Black Panther star Chadwick Boseman passed away after a secret five-year battle with cancer, leaving everyone reeling. For MCU fans, it didn't take long until they started questioning what this meant for T'Challa, no great surprise when the actor's take on the character was nothing short of iconic.
Marvel Studios has decided to honour Boseman's legacy by not recasting the hero. Instead, Shuri looks set to inherit the mantle, picking up where her fallen brother left off.
Recently Black Panther: Wakanda Forever director Ryan Coogler spoke on The Official Black Panther Podcast (via The Direct), and emotionally recalled his final conversation with Boseman. That saw the filmmaker offer his collaborator the chance to read the sequel's script, an opportunity the What If...? star chose to decline.
"I just finished [the script], man. My last conversation was calling him, asking him if he wanted to read it before I got notes from the studio," he recalls. "That was the last time we spoke. And yeah, so I, you know, he passed maybe a couple weeks after I finished."
"He was tired, bro. I could tell he was tired. I’d been trying to get a hold of him for a few days and Denzel [Washington] had been trying to get a hold of him too. So I texted him and told him, 'Hey man, Denzel said he’s been looking for you too.' Because he just did Ma Rainey for Denzel. So he called me. And I could tell he was laying down."
"We were talking. And Simone [Boseman] was with him. And [Laughs] he kicks Simone out, because he told her he didn’t want her to hear nothing that could get him in trouble with the NDA. And she didn’t wanna leave him. So I could tell something was up. But they were joking and laughing."
"He talked about how they were planning their wedding in South Carolina. And how many people he was going to invite. And he asked about my kid, ’cause he had missed our baby shower," Coogler continues. "And then he was like, yeah, he said he didn’t wanna read it ’cause he didn’t wanna get in the way of whatever notes the studio might have."
"So he was like, ‘It’s better if I can read it later.’ But I found later that he was too tired to read anything."
These comments made for a tear-jerking read, but are even harder to listen to (despite that, we'd strongly recommend checking the podcast out). It's said to think that Boseman was too unwell to read Black Panther: Wakanda Forever's screenplay, and even sadder to think he may have known it was a movie he wouldn't be able to make.
Hollywood lost a great in Boseman, but his legacy lives on, and all signs point to the upcoming sequel being a fitting tribute to his inspiring time in the MCU.
Black Panther: Wakanda Forever arrives in theaters on November 11.