Black Panther: Wakanda Forever will introduce Namor and end Marvel’s Phase 4

At San Diego Comic-Con, Marvel announced that Black Panther: Wakanda Forever would be the final film in Phase 4 of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Black Panther: Wakanda Forever will arrive in theaters on Nov. 11 2022.

The fourth phase of the MCU started with WandaVision, the first of the Disney Plus TV shows that were canon in the MCU. The first film was Black Widow, which came out in July 2021. With the company announcing the slate and release dates for Phase 5 at SDCC 2022, with representatives promising that the next phase was about “resetting and introducing new characters.”

One of those new characters will be Namor, the King of Atlantis, played by Tenoch Huerta, most recently seen in The Forever Purge. As undersea royalty, Namor bears a grudge against the surface world that often puts him at odds with the superheroes of the Marvel Universe — and has a very specific rivalry with T’Challa, which will likely be revised in this version of the story.

Also appearing will be Riri Williams (Dominique Thorne), the teen whiz kid who builds her own Iron Man-style armor to become the hero Ironheart.

Of course, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever will feature the most important returning characters, like Shuri (Letitia Wright), M’Baku (Winston Duke), and Nakia (Lupita Nyong’o).

Between the release of the original Black Panther and its sequel, star Chadwick Boseman, who played T’Challa, the MCU’s Black Panther, passed away after a quiet battle with cancer. Marvel president Kevin Fiege has made it clear in the past that the role of T’Challa will not be recast.

Black Panther: Wakanda Forever also brings back characters like Everett K. Ross (Martin Freeman), Ramonda (Angela Basset), and Okoye (Danai Gurira). The Black Panther sequel will also bring back original-movie director Ryan Coogler, who also co-wrote Wakanda Forever with Joe Robert Cole, Coogler’s collaborator on the script for the original.

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