Black Panther: Wakanda Forever original story outlined by writer-director Ryan Coogler

Ryan Coogler revealed his film’s complicated backstory Black Panther: Wakanda Forever would take place before the tragic death of the original film’s star, Chadwick Boseman.

Coogler told The New York Times that the original intention was for the film to focus on the relationship between fathers and sons. The battle reportedly led to T’Challa’s five-year absence after “The Blip,” the Thanos-induced mass destruction that turned half the world’s population to dust, only to be brought back later.

The sequel would still have Prince Namor, the Sub-Mariner, as the villain. But T’Challa would have been attached to his love Nakia (Lupita Nyong’o), who gave birth to a son, Toussaint, in his absence. Dealing with this new reality would have been the focus even as the Black Panther fought Namor.

It was, ‘What are we going to do with the blip? Cooller told the Times. “That was the challenge. It was absolutely nothing like what we did. It was supposed to be a father-son story from a father’s perspective, because the first film was a father-son story from the boys’ perspective.”

Cooller continued. “In the (original) script, T’Challa was a father who had this forced five-year absence from his son’s life,” Coogler said. “The first scene was an animated sequence. You hear Nakia talking to Toussaint. She said, “Tell me what you know about your father.” You realize he doesn’t know his father was the Black Panther. He never met him and Nakia remarried a Haitian. Then we get to reality and that’s the night everyone comes back from the blip. They see T’Challa meeting the boy for the first time.

Reduction up to three years after the closing of the The Avengers: Infinite War.

“Then it goes on for three years and he’s essentially co-parenting,” Coogler continued. “We had some crazy scenes there for Chad, man. Our code name for the film was Summer Break and the film was about a summer that the boy spends with his father. For his eighth birthday, they perform a ritual that requires them to go into the forest and live off the land. But something happens and T’Challa must save the world with his son on his hip. It was the movie.”

The rewritten version of Wakanda forever became a meditation on grief and revenge directed at T’Challa’s sister Shuri (Letitia Wright), who eventually becomes the new Black Panther.

Cooller added that Val [the C.I.A. director, played by Julia Louis-Dreyfus] was much more active in the original plan. “Actually it was a conflict between Wakanda, USA and Talokan (the underwater kingdom ruled by Namor). But it was all mostly from the child’s perspective.”