Black Panther 2’s after-credits scene is a touching reveal of T’Challa’s legacy that’s a metaphor about Chadwick Boseman’s life. But does Marvel Comics’ Black Panther have a son, too?
Like nearly every Marvel Cinematic Universe movie before it, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever has a treat for fans who are patient enough to stay past the point where the credits start.
You’d be hard-pressed to find another Marvel post-credits scene that’s as touching as this one. But it also raises bigger questions about where the MCU is headed, and how closely it will follow the comics.
[Ed. note: This piece contains spoilers for Black Panther: Wakanda Forever.]
The movie itself closes with T’Challa’s sister Shuri (Letitia Wright) finally able to confront her grief for her family by carrying out a traditional Wakandan funeral ritual. The credits scene picks up moments later, as Nakia (Lupita Nyong’o) joins the young Black Panther and introduces her to Nakia’s secret son — T’Challa’s offspring and Shuri’s nephew. The boy says he is called Toussaint, for Toussaint Louverture, a pivotal figure in the overthrow of French control in Haiti and the country’s transformation into a sovereign state of formerly enslaved peoples. But that, he says, is his Haitian name, and he has another: Prince T’Challa, of Wakanda.
Nakia explains that she and the late T’Challa conceived in secret, and decided to raise their son outside the pressures — and dangers, as Wakanda Forever so emphatically demonstrates — of the Wakandan court. It’s a beautiful button on the film’s themes, as Shuri embraces the final member of her family she didn’t even know she had. And it’s a tear-worthy tribute to the previous T’Challa, late actor Chadwick Boseman: a firm statement that a hero’s legacy lives beyond death in the actions of those who loved them.
