During San Diego Comic-Con, we received a lot of news regarding Marvel's upcoming Black Panther. We learned who all the major players will be. Now, one of them has given us some details on exactly what it is they'll all be doing. While the details are all vague -- because this is Marvel, so of course they are -- we can start to put the pieces together in a few different ways in order to see how they fit. Lupita Nyong'o tells us that the film will have a couple of villains, which will lead Black Panther to get assistance from a couple different places, one at home, and one abroad.
At Marvel's big SDCC panel, we learned that Lupita Nyong'o will be playing the role of Nakia in the film, a member of Wakanda's elite band of female warriors, called the Dora Milaje. Following the San Diego Comic-Con panel at the press round up, Nyong'o told Collider how it is that the Dora Milaje will become part of the story.
The story of this Black Panther is - what am I allowed to say? The story is that the Black Panther's leadership is really threatened by two foes who come together, and so Black Panther gets the help of the C.I.A. and the Dora Milaje to try and defeat the enemy.
While the exact nature of the threat is not clear, the basic structure makes a lot of sense. We expected Martin Freeman's character from Captain America: Civil War to make a return, so this is how Everett Ross will become part of the story, T'Challa will call on him when he needs help. In addition, Lupita Nyong'o's character, as well as that of The Walking Dead's Danai Gurira, will also join the fight at the behest of T'Challa. In the comics, the Dora Milaje is an ancient order which Black Panther decides to reinstitute, we'd guess that's what will happen here as well.
But what about these two foes? One of them is fairly easy. Michal B. Jordan was introduced at the Comic-Con panel as Erik Killmonger, one of the classic Black Panther enemies, so he's almost certainly one of them. The other is a bit tricky. In Avengers: Age of Ultron we met Andy Serkis' character Ulysses Klaw, probably Black Panther's most famous enemy. We've always assumed that he would make an appearance in the Black Panther movie, yet neither the actor nor character has never been confirmed to appear in the movie. That didn't change at Comic-Con.
The other possibility is that Lupita Nyong'o is trying to trick us. In the comics, her character of Nakia becomes jealous of the fact that T'Challa is in love with somebody other than her, and she goes bad. Maybe, if the Dora Milaje is not created as a response to this threat, but is around already, she's the other foe that joins with Killmonger?
Whatever the solution, now that have a basic framework, we can start here and go forward to figure out all other news fits into it. The Black Panther movie will hit theaters February 16, 2018.
