The final movie of Marvel’s Phase 4 is here. Black Panther: Wakanda Forever marks an important point in the MCU as well as in its characters’ lives. As Shuri (Letitia Wright), Queen Ramonda (Angela Bassett), and the rest of the Wakandans deal with the loss of King T’Challa (Chadwick Boseman), a new threat rises from the Atlantic in the form of Namor and his oceanic people of Talokan.
In many ways, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever is all about honoring Boseman’s real-life passing and finding ways for the ensemble cast of characters to move on to the next chapter of their lives. Yet despite T’Challa and Boseman no longer being here, their presence looms large over the Black Panther sequel.
Never is that more true than during the movie’s final moments and end credits scene, the latter of which contains a huge reveal about how T’Challa’s influence will still be felt on the Marvel Cinematic Universe in future projects. We’re going to break down that end credits scene, which means there will be SPOILERS below.
Black Panther: Wakanda Forever ending explained
After defeating and then forming a truce with Namor, Shuri, the new Black Panther, sets out to finally lay her brother to rest. Earlier in the film, Shuri refused to burn her funeral garb that she wore on the day of her brother’s passing. But by the end of the movie, she is ready to take that big step.
As the Wakandans gather for the ritual where the Black Panther must fight any would-be challengers for the throne, it is revealed that Shuri has decided to skip the event. In her stead, M’Baku (Winston Duke) emerges from Shuri’s ship and declares that he plans to challenge for the right to rule.
The gathered Wakandan leaders look confused at this turn of events, but it is almost certainly something planned together by M’Baku and Shuri. Shuri was never raised with the expectation she would have to become queen, and we’ve never really seen her wanting that role. M’Baku, on the other hand, challenged T’Challa for the right to be king in the first Black Panther film and gradually fell more and more into the role of leadership throughout Wakanda Forever as he provided sanctuary for other tribes and gave Shuri crucial advice that led to the tentative peace between Wakanda and Talokan.
From there, the scene cuts to Haiti, where Shuri arrives at Nakia’s (Lupita Nyong’o) beachside house. Nakia has already set up a fire on the beach for Shuri’s ritual to say goodbye to her brother. Shuri goes out alone, tosses her funeral garb onto the fire, and then sits with her grief as the audience is shown flashes of scenes she shared with T’Challa.
The credits role, but as any Marvel fan knows, there’s always more to come in the post-credits scene.
What happened in the Black Panther: Wakanda Forever’s post-credits scene?
Unlike many other Marvel post credits scene, the final sequence of Wakanda Forever is a direct continuation of the movie’s ending. As Shuri sits at the fire, Nakia comes out to join her with a six-year-old boy. The three sit together, talking, and Nakia hits audiences with an enormous reveal: the boy is her and T’Challa’s son. He goes by the name of Toussaint, but eventually tells Shuri his secret: his real name is T’Challa, son of King T’Challa.
If you’re wondering how exactly the timelines of T’Challa and Nakia having a child work out, you’re probably not alone. Due to the five-year blip, the Marvel Cinematic Universe currently has a somewhat confusing history where some characters are five years older while others vanished, leaving the world to move on without them.
T’Challa was one of the characters affected by the snap, losing out on five years of his life. However, since his son is six years old in Wakanda Forever, this implies that he and Nakia conceived before the snap — in other words, between the end of Black Panther and the start of Avengers: Infinity War.
Moreover, Nakia says that she and T’Challa agreed together that their son should be raised away from Wakanda and the pressures of the crown. This means that the two agreed that Nakia would end up taking their son to live abroad before the events of Avengers: Infinity War, which explains why Nakia isn’t present for either that or the follow-up Avengers: Endgame.
Though Marvel hasn’t recast T’Challa as the Black Panther, it laid the groundwork for another descendent to one day take up the mantle, one who even shares the same name. It’s a wonderful way to knit another T’Challa into the MCU without recasting the part that Boseman played so poignantly.
Black Panther: Wakanda Forever is out now in theaters.
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