“Only the most broken people can be great leaders,” Namor (Tenoch Huerta) said in the… latest trailer in front of Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. While the first trailer for Ryan Coogler’s highly anticipated sequel conveyed a message of sadness as the main characters mourned the death of King T’Challa, reflecting the audience’s lingering grief over the loss of Chadwick Boseman. The latest trailer puts more emphasis on the film’s story. It even hints at the inclusion of a major Marvel villain that hasn’t been announced yet.
While there’s still a somber tone, which I suspect will permeate the film as a means of allowing collective mourning for Boseman, this trailer is confirmation that T’Challa’s death won’t make the world smaller. Rather, Wakanda forever seems to offer a larger tapestry to reframe T’Challa’s legacy and consider how loss shapes a nation. Undoubtedly, the latest trailer doesn’t evoke a superhero movie at all, at least not the one we’re used to, but rather an epic unfolding through tragedy, faith, and the determination to lay claim to the future.
Namor isn’t your typical comic book antagonist, and the new footage in the trailer does everything it can to prove that point, providing glimpses into Namor’s Mayan culture, regality, and place among his people, which clearly made him a foil. makes for T’Challa, just as human and just as driven by duty to his people and his god. With T’Challa gone, Namor is a king without equal, which makes his introduction all the more interesting. Of course it’s natural to regret that we won’t see T’Challa and Namor in this film, the inclusion of Namor speaks to Coogler’s interest in exploring the idea of the throne as a people rather than a person.
Thanks to Marvel Studios
The poster for the film also seems to emphasize this, with the figure of the Black Panther looming over Shuri (Letitia Wright), Nakia (Lupita Nyong’o), Ramonda (Angela Bassett), and M’Baku figuratively suggesting, and perhaps literally, despite the apparent female Black Panther show in the trailer, that they are all rulers of Wakanda and maybe Black Panther too. Likewise, Namor, who wears Kukulkan’s headdress, is supported by Namora (Mabel Cadena) and Attuma (Alex Livinalli), suggesting that every move Namor makes as ruler is not one he makes alone. And if the comics are any indication, Namora and Attuma could be the figurative angel and devil on his shoulder.
Although Namor is one of Marvel’s very first characters, in Marvel Comics No. 1 (1939), and has been villain, hero and antihero, his relationship with Wakanda and Black Panther is relatively recent, coming to prominence during Christopher Priest continues Black Panther which ran from 1998 to 2003. Since then, other writers, such as Brian Michael Bendis, Jonathan Hickman, and Jason Aaron, have fueled the animosity between the two kings and their kingdoms, with Namor drowning most of Wakanda during Avengers vs X-Men, causing T’Challa to assume the mantle of King of the Dead, while Shuri rules over the remaining people of Wakanda as Queen and Black Panther. Though the two would make up for it during Secret Warsrecent conflicts in Jason Aaron’s Avengers have once again put the two at odds.
Elements of that conflict, including a torrent of water raging through Wakanda, can be clearly seen in the latest trailer. Despite the threat of war and the warning from M’Baku (Winston Duke) that killing Namor is tantamount to killing the god of his people, Huerta has made it clear that Namor is not the villain of Wakanda forever. The conflict seems to be driven by the question of what a nation becomes without its king. Are they getting better or worse? That question pushes the story of Wakanda forever beyond mere superheroes and into the realm that big fantasy and sci-fi epics like Under the spell of the Ring and Dune, have explored. The weight of leadership by flawed or “broken” individuals is more than something that can be solved by mantras of power and responsibility.
T’Challa and Namor straddle the line of king and superhero, and king and antihero, respectively. But there is also a third point of comparison. In the same Black Panther run by Priest who introduced the conflict between T’Challa and Namor, a third monarch waged war against the two kingdoms: Doctor Doom. As king and villain, Doom is yet another take on what the throne means, and in this case when it really is a symbol of the self rather than a nation. Yet, in the comics, Doom’s Latveria is a peaceful land, a land where the inhabitants have little to worry about and are not even forced to fight their ruler’s wars. No one is as broken as Doom, but by Namor’s estimation, does that make him a great leader? Although purely speculative, Huerta’s comments about not the villain and the themes of Wakanda forever lit up by the recent trailer suggest that Doom could play a part in this epic clash of nations.
It seems that Coogler is giving us a chance to mourn Boseman, T’Challa and the concept of a noble monarchy by turning Wakanda against Tolocan and exposing what we value in a nation and its rulers. By deconstructing the iconography and invincibility of the monarchy, Coogler arguably paves the way for a reconstruction of mythology that speaks to the essence of these characters’ abilities to inspire and explore greater truths about what we value.