As the women of Wakanda, led by Letitia Wright’s Shuri, struggle to fill the void T’Challa has left, Coogler stages less a typical Marvel movie than an intricately doom-laden geopolitical thriller.

by Owen Geiberman

When Chadwick Boseman passed away in August 2020, the tragedy of his death felt wrenchingly multi-layered. We had lost an actor who, after “Get on Up” and “42” and “Da 5 Bloods,” was arguably on his way to becoming the greatest actor of his generation. We’d lost the rare sublime screen star who was also a culture hero — his slyly playful and forceful performance as T’Challa, the Wakanda-king-turned-leonine-superhero of “Black Panther,” made Boseman a mythic presence in pop culture, revered around the globe as a larger-than-life figure who was also a winningly down-to-earth icon of Black fortitude and nobility. And, of course, we’d lost the anchor of the rare comic-book franchise that really meant something. “Black Panther” was a very good Marvel movie that was also grander than that. The film marked a paradigm shift: a long-overdue leveling of the blockbuster playing field, and a celebration (through its extraordinary success) of the fact that a Black superhero could now stand astride the world.

When Ryan Coogler, the director and co-writer of “Black Panther,” agreed to go ahead in making the sequel after Boseman’s death (for a while he says he considered stepping away), he knew that the already daunting challenge of creating a movie that could live up to the first film had multiplied exponentially. His decision not to replace Boseman with a different actor was wise. You don’t try to replace someone who’s irreplaceable.

Yet what Coogler has done instead in “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever” carries its own high-wire audacity. Teaming up again with co-screenwriter Joe Robert Cole, the filmmaker has woven the demise of his leading man into the very firmament of his story. As the characters, led by Letitia Wright’s Shuri, the princess of Wakanda who is T’Challa’s younger sister, proceed to mourn T’Challa’s death, they tap deeply into our collective feelings about Boseman. That sounds like a standard thing for a movie in this predicament to do, except that where Coogler goes further is in building his entire drama — the drive, power and passion of it — around the wounding hole in Wakanda left by T’Challa’s death.

The characters who now stand in his shadow, almost all of them women, are desperate to fill the void, and they’ll need all the wily valor they can muster. Shuri, haunted and saturnine, with burning eyes, her faith locked up in technology, which she also uses to shield herself from the world; Danai Gurira’s Okoye, the head of Wakanda’s all-female special forces, bald and actiony, with a gnashing directness worthy of Nina Simone (though that’s a quality that can also get in her way); Lupita Nyong’o’s War Dog Nakia, a spy with, ironically, the film’s sunniest temperament; Michaela Coel’s Aneka, the pensive and feral Wakandan warrior; and a new character, Riri Williams (Dominique Thorne), an MIT prodigy who invented a vibranium detector as a student project only to see it fastened onto by the CIA — these women seize the reins of what is less a typical Marvel movie, driven by light-and-magic effects, than an intricately doom-laden and engrossing geopolitical thriller.

Wakanda, the most powerful nation on earth, faces a world that covets its reserves of vibranium, the indigenous purple-glowing metal that’s the source of its power. Early on, mercenaries break into the country’s technological nerve center, trying to take vibranium by force. But they’re subdued and captured, and there’s a terrific scene set at the United Nations where T’Challa’s mother, Ramonda (Angela Bassett), the queen of Wakanda who is now its leader, parades the bound prisoners as she dresses down the world for daring to raid her nation. This is the first (though not the last) scene Bassett will play with a blazing fury worthy of Shakespeare, and she’s mesmerizing. The source of Ramonda’s rage, which she’s too proud to say out loud, is that the attitude of many of the world’s nations towards Wakanda is charged with racism. That’s why they think they can plunder it.

The story turns on the possibility that vibranium may exist outside Wakanda — which is why the U.S. has sent an exploratory vessel into the ocean, only to see its operatives killed by the otherworldly power of Talokan, an ancient civilization of underwater dwellers with winged ankles. They’re led by Namor, played by Tenoch Huerta Mejía as a deceptively gentle-spirited, ultimately imperious king who is something like Aquaman, except that the character predated Aquaman in the comics (in 1939) by two years. Talokan, like Wakanda, is an outlier among nations, which is why Namor wants to team up with the Wakandans. But he offers Shuri a Faustian bargain: His dream is to burn the whole surface world, which makes him a spiritual cousin to Michael B. Jordan’s Killmonger, who in “Black Panther” exhorted a similar chip-on-the-shoulder nihilism.

Watching “Wakanda Forever,” it’s almost unavoidable that we feel the absence of Boseman’s heroic dramatic center of gravity. The movie doesn’t have the classic comic-book pow of “Black Panther,” and it’s easily 20 minutes too long (we could probably have lived without the Talokan backstory). Yet “Wakanda Forever” has a slow-burn emotional suspense. Once the film starts to gather steam, it doesn’t let up.

The pivotal character is Shuri, and we’re with her on every step of her evolution from wary, desolate tech-head to underground politician to do-or-die action heroine. Coogler has fun showcasing Julia Louis-Dreyfuss as the head of the CIA, who’s a lot more ruthless than her ex-husband, Agent Ross (Martin Freeman); in her snappy way, she stands in for today’s realpolitik America. The other note of levity is struck by Winston Duke, whose mountain tribe leader M’Baku is like the court jester of the Wakanda coalition. It all climaxes with a battle distinguished by its teeming, writhing frenzy. The heroes of “Wakanda Forever” are fighting for their lives, their nation, their fallen king, and the movie lets us touch the ruthlessness of their devotion. They fill the void, all right, and so does Ryan Coogler as a Marvel storyteller. T’Challa is gone, but somewhere he is smiling.