It seems to be a consensus that Black Panther: Wakanda Forever is the finest film to come out of Phase 4, which is commonly thought to be the least successful of the MCU’s phases. As far as I’m concerned Wakanda Forever is the only movie In Phase 4 that has compelling storytelling, characters that the audience will want to root for, a powerful antagonist, and an overarching theme that will resonate with the public.
Read: Black Panther: Wakanda Forever Review
However, we can all agree that the finished version, Wakanda Forever, is not what was originally intended. The tragic death of Chadwick Boseman reworked the entire picture and necessitated a fresh script. But we never knew what the original story was, until in an interview with The New York Times, Ryan Coggler, the director of the Black Panther movies, revealed the original story notes for Wakanda Forever Before Chadwick Boseman’s death.
Coogler explained in the interview how Toussaint, the son of T’Challa and Nakia, was already a part of the plot in the original story of Black Panther 2 film. The youngster was originally revealed right at the start of the film. Conversely, the only time we see Toussaint in Black Panther 2: Wakanda Forever is in the post-credits sequence. Coogler said they wanted to portray how T’Challa had missed the first five years of his son’s life after being Blipped to dust by Thanos.
Black Panther 2 Original Story:
It was absolutely nothing like what we made. It was going to be a father-son story from the perspective of a father, because the first movie had been a father-son story from the perspective of the sons. In the script, T’Challa was a dad who’d had this forced five-year absence from his son’s life [because of the Blip]. The first scene was an animated sequence. You hear Nakia talking to Toussaint. She says, ‘Tell me what you know about your father.’ You realize that he doesn’t know his dad was the Black Panther. He’s never met him, and Nakia is remarried to a Haitian dude. Then, we cut to reality and it’s the night that everybody comes back from the Blip. You see T’Challa meet the kid for the first time.”
Coogler made it clear that the first scene of the original Black Panther sequel affected our perspective on T’Challa’s return after the Avengers had saved half the world. It wouldn’t end there, though. Coogler further indicated that there would be a second time leap immediately following the first:
Then it cuts ahead three years and T’Challa is essentially co-parenting. We had some crazy scenes in there for Chad, man. Our code name for the movie was ‘Summer Break,’ and the movie was about a summer that the kid spends with his dad. For his eighth birthday, they do a ritual where they go out into the bush and have to live off the land. But something happens and T’Challa has to go save the world with his son on his hip. That was the movie.
Black Panther: Wakanda Forever is currently in theaters now, and will be making its streaming debut on DisneyPlus in January 2023.
