Let me be clear here. I am doing a truncated recap of 
“Wakanda Forever” (and will probably do the same for 
“Secret Invasion” and “Ms. Marvel”) because I honestly 
don't know if I am up to spending so many hours on these 
things anymore, but I know they probably contain character 
establishment and details that will be important later in 
this neverending series from hell. I am NOT doing this 
because I agree with the toxic fanboys who insist these 
movies and shows are awful for nebulous reasons that 
DEFINITELY don't make them racist, sexist shitheads. 
“Wakanda Forever” may be a mess (the same way “Multiverse 
of Madness” was for similar AND different reasons) and 
probably the same goes for “Secret Invasion”, but “Ms. 
Marvel” is rightfully considered one of the better origin 
stories. Certainly better than “The Eternals” (which I am 
still happily ignoring and no amount of insisting that 
insane plot will be important later will change my mind on 
that). That being said...let's do this.


“Black Panther 2: Wakanda Forever”

Starring: Letitia Wright, Danai Gurira, Tenoch Huerta, 
Angela Bassett, Dominique Thorne, Lupita Nyong’o, Winston 
Duke, Martin Freeman, Julia Louis Dreyfus


Obviously, the biggest problem going into this movie was 
the loss of Chadwick Boseman. The writers had two choices 
here. Option A) they could recast T'Challa and forge ahead 
with the storyline they had originally planned for his 
trilogy. Option B) since there would be a plot somewhere 
down the line where Shuri became Black Panther (and the 
parallel Jane Foster as Thor movie was already coming out), 
they could move that up and reconfigure every other part of 
those future storylines into a new direction. There are 
moments when you can sense how the story MIGHT have gone in 
an ideal world where everything wasn't messed up by a 
pandemic and the death of the lead actor. I may have been 
optimistic in my thinking that the damage would not still 
be felt this far down the line of movies.

So it begins with T'Challa dying off screen of an 
unidentified illness while Shuri helplessly tries to save 
him by creating a synthetic version of the purple herb 
Killmonger destroyed in the first movie. And the title card 
is just silent images and clips of Chadwick.

Ramonda reverts back to queen of Wakanda, representing them 
at the UN where she is berated by Toby from The West Wing 
for failing their promise of fully joining the rest of the 
world. The French lady chimes in that Vibranium can be used 
in WMDs. Ramonda gives a little speech about Wakandans 
never trusting these powerful white people as far as they 
could throw a brick shithouse (paraphrasing a bit) and that 
was reinforced by some military guys who tried to break 
into a Wakandan facility in Mali to steal Vibranium and 
were stopped by the Dora Milaje. She has the military guys 
dumped on the UN officials and sneers that the next time 
something like this happens they won't be so nice. She 
finishes by establishing for the audience that the world is 
searching for Vibranium outside of Wakanda and good luck 
with that.

So the next scene has an American team finding some in the 
Atlantic. And immediately being attacked by the MCUs 
version of Atlanteans. Sirens make several men just walk 
over the side of the boat with "eerie singing". The rest 
are killed by spear wielding, seemingly invincible blue 
mermen. 
   Chrissy: Because why not make it difficult to tell this 
    movie apart from the newest Avatar being released the 
    same year?
   Diandra: Oh, I forgot you were here.
   Chrissy: You do that a lot. One of these days I'm going 
    to put a smiley face on a balloon in my place and see 
    how long it takes you to notice.
   Diandra: If you think I've successfully blocked enough 
    of that show from my memory to not get the reference...
The lead scientist nearly escapes with a helicopter pilot, 
but the helicopter is pulled out of the air and slammed 
into the water by an unseen figure floating in midair. 

For more exposition dump, we go back to Wakanda, where 
Shuri has been busy inventing suits of armor and weapons 
and her own version of JARVIS named Griot (voiced by Trevor 
Noah). She has given up all efforts to recreate the Black 
Panther herb and doesn't care if they ever have a Black 
Panther again. It is briefly established that Nakia is 
trying to reach her, but Shuri keeps refusing to take her 
calls. Ramonda takes her to a swamp area somewhere to 
perform a ritual that marks the end of their mourning of 
T'Challa, but Shuri is very much not interested in 
entertaining the old spiritual bullshit. They are 
interrupted by the official introduction of Namor in a 
scene so dark he seems to literally be coming out of 
nowhere and you have to squint to make out his face 
clearly. This replicates perfectly the experience I had 
with about half the scenes in The Eternals and I felt both 
validated and annoyed that everyone else only seemed to 
notice it now. 

So yeah. His kingdom is on top of a previously unknown 
alternate source of Vibranium that Americans are determined 
to strip mine now that the world knows the metal exists. 
And he wants the Wakandans to help him put a stop to it 
since it was kind of their fault. He leaves them with a 
shell to call him when they find the scientist responsible 
for locating them and a veiled threat of war if they don't 
cooperate. He also leaves the Vibranium detector the 
scientist built, which Shuri says was designed by someone 
"brilliant". She and Okoye visit her "favorite colonizer", 
AKA Everett. After being reassured the Wakandans were not 
responsible for what happened on the mining ship, he gives 
them the name of the brilliant scientist, who he calls a 
"kid". The only person who could possibly be capable of 
building such a machine.

And this is how we bring Riri Williams - aka Ironheart - 
into the MCU. 
   Chrissy: And piss off a whole bunch of dudebros who had 
    no idea NextGen IronMan was a black girl.
   Diandra: Yeah, funny how the loudest fanboys seem to 
    have the least knowledge of the comics. "wHat'S nExt, 
    SpiDeR wOmaN?" Uh, dude. Maybe try reading one of the 
    comics these movies are based on.
It turns out she didn't build the detector for the CIA or 
whatever government agency used it, but for a school 
project to spite her professor who said it was impossible. 
The Wakandans convince her to join them by threatening to 
leave her to her own defenses when the crazy merman with 
wings on his ankles comes to kill her.

So she takes them to her lab, where she just leaves the 
laptop with the schematics because it is so well encrypted 
she once needed to build a quantum machine to crack it. 
Griot warns them just before the FBI show up to raid the 
lab. Riri escapes in her own Iron Suit and Shuri and Okoye 
escape in separate vehicles to try to replicate the awesome 
chase sequence of the first movie. Also somewhat 
replicating tech issues with the Iron Man movies because 
Riri flies too high to take out a tracking drone at one 
point and passes out from lack of oxygen.

And then the Atlanteans ride in on some breaching whales 
and attack all of them, killing several feds, but failing 
to take down Okoye because she is unkillable. 
Unfortunately, so are they apparently. While she is dazed 
and knocked aside, Shuri turns Griot into a universal 
translator and convinces them to take her and Riri to 
Namor. Which their equivalent of Okoye grants, turning his 
water mask into an oxygen mask for her.
   Diandra: You know what? I almost understand complaints 
    about this movie because seeing that last paragraph 
    written out sounds like it was written by an insane 
    person. Or, like...whoever wrote “Everything Everywhere 
    All At Once”.
   Chrissy: Yeah, I don't think that was the problem the 
    loudest complainers had with this moive.
   Diandra: I did say almost.

And this is where Everett's side plot seems to veer 
entirely into its own separate movie. When he tries to join 
the officials investigating the incident in the morning, he 
is met by Valentina, who apparently gave the feds a heads 
up that the Wakandans were in town. And we're retconning 
that they already know each other because she looks him up 
and down and asks if he finally put that home gym in then 
and suggests she would like to "drop by sometime and jump 
on your Peloton."
   Chrissy: [loud snort] Is that what we're calling it 
    these days?
   Diandra: Yeah, between that and that "Pilates machine" 
    Doctor Strange keeps in the torture dungeon...
   Chrissy: I'm sure you could get a fic out of this if you 
    wanted to.
   Diandra: I don't.
Everett finds Shuri's discarded kimoyo beads and pockets it 
before anyone sees. And then Valentina says something I 
completely missed the first time I saw this: that she needs 
to apologize for some things she said to him back when they 
were married.
   Chrissy: Oh, so that wasn't just you forgetting things 
    again?
   Diandra: No. I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have forgotten 
    that.

For her failure to protect the crown princess, Ramonda 
announces Okoye will be stripped of her title and rank. One 
of the other tribal leaders reminds her that Okoye fought 
her own husband in the first movie and she "gave 
everything". Ramonda raves that he is in a nice cushy place 
where she can visit him while HER husband was murdered. "I 
am queen of the most powerful nation in the entire world 
and my entire family is gone! Have I not given everything?" 
She reminds Okoye that SHE was the one who had to go to the 
Jabbari to beg for protection when Killmonger staged his 
coup AND Okoye ignored her warning against taking her one 
remaining child on this mission, so... "today, I am DONE."
   Chrissy: And if you were wondering why she got an Oscar 
    nomination for this...
   Diandra: And might have won if the Academy wasn't so 
    enamored with that other movie, yeah.
   Chrissy: Oh, they just generally don't like comic book 
    movies for anything other than special effects. Which 
    they often lose anyway.

Ramonda asks Griot to track the kimoyo beads, which trill 
in Everett's pocket while he's still with Valentina. He 
pretends it's a phone call from an imaginary girlfriend 
until she leaves. Then he and Ramonda play catch up, at 
least as far as she is willing to tell him what's going on. 
Everett's people believe the Wakandans are the ones 
attacking authorities and stealing the detection device 
despite the fact that everyone who has seen them has 
immediately noted Wakandans are not blue. Ramonda makes 
Everett promise to warn her if the government tries to act 
on their theories and Everett agrees he will do whatever 
they need because he is indebted to Shuri. 

And now is when Griot finally mentions that the language 
the blue people are speaking is Yucatec Myan. It is also 
when Ramonda goes to Haiti to find Nakia, who she notes 
wasn't at T'Challa's funeral. Because the stopping and 
starting and rewriting and reshooting has left this whole 
plot looking very awkwardly stitched together. But 
apparently she thinks Nakia can help recover Shuri for 
whatever plot convenient reason.

Riri wakes up in a cave somewhere lit by lots and lots of 
glowworms and guarded by an Atlantean. Shuri is given 
"proper" ceremonial wear and escorted to meet Namor. And 
because Nakia is apparently also talking to an old woman in 
the Yucatan at the same time, she gets the big exposition 
dump ball rolling about the seemingly immortal creature 
that disappears people into the water. Shuri identifies the 
bracelet Namor gives her (and all other artifacts in the 
room) as 16th century Mesoamerican. Just...like...on sight. 
Because in 1571, his mother's village was plagued by 
smallpox, war and famine thanks to the Spanish. Their god 
Chaac sent their shaman a vision of a miracle plant 
sprouting underwater that could save them, which is of 
course some equivalent of Wakanda's heart shaped herb. 
Except instead of just making them invincible and giving 
them visions of the afterlife, it rewired them to breathe 
underwater and turned their skin blue (when they are out of 
the water). Because his mother was pregnant with him at the 
time, Namor was born half human and able to live (and 
"swim") in any environment with non-blue skin, but had 
wings on his ankles and pointy ears. "I was a mutant."
   Chrissy: Are we gonna be able to turn this into a 
    drinking game now that they're allowed to say that word 
    in the MCU? 
   Diandra: You'll use any excuse, won't you?
   Chrissy: It does make getting through nonsense superhero 
    stuff easier.

He isn't immortal. Probably. Just ages REALLY slowly. 
   Chrissy: Those terrible twos must have been a decades 
    long nightmare.
   Diandra: At least she missed the teen decades.
His mother missed her home and made him promise to bury her 
there, at which point colonization was in full swing. They 
destroyed a plantation and Namor personally killed a 
Spanish priest after he dubbed him "the child without 
love." Because Namor rolls off the tongue better than the 
other thing he called him: "son of Satan". And also because 
he has "no love for the surface world", which is why he has 
to kill Riri. Shuri offers to take her to Wakanda instead, 
then offers to exchange herself as some sort of hostage or 
something. Not sure it makes sense, but the plot connecting 
these scenes that were obviously intended to go somewhere 
at some point is pretty hasty and threadbare.

One of the reasons the...Talokan, apparently...are so 
invincible is that they live deep enough underwater that 
the atmospheric pressure and temperatures would kill 
humans. So Shuri has to use a big clunky suit to visit.

Now. A lot of the dickheads complaining about this movie 
took issue with the fact that it consumed basically all of 
the available VFX budget, leaving little for "Quantumania", 
which ended up making that one look "awful". But 
really...I'm just glad it doesn't look as fucking goofy as 
"Aquaman" did. And I'm not sure there WAS any way to make 
"Quantumania" look LESS goofy. As Shuri is staring at the 
Vibranium city whose skyline doesn't look all that 
different from Wakanda, Namor asks if she understands why 
he would be willing to kill to protect this.

Except Ramonda is just as willing to kill to protect her 
daughter. On the surface, Griot announces that he has 
located the tracking signal in Shuri's earrings and she 
gives Nakia authority to retrieve her by "any means 
necessary". 

Namor and Shuri find a cave (or go back up to it? I don't 
know) so she can get out of the suit to talk. They do some 
sort of bonding over losing everyone they love, with a side 
note that he has lived centuries longer than her and has 
probably learned not to get too attached by now. 
   Chrissy: Yeah, that's just mortal/immortal relationships 
    101. 
   Diandra: See also: literally any combination of 
    Asgardian and human, both canon and not.
   Chrissy: How’s that new FrostStrange story coming, by 
    the way?
   Diandra: [violent shushing gestures] Hahahahaha...what 
    story? I don’t know what you’re talking about. [glares]
She admits that this place is amazing and his instinct to 
protect it is fair, but she cannot let him kill Riri. Also, 
someone will come for her eventually. They need to come up 
with some sort of peaceful solution here. He exposits that 
it isn’t about just the scientist. “For centuries, the 
surface nations have conquered and enslaved people like us 
over resources.” He has expected they would come for 
Talokan eventually and here we are. And as far as he’s 
concerned Wakanda is either with them or against them. She 
argues that asking Wakanda to help him wage war on the 
WORLD is insane. He thinks they should preemptively strike 
the countries that would absolutely strip-mine Wakanda too 
if given half a chance. This being not all that different 
from Killmonger’s logic in the first movie, I wouldn’t be 
surprised if the loudest voices claiming this movie to be 
“awful” were not the people saying the same thing about the 
first one. Because pointing out how certain people have 
fucked over the world makes certain people VERY, very 
angry. Oh, and the alternative is that they kill Riri and 
attack Wakanda first.

The CIA announces that the president (whoever that is at 
this point in this universe) wants to attack Wakanda and 
Everett begs for time to figure out who is really behind 
what’s going on. Then he relays everything to Ramonda, who 
threatens to reveal the Talokans to the world. Namor 
responds by threatening to kill her and Shuri. This lasts 
all of maybe a couple hours (or maybe it all happens 
simultaneously, whatever) before Nakia finds the cave Riri 
and Shuri are being held in and breaks them out, killing a 
couple Talokans in the process. Yes, again...like 
“Multiverse of Madness”, the flow of the story is kind of a 
mess.

So the Talokan attack the borderland first. M’Baku tries to 
attack Namor and Namor shatters his spear and armor like 
they’re made of tissue paper before having an ariel battle 
with a couple people – including Shuri - in fighter jets. 
He disables them and then attacks the palace with water 
bombs. Ramonda has to rescue Riri from the flooded tower 
and Okoye and Nakia arrive in time to save Riri from 
drowning...but not Ramonda. Namor retreats with the promise 
to come back in one week for some reason.

So we get two funerals in one movie.

And then we get an aside from the divorcees as Everett 
learns of Ramonda’s death via Anderson Cooper and Valentina 
suggests his “friends” are keeping information from him. 
Oh, and she bugged the beads he’s been using, so she’s been 
spying on him all along. Then she pulls out a pair of 
handcuffs that are apparently stored in the kitchen.
   Chrissy: While I applaud the kink factor implied...if 
   you are getting down to business so frequently that you 
   need a pair of cuffs at the ready at all times here, I 
   am NOT eating anything prepared in that kitchen.

Shuri gets Griot back to work on creating a synthetic 
version of the purple plant using the bracelet Namor gave 
her. At the same time, she and Riri have an exposition dump 
where they note that the rest of the Talokans have water 
breathers, but Namor apparently absorbs oxygen through his 
skin “like a jellyfish”. Riri figures out the water makes 
him stronger because...he’s...getting oxygen both ways? 
Whatever, if they can keep him from water long enough, 
he’ll get weaker, so Shuri has Griot rig the jet to aid 
that process. We also establish that Riri has been 
tinkering and building shit since she was three because her 
mechanic dad encouraged her. They build a suit for Okoye 
Shuri calls the “Midnight Angel”, Riri builds herself a new 
suit and Nakia drops by just as Shuri successfully 
recreates the plant. They do a version of the ritual, with 
Nakia muttering something about the ancestors not being 
able to find their way to the lab to explain why the 
“ancestral plane” for her is the flooded palace, where she 
finds, not Ramonda, but Killmonger. They discuss the 
differences between her father (who killed his brother), 
her brother (who let their father’s killer live) and her 
(undetermined, but has the potential to be like Killmonger, 
he thinks). Surfacing, Shuri assumes she didn’t get Black 
Panther powers until in the middle of a rant she punches 
one of the suits they made and makes a big dent in a stone 
wall across the room. 

M’Baku verifies that she has Panther powers by arm 
wrestling her instead of going through that whole cliffside 
fight thing again. Then the two of them have a policy 
debate because he notes that Namor’s people don’t call him 
a general or a king, they call him a god. Specifically, the 
Mayan serpent god Ku’kul’kan. But Shuri overrides him and 
demands everybody enact plan “kill the serpent god” over 
the objections of several of them who think she’s just 
trying to get revenge for him killing her mother.

So they lure him and his warriors out to the middle of the 
Atlantic where they have dropped the Vibranium detector off 
a battleship. Except of course this is where Namor is 
strongest, so Riri in her brand new IronHeart suit knocks 
him onto the dehydrator jet, which Shuri takes to the 
nearest deserted beach, barely making it before he destroys 
the ship with his pure Vibranium spear. 

Once they have him, the Wakandans try to retreat, but the 
Talokan use whales to launch a whole fishing net full of 
water bombs at the ship and continue the fight, with a few 
former Dora Milaje in the angel suits.

Even though he is weakened, Shuri struggles to subdue 
Namor. But she manages to slice the wings from one ankle 
with her claws. And of course the old rule about every hit 
powering up the suit with kinetic energy still applies. So 
she blasts the crap out of their entire surroundings before 
he manages to spear her to a rock. She cuts the spear and 
lifts herself off it before he can stagger all the way back 
to the water and sets off a blast that sears him. Except 
when she’s standing over him with a spear she has 
flashbacks of everything that has brought them to that 
moment, including images of all the innocent Wakandans and 
Talokan in their kingdoms. So instead of finishing him, she 
demands he surrender and vows the Wakandans will protect 
the Talokan. “Vengeance has consumed us. We must not let it 
consume our people.” He agrees to the terms and they fly 
the jet back so he can call off the troops. 
   Chrissy: This seems like an abrupt resolution, but they 
    have the same problem “Multiverse of Madness” did. When 
    you cast a major hero from the comics as the villain, 
    there’s really no good way to resolve things.
   Diandra: Yeah, which in a way makes things a bit more 
    true to life. There’s never an obvious Big Bad to be 
    defeated in real life, although people often try to 
    make that narrative fit anyway. But it’s harder to fit 
    into the mold of a superhero movie. Then again, part of 
    the criticism of these movies is that they’re just 
    neverending battles against increasingly overpowered 
    villains, so.

It turns out – as he tells Namora later – he sees this as a 
good strategy. Align with the most powerful nation on the 
surface and when the rest of the surface dwellers attack 
them, they will turn to Talokan for help. So this is 
definitely setting up for the third movie at the very 
least.

And speaking of setting up other things...Okoye attacks the 
transport taking Everett to prison and frees him, but 
this...doesn’t explain why he ends up prisoner of the 
Skrulls in “Secret Invasion”.
   Chrissy: I think everyone was too busy debating when 
    Rhodey became a Skrull to worry about him.
   Diandra: Probably. Thanks for skipping about twelve 
    steps ahead there.
   Chrissy: Hey, you started it.

Shuri goes to Haiti where she performs the funeral clothes 
burning ritual again and mourns both of her loses. And in 
the mid credit scene, Nakia introduces her to the son 
T’Challa had with her in secret and raised in Haiti away 
from all the royal family bullshit.

   Diandra: Okay, I know I asked if you wanted to join me 
    in a quick run through of this, “Secret Invasion” AND 
    “Ms. Marvel”, but...that took longer than I thought it 
    would.
   Chrissy: Yeah, I thought you were being overly ambitious 
    there. And while Everett is in “Secret Invasion”, as 
    you noted it’s kind of separate from this.
   Diandra: Yeah. And it’s set up for “Captain Marvel 2” 
    along with “Ms. Marvel”, which is why I waited this 
    long to get back to that.
   Chrissy: Okay, well...first though, I think the next one 
    is “Guardians of the Galaxy”.
   Diandra: [very long sigh] Do I have to?
   Chrissy: Or we could do something else. You still 
    haven’t done the third “Star Trek”.
   Diandra: Yeah, we could do that. But first, I think I 
    need to take a break because I’m really close to 
    crossing two and a half million words written in the 
    past twenty years and I want to cross that line with 
    fic, not a recap.
   Chrissy: Oof. Given how slow you write, I suppose it 
    will be Christmas before you get back to recapping 
    then. Hey, maybe we can do the Guardians Christma-
   Diandra: No.