T’Challa’s son was included in an earlier draught of the script before Chadwick Boseman’s death, according to Black Panther: Wakanda Forever co-writer Joe Robert Cole, who made this revelation last month.
Cole was very clear when he stated that Boseman’s passing prevented them from including a child, who “was always in the DNA of what we wanted to do.”
In order to “repurpose the film thematically” after losing its star, producer Nate Moore claimed that Ryan Coogler rewrote the son’s part in the movie. But the details of what T’Challa’s son would have been doing in the follow-up were kept a secret from the audience.
The son’s much more significant role in the sequel’s initial plot has finally received some additional context from Coogler.
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Saving the World with T’Challa and His Son
Before Chadwick Boseman passed away, the first draught of the script for Black Panther: Wakanda Forever was asked about by director Ryan Coogler in an interview with The New York Times. The biggest challenges were the Blip:
“What are we going to do about the Blip? was the question. T’Challa is one of the billions of people who abruptly disappear in Marvel’s “Avengers: Infinity War,” only to be brought back by the Avengers five years later. The problem was that.”
In order to mirror the original and how it would have been “mostly from the child’s perspective,” Coogler continued, the original script was “nothing like what we made” and was “a father-son story from the perspective of a father.”
“It was utterly unlike anything we produced. Because the first movie had been a father-son story from the perspective of the sons, this one would be as told by the father.”
According to the original plan for the sequel, T’Challa would have had to deal with “this forced five-year absence from his son’s life.”
“In the narrative, T’Challa was a father who had to spend five years apart from his son due to circumstances. The opening scene was an animated scene. In the post-credits scene, T’Challa’s love interest, Nakia, played by Lupita Nyong’o, can be heard speaking to Toussaint, the couple’s young son who was first visible in “Wakanda Forever.” She orders, “Tell me what you know about your father.”
It would have begun with a similar animated scene of Lupita Nyong’o’s Nakia telling her son about his father, the Black Panther, to the opening of the first movie. T’Challa included, it would have “cut to reality and it’s the night that everybody comes back from the Blip.” :
“You understand that he is unaware that his father was the Black Panther. He’s never met him, and Nakia recently wed a man from Haiti. Then, we cut to the night that everyone returns from the Blip, where we are in reality. T’Challa first meets the child, as you can see.”
Then there would have been a three-year time jump, demonstrating T’Challa “basically co-parenting,” and there would have been “some crazy scenes in there for Chad”:
“Three years later, it jumps ahead, and he is essentially co-parenting. For Chad, man, we had some crazy scenes in there. The film’s working title was “Summer Break,” and it was about a young boy spending the summer with his father.”
The main plot would have involved T’Challa taking his son “[out] into the bush” to celebrate his eighth birthday, only to be drawn into a battle to save the world:
“They perform a ritual for his eighth birthday in which they venture into the wilderness and are forced to survive on their own. However, something happens, and T’Challa is forced to travel to save the world while carrying his son. The film was that.”
From the Son’s Perspective
The plot would still have involved Namor, according to Coogler, who also confirmed that T’Challa’s conflict with the Talokan ruler would have been told from the son’s perspective.
Is it conceivable, for instance, that T’Challa’s son would have attempted to persuade Shuri of his devotion to Talokan instead of Namor?
It’s interesting how Coogler only changed the perspective while maintaining such strong thematic similarities to the original. Would T’Challa struggle to set a better example for his son and be a better father than T’Chaka was for him?
But unless Coogler provides more information, fans will have to make up their own theories about the specifics of what the son’s role might have been.
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