Warning: SPOILERS for Black Panther: Wakanda Forever are ahead!
Following the ending of Black Panther: Wakanda Forever’s main story, the emotional post-credits scene revealed that a young boy we’d briefly seen earlier in the movie was Toussaint, the son of Nakia and the late T’Challa, with his Wakandan name also being T’Challa. Ryan Coogler previously informed CinemaBlend that Wakanda Forever was always going to feature the previous Black Panther’s son, but now the filmmaker has shared how this post-credits reveal was originally going to be integral to the main story before Chadwick Boseman’s death.
Prior to Chadwick Boseman passing away in August 2020 at the age of 43, the plan was for Black Panther 2 to be “a character study that delved deeply” into T’Challa’s “psyche and situation,” and it was indicated that our hero would learn about the existence of his son after being reconstituted by The Blip. Ryan Coogler confirmed this was indeed the case while speaking with The New York Times, saying the following about how Black Panther 2 had been conceived as a “father-son story”:
In the script, T'Challa was a dad who'd had this forced five-year absence from his son's life. 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.
Remember that T’Challa was among the half of the all life in the universe snapped out of existence by Thanos at the end of Avengers: Infinity War, but five years later, Smart Hulk brought all those people back with Infinity Stones retrieved from The Time Heist in Avengers: Endgame. Meanwhile, Lupita Nyong’o’s Nakia was among the half who survived The Snap and gave birth to her son shortly after T’Challa’s disappearance. So along with T’Challa learning that he has a son after suddenly being returned to life, now this kid is learning about his heroic lineage.
Ryan Coogler then shared that following T’Challa’s return and meeting his son, Black Panther 2 would have fast-forwarded three years, and the story would have seen the title superhero and his offspring going on a journey together that still would have involved Namor the Sub-Mariner, played by Tenoch Huerta, as the main antagonist, although his and Julia Louis-Dreyfus’ Valentina Allegra de Fontaine’s roles in the story would have been slight different compared to what we got in the final product. As Coogler explained:
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.
After Chadwick Boseman died, Black Panther 2 was retooled to follow Letitia Wright’s Shuri struggling with her brother’s death and ultimately succeeding him as Black Panther. According to producer Nate Moore, Shuri was the only candidate considered to become the new Black Panther, although as revealed at the end of Wakanda Forever, following the death of Angela Bassett’s Ramonda, it’s Winston Duke’s M’Baku who will lead Wakanda now, as opposed to Shuri also sitting on the throne. Shuri is also now aware that she has a nephew, and while it’s unclear if Toussaint will ever appear in the MCU again, at least we know he’ll be carrying on his father’s legacy, though this doesn’t mean he’ll be putting on his own Black Panther suit years from now.
Black Panther: Wakanda Forever is still playing in theaters and is expected to premiere to Disney+ subscribers sometime in early 2023. The next of the upcoming Marvel movies to look forward to is Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania in February, followed by Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 in May.
