5 Massive MCU Mysteries That Were Answered In The Comics

In Captain America: Civil War, after King T’Chaka is killed in an attack by brainwashed Bucky Barnes, T’Challa vows revenge on The Winter Soldier and dons the Black Panther costume and starks kicking ass. However, this raises a few questions. If the mantle of The Black Panther is supposed to be passed down when the previous Black Panther dies, how did T’Challa have access to those powers immediately after his father’s death? Surely, they didn’t just have some Wakandan herb with them on the off chance T’Chaka caught the wrong end of an explosion? And how was he able to perform so well with them, seeing as presumably this was the first time he took his new found powers for a test drive?

How T’Challa got his powers is explained in the comic prelude to Black Panther, the aptly named Marvel’s Black Panther Prelude. In the story, it’s revealed that T’Challa has been actually acting as The Black Panther for almost a decade already. Around the time of the first Iron Man film, T’Challa obtained the powers of the Black Panther to protect Wakanda against various threats, including the terrorist mercenaries Zanda and Douglas Scott.

So, in short, T’Challa was up there on Captain America’s level with no warning or preparation because he had, in secret, been the Black Panther for almost a decade already.