Black Panther: Wakanda Forever - Ending & Post-Credit Scenes Explained
How Black Panther: Wakanda Forever sets up the MCU's Phase 5.
Black Panther: Wakanda Forever is finally in cinemas, and it is a big movie.
Across its extensive 2-hour-41-minute runtime, Ryan Coogler's superhero sequel acts as a eulogy for Chadwick Boseman's T'Challa, introduces a whole new Black Panther to the world, sees a war erupt between the Wakandans and villain Namor, teases Riri Williams' Ironheart show and even progresses the story of Martin Freeman's Everett Ross. Yeah, I forgot about him too.
Even more impressively, it accomplishes most of this within the confines of the movie itself. There's only one mid-credits sequence to speak of here, and it's not the kind that teases too much about the wider world of the MCU.
Consequently, Wakanda Forever feels pretty complete and self-contained by the time the credits roll, but there are a few lingering threads that could have major ramifications for Marvel's universe going forward.
Bid goodbye to Phase 4, because Phase 5 is just around the corner...
7. The Ironheart Lead-In
A bit like Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, a major plot beat in Wakanda Forever surrounds the heroes attempting to protect a newly-established superhero from the villain. In this case it's Riri Williams - aka Ironheart - a bona-fide intellectual prodigy who creates an impossible Vibranium-detecting device out of spare parts she finds in junkyards.
More than that though, Riri has been repurposing Stark tech to make her own Iron Man suit - two versions of which we get to see in action in the sequel. Sadly, the ending of Wakanda Forever sees her stripped of her swanky new suit and sent back to the US to restart her life. She still has the brains, but she's back to the scrapyard for resources.
That means her eventual transformation into Ironheart - set to happen in the already-announced Disney+ show of the same name - will also see her don a different version of the armour. Perhaps more tantalisingly though, she's going to return to the US with her capabilities being known by the authorities, which will no doubt have pretty major ramifications on her previously undisturbed existence.