Relationship Spotlight: Okoye & T’Challa (Black Panther)

How cool is it that this superhero film features three major female characters (there’s Ramonda too, but her role is quite a bit smaller) who all have interesting and different relationships with the male lead?  We’ve already looked at T’Challa with his sister Shuri and his once-and-potential-future paramour Nakia; now, it’s time to see him with his loyal right hand, Okoye (T’Challa-Okoye-related spoilers.)

As the general of the Dora Milaje, Okoye spends a great deal of her time at her king’s side.  Whether it’s flying his plane, advising him on strategy, joining him on undercover missions, or leading the Dora Milaje to battle in his name, she is both highly capable and deeply devoted to her service.  She may not have the same careful hand for undercover work that Nakia or T’Challa do, but you’d be hard-pressed to match her skill or her boldness in a fight.  With her everpresent spear in hand, she’s a deadly foe, and she’s always ready and willing to do battle for the sake of Wakanda.

T’Challa trusts Okoye, his general, greatly.  That doesn’t mean he always takes the advice she gives him – such as their mission at the start of the film, where he goes in alone despite her counsel and she winds up dropping in anyway to save him at an opportune moment – but he’s pretty much always prepared to hear it.  He respects her insight and experience, and there’s something quite stirring about seeing a young king, who is himself skilled in both combat and strategy, consulting this trusted female warrior.  The film definitely establishes the ties between T’Challa and W’Kabi, but the comradeship T’Challa has with Okoye is demonstrated, almostly effortlessly, in every scene they share together.

(On a side note, it occurs to me that, while Okoye and T’Challa are often in the same fights, I don’t think we’ve really seen much of them actually fighting side by side.  There are always so many bad guys involved that their respective attentions tend elsewhere, and each ends up kicking ass in a different part of the fight/battle.  Given their different fighting styles – T’Challa’s graceful acrobatics and hand-to-hand combat, Okoye’s skill and power with her spear – it would be really fun to watch them fighting more alongside each other.)

But more than allies, more than a king and his loyal general, they’re also very genuinely friends.  T’Challa and Okoye are both more reserved than a lot of the characters in the film, and so they’re a good match, bringing a steadiness to the work they accomplish together.  They discuss strategy efficiently and well, but they have fun, too.  Okoye is definitely at her funniest with T’Challa, lightly teasing him about his feelings for Nakia or innocently playing it off when he good-naturedly chides her for having fun at Everett Ross’s expense.  While they make a strong team in a fight, there’s a history and a rich platonic regard backing that up.

T’Challa Character Comparison: Civil War and Black Panther

I just rewatched Captain America:  Civil War for the first time since seeing Black Panther (several times.)  It was good to go back and revisit the introduction we had to T’Challa, along with the tiny hints we got of Wakanda.  I remember how much I flat-out adored T’Challa when I first saw Civil War, and how the film got me even more pumped for Black Panther than I already was.  But watching it again, I was really struck by how, while T’Challa is still pretty great in that movie, I love him so much more in Black Panther (some spoilers for both movies.)

We’ll start out with the fact that trying to kill Bucky in a misinformed attempt to avenge his father – while the ink on the signatures of the Accords is still drying, no less – isn’t particularly in character for the T’Challa we know in Black Panther.  There, the young king shows himself to be bold but also measured; he frequently takes time to ponder his next move, to worry over whether he’s doing the right thing, and even his mission style often takes a more covert approach.  I don’t really fault Civil War T’Challa for that, though.  After all, no one is exactly doing the reasonable thing throughout basically the whole of Civil War – it’d be hard to end up with the superhero-on-superhero battles if the characters weighed their decisions more.  So, it’s a product of the narrative, not to mention tying into the movie’s overall theme of the corrosive effect of vengeance, leading to the great scene of T’Challa’s literal mountaintop epiphany when he confronts Zemo.

However, I do have a couple complaints when it comes to T’Challa and Wakanda’s intros in Civil War, having now seen them as they ought to be in Black Panther.  First, on the matter of Wakanda itself, the pre-Black Panther hints we get of the kingdom are kind of all over the place.  It’s first brought up as an easter egg in Age of Ultron, where Bruce has seemingly never even heard of it and Tony and Cap know about it mainly through the connection of Cap’s Vibranium shield that was made by Tony’s dad.  Meanwhile, Civil War first shows us Wakandans on an outreach mission to Nigeria, and when some of their people are caught in the crossfire of an Avengers operation gone south, T’Challa’s father seems to emerge as one of the key voices behind the Accords.  At no point in that movie does anyone treat T’Challa like they think he’s from a third-world nation (not even unsympathetic characters like Thunderbolt Ross,) and no one questions Wakanda’s major role in pushing the Accords.

This doesn’t really gel with Black Panther, where Wakanda is known for being reclusive but incredibly “poor” (little does the rest of the world know.)  Where Everett Ross is polite-ish but fairly condescending to the Wakandans he meets, until he actually goes there and realizes the astounding advances they’ve been hiding.  I don’t think we can make an argument that Civil War didn’t have time to touch on this idea at all, since they took the time to make Wakanda a bigger player within the Accords than would make sense for the world’s perception of it at the time (given the recent incident in Nigeria, I could see T’Challa and T’Chaka being invited to the signing, but not T’Chaka giving a big speech and certainly not him talking about finally wanting to share Wakanda’s resources.)  I feel like this is the sort of oversight that comes from different perspectives – it’s far more likely that patronizing attitudes from unknowing Americans will occur to a Black director/screenwriter than a white production team.

Similarly, other than the Wakandan cryo-chamber in the credits scene, we don’t really get any sense of Wakanda’s technology (and even then, the same movie features a shot of Siberian cryo-chambers old enough to be in an abandoned, seemingly-forgotten facility.)  There’s T’Challa’s Vibranium suit, but as Shuri points out in Black Panther, this version is “functional,” without a fraction of the cool-ass technology she uses for his suped-up version in his own film.  It could be argued that Marvel was saving the awesome Wakandan technology for Black Panther, and that makes sense, because the technology in that movie is endlessly awesome.  Still, I would’ve liked to see at least a few veiled hints of it, or at least no scenes of T’Challa using low-tech western stuff.  Watching Civil War this time, I was really struck by the shot of T’Challa looking at a smartphone.  Given Wakanda’s stylish sand tables and holographic communicators powered by kimoyo beads, I have to think T’Challa’s thoughts about smartphones would be similar to Okoye’s about guns:  “so primitive.”

Finally, the Africanness of T’Challa (and Wakanda, obviously,) stand out so much more to me in Black Panther.  I love that Shuri’s lab is decorated with African designs, and I love the amazing costuming for everyone in the film.  Nothing about Wakanda or T’Challa apologize for their Africanness, and what’s more, they don’t have the barest sense of any reason that they should.  The confidence and self-assurance that comes from never having been colonized is palpable, and T’Challa’s well-tailored but very western clothes in Civil War don’t have nearly the same flair.  Again, this is maybe something that never occurred to the Russo brothers, or perhaps dressing T’Challa in suits was their way of showing that he’s sophisticated.  (Side note:  I also seemed to remember a scene where T’Challa dismisses Wakandan beliefs about the afterlife as something his father believed in, not him, but the scene is more ambiguous than I thought – it could be that T’Challa is only making the distinction in that his father thought the afterlife was peaceful, responding to Natasha’s remark on it.  Either way, the impression does distance T’Challa a little from Wakanda’s religion.)

But T’Challa – and Wakanda – has never needed western trappings to be sophisticated, to be “modern.”  That’s the whole point.  I love that T’Challa uses phrases like, “For Bast’s sake!”, and that Wakanda’s techonologically-advanced weapons are based on spears, not guns.  At the end of Black Panther, when T’Challa goes to the UN to open up Wakanda to the world, I love that the Dora Milaje who escort him still have neck rings to go with their inconspicuous dresses, and I love the glorious scarf T’Challa drapes over his chic black suit.  I don’t think that’s something that Civil War quite understands about T’Challa and Wakanda, and I’m not sure if it ever could have.  Now that T’Challa and Wakanda have made their proper debuts in the MCU, I hope Infinity War uses them (and the other Black Panther characters appearing in that movie) as they ought to be.

Relationship Spotlight: Nakia & T’Challa (Black Panther)

I really enjoy the relationship between T’Challa and Nakia in Black Panther.  Comrades, confidantes, and (ex?) ex-lovers, these two are the whole package (some T’Challa-Nakia-related spoilers.)

We know from the jump how much Nakia means to T’Challa.  On a mission to extract Nakia from an undercover operation, Okoye warns T’Challa, “Don’t free when you see her,” but the second he lays eyes on her, that’s exactly what he does (there’s something sweet about a superhero/king getting so lovestruck.)  Althought we’re told early on that they’re exes and other characters comment on that apprehensively – such as Shuri asking T’Challa if it’s really a good idea to bring his ex on a mission – it’s clear that there’s no love lost between them.  As soon as Nakia is back in Wakanda, she and T’Challa start spending time together, and when he’s troubled, she’s usually the first person he turns to and she’s all too happy to provide support and comfort.

So if they still care so much about each other, why are they not together?  The force keeping them apart seems to be more logistical than anything else.  Despite knowing she’d make a great queen, that isn’t a life Nakia wants for herself.  Her work as a spy has taken her into other countries, and having seen how people suffer outside Wakanda, she can’t forget about them.  She wants to get out there and help, and if Wakanda’s isolationist policies keep T’Challa from doing that from the throne, Nakia can’t stay.  It’s obvious that she still loves T’Challa, but until he decides to open Wakanda’s resources up to the world (allowing Nakia to accomplish her goals from home,) she doesn’t seriously entertain the possibility of getting back together.

I like that.  I like that her ideals come before her desires and that, while T’Challa plainly wishes otherwise, he respects her decision and doesn’t resent her for it.  As exes, there’s no bitterness between them, no jealousy or sniping.  They challenge one another, debating what’s best for Wakanda, and even when they’re not “together,” they’re still on each other’s side.

That’s the really big takeaway with these two.  Together or apart, they trust one another absolutely, listen to each other’s ideas/strategies, and rely on the other to back them up in dangerous situations.  They work seamlessly as a team, and we never see them approaching each other as anything but equals.  Even considering the fact that T’Challa is Nakia’s king, he doesn’t order – they collaborate.  That’s something I feel you almost never see in fictional relationships, a truly equal partnership between a man and a woman, one where they come at issues from different perspectives but still work together as a cohesive unit.  It’s about what they bring out in each other, how each bolsters the other, and what they can build together, and that’s beautiful.

Relationship Spotlight: T’Challa & Shuri (Black Panther)

There are several important relationships of note in Black Panther, but I don’t think any are as fun as T’Challa and Shuri.  This brother and sister are fantastically entertaining together, playing their scenes with infectious humor and a comfortable warmth that brightens the screen (some T’Challa-Shuri-related spoilers.)

T’Challa and Shuri may have grown up royalty, and he might’ve just been crowned king of Wakanda.  He may be a superhero and she may be a certified genius running her own lab of crazy-amazing science toys.  But for all that, they’re also very much the quintessential big brother and little sister, and that sibling love/camaraderie shines through in all their scenes together.

I said in my Favorite Characters write-up about T’Challa that, while he gives his responsibilities the gravity they deserve, he also doesn’t take himself too seriously.  Nowhere is that more evident than in Shuri’s merciless teasing of her big brother.  She gives him crap in the middle of his own coronation, urging him to hurry along the formalities and get on with it already, and she takes full advantage of her superior STEM knowledge to have a little fun at his expense during a lab demonstration.  Their affectionate banter is super adorable, and T’Challa often seems at his most relaxed with Shuri.

As her older brother (and, again, as the one with superpowers,) T’Challa tends to be protective of Shuri, but he also recognizes her capabilities and desire to get in on the action.  Her contribution to the South Korea mission, remotely driving T’Challa’s car for him so he can focus on fighting the baddies, feels ideal – it leans heavily on her technical prowess and lets her help in a big way without leaving the safety of her lab.  Of course, Shuri can do a lot more than that, as she demonstrates when she fights alongside Nakia in the climactic battle against Killmonger, but it’s also understandable that, when T’Challa’s running the mission, he’d want to keep her out of the direct fray.  After all, while she’s definitely a fighter, it’s not indicated that her level of training is anywhere near T’Challa’s, Nakia’s, or Okoye’s, and for all her abilities, she is only a teenager, and it’s natural that T’Challa would want to keep her safe.

But if T’Challa wants to take the lead in a fight, he absolutely defers to Shuri’s knowledge when it comes to tech and science.  She’s the one who makes upgrades to his Vibranium suit and designs cool gadgets to help him on his missions, and when T’Challa encounters “broken white boys” in need of Wakanda’s advanced medical technology (like Agent Ross,) Shuri’s the one he trusts to fix them.  He’s fully aware of all she can do and plainly respects her for it.

I’m thrilled that Shuri is going to be joining T’Challa in Infinity War.  I don’t know how much screentime she’ll have or how much she’ll get to interact with non-Black-Panther characters, but I hope to see T’Challa proudly showing off all his little sister can do to his new American acquaintances (come on, there has to be a scene of Tony meeting Shuri, right?)

Favorite Characters: T’Challa (The Avengers)

I adored T’Challa when I first saw him in Civil War, but, knowing Black Panther was on its way, I made myself wait to do a Favorite Characters post on him.  Having now seen him in his own movie, that initial characterization still holds and has also been expanded.  Today is all about the king (T’Challa-related spoilers for both Civil War and Black Panther.)

The word I keep coming back to is “regal” – I don’t think anything else captures him quite so well.  Everything about the way T’Challa carries himself screams royalty.  The young king moves through the world with a very tangible awareness of his duty to his people, that knowledge that the weight of their well-being is on his shoulders.  He takes his responsibilities seriously, and his most unsure moments come when he wonders if he’s truly doing the best for his subjects.  Similarly, he’s serious about carrying the mantle of the Black Panther, being Wakanda’s protector and doing honor to the privilege of having that power.

But he’s also regal in the sense of being incredibly self-assured.  Yes, T’Challa’s responsibilities make him weigh his decisions carefully and worry whether he’s doing the right thing, but he’s also a young man who’s ready to face what that responsibility throws at him.  There’s no “refusing the call” moment for this hero – he knows who he is, and he’s prepared to do the work to figure out what Wakanda needs of him.  That brings with it confidence and strength, a swagger that comes from being the leader and protector of the most advanced nation on the planet.  When ignorant Americans treat him like a primitive, it rolls effortlessly off his back, becaue he knows with absolute certainty that their misinformed opinions of him have nothing to do with who he really is.

I like that his convictions are strong but his opinions aren’t implacable.  We see this in both Civil War and Black Panther.  In Civil War, he first suits up hellbent on avenging his father’s death, but when he discovers how the truth has been manipulated, he not only flips the script and helps the man he’d originally been after (giving Bucky safe refuge and access to Wakanda’s medical technology,) he also recognizes that vengeance against the real culprit won’t ultimately solve anything (capturing Zemo instead of killing him.)  And in Black Panther, he comes to understand Nakia’s point about Wakanda opening itself to the world and sharing its knowledge/resources with those who need it.  These moments don’t mean he flip-flops or that his mind isn’t set, it’s that his understanding evolves and his actions change accordingly, which is hugely important for a leader.

Overall, T’Challa is a lot more serious than your average Marvel hero, offering fewer quips than, say, Tony or Peter (Quill or Parker – take your pick,) but he’s far from humorless.  His sibling banter with Shuri is tons of fun, he and Okoye can snark back and forth with each other, and his slightly-flustered reaction to seeing Nakia after a long absence is as endearing as it is hilarious.  While he takes his duties seriously, he doesn’t take himself all that seriously, and he’s good-natured about poking fun at himself when the situation warrants it.

I’m thrilled that T’Challa has his own film and can’t wait to see more Black Panther.  But even aside from all that awesomeness, I’m also just glad to have him in the MCU, because he is a different sort of hero/personality to bring to the mix.  His presence definitely added something new to Civil War, and I look forward to seeing what he adds to Infinity War and beyond.