7 Years Later, This Marvel Comic Could Fix Black Panther 3’s Timeline Problem
Turns out a trip through a wormhole might be all that's needed for Toussaint to come of age.
Since the shocking and untimely passing of Chadwick Boseman back in 2020, the future of the Black Panther franchise has been shrouded in understandable uncertainty. While Ryan Coogler has spoken briefly about his ideas for where T’Challa would have gone next, those plans were tragically not meant to be, and 2022’s Black Panther: Wakanda Forever established Shuri as the inheritor of the Black Panther mantle. But that same film introduced T’Challa and Nakia’s young son, T’Challa II (aka Toussaint), already implying that at some point in the future he’ll be taking the role over from his aunt.
That torch passing just might come sooner than anyone thought, however, as it was revealed at this year’s San Diego Comic-Con that David Jonsson (seen in HBO’s Industry, the rom-com Rye Lane, and 2025’s Alien: Romulus) will be playing an adult version of Toussaint in the upcoming Black Panther 3. Naturally, the first question raised by the casting is how exactly T’Challa’s son, who appeared in Wakanda Forever as a six year old, will be aged up in a way conducive to the MCU’s timeline; there’s always the possibility that it could just be a time-jump, but it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense for the franchise to skip forward a whole twenty years. There is, however, a potential solution, one found in the pages of a semi-recent Black Panther comic arc.
The Intergalactic Empire of Wakanda could launch Black Panther 3
Shuri officially became Black Panther in the 2022 sequel, but it seems her tenure might be short-lived.
In 2016, acclaimed essayist and novelist Ta-Nehisi Coates ventured into the world of writing comic books with a divisive five-year run on Black Panther. His arc began with Black Panther volume 6 #1, but in 2018 the book was relaunched as volume 7 with a new #1. That relaunch kicked off one of the character’s most consequential recent storylines, “The Intergalactic Empire of Wakanda,” and might have given Ryan Coogler and the folks at Marvel the perfect angle to tackle T’Challa II’s sudden growth-spurt.
“The Intergalactic Empire of Wakanda” follows the aftermath of 2015’s Secret Wars crossover, and the multiversal cataclysm of that event, as well as a devastating attack on his nation by Ulysses Klaue, convinces T’Challa that isolationism can no longer be relied on as an effective means of keeping Wakanda safe. He handpicks a team of Wakandan scientists and explorers for an expedition into the vast reaches of space, in search of the origins of the vibranium meteorite that crashed into Wakanda centuries ago (driven by a fear of the resource’s finite nature on Earth). However, that team of explorers accidentally gets sucked into a temporal anomaly that slingshots them 2,000 years into the past, where they’re stranded and surrounded by numerous hostile alien species.
Born out of a noble desire to protect his people, T’Challa’s decision to send Wakandans into space spirals into a full-fledged imperial conquest in space partially in his name.
With no way home and limited options for survival at their disposal, T’Challa’s explorers twist Wakanda’s national ethos of self-defense into a justification for aggressive colonial expansion, and over 2,000 years, the time-displaced explorers create a vast empire modeled after Earth’s Wakanda (even naming great warriors after key figures such as M’Baku and even T’Challa himself). However, that empire slowly becomes one built atop unceasing conquest and the slave labor of subjugated alien races. Eventually, the ruler of the Intergalactic Empire in the modern day, a despot named Emperor N’Jadaka (named after the true Wakandan name of classic Black Panther villain Erik Killmonger), wages a huge attack on Prince T’Challa and Wakanda Prime out of fear that T’Challa might one day succeed him on the intergalactic throne.
The Intergalactic Empire could also fix Toussaint’s age
The temporal wormhole that inadvertently created the Intergalactic Empire also presents a perfect opportunity by which to age Toussaint/T’Challa II up. The events of Wakanda Forever, namely the conflict between Atlantis and Wakanda that claims the life of Shuri’s mother Ramonda, clearly force her to think critically about the dangers Wakanda faces now that it’s on the world stage – and that’s even before she learns about the threat posed by dimensional incursions. There’s a world in which Shuri, trying to protect her country and her nephew, sends Toussaint off to space only to meet him as a seasoned warrior 20 years later (because the 2,000 years in the source material just wouldn’t make sense), now part of a budding interstellar kingdom bearing Wakanda’s name.
Along with being bonded to a symbiote like Venom, Emperor N’Jadaka of the Intergalactic Empire eventually resurrects his original namesake and fuses with him, housing two of T’Challa’s greatest threats in one alien-enhanced body.
As of right now, there’s nothing known about Black Panther 3 except a release date and a few members of the cast (which includes Oscar-winning Denzel Washington). In all likelihood, the script probably isn’t even complete, which makes speculating on what direction the story will take a little difficult. However, we know that in order for the casting to make sense, T’Challa II has to be aged up somehow — and if it isn’t the result of reality-warping shenanigans by Doctor Doom, then doing a loose adaptation of “The Intergalactic Empire of Wakanda” might just be the best solution.
