SPOILER ALERT!! 

The movie Wakanda Forever begins with the scene of King T’Challa dying since the actor that played Black Panther (Chadwick Boseman) in the previous film passed in 2020. After the King dies, the movie shows the power shifting back to his mother due to his death. 

 Shuri (his little sister) begins distancing herself from everyone and focusing on her work. Once the mother recognizes her daughter’s pain in the grieving process, she invites her to do a ritual that helped her with the feelings of loss which includes burning her funeral clothes. 

When they are about to perform the ceremony, a man with wings on his feet flies out of the water and tells the Queen and Shuri to find a scientist for him that made a device that detects Vibranium. When the scientist is found, Shuri and Wakanda’s military general (Okoye) go to see her in Massachusetts to protect her from this flying man (Namor). 

Once she is found and being brought back to Wakanda over a bridge, Namor and a couple of other blue people kidnap Shuri and the scientist and bring them back to their underwater empire. 

In their underwater lair, the reoccurring villain explains to Shuri his reasoning behind needing the scientist dead. Because his underwater kingdom relies on Vibranium, her device could lead the outside world to it. While Shuri understands his concern, she refuses to let the scientist be killed. 

While this conversation is happening, the Queen is tracking Shuri from her earrings and has Nakia (T’Challa’s former girlfriend) go to rescue her. When Nakia is in the middle of saving Shuri and the scientist, she ends up killing one of the blue people and this action and the fact that Shuri will not help him makes Namor declare war on Wakanda. 

When Shuri returns to Wakanda, she begins preparing for the battle from the blue army by enforcing different protection measures around the country. It takes little time for them to show up. While everyone was fighting, Namor broke the glass and flooded the room where the Queen and the scientist were located, which resulted in the Queen drowning from saving the scientist. 

After this event, Shuri is left alone without a family and is expected to lead the country. With all the pressure, she takes it upon herself to remake the plant responsible for turning someone into the Black Panther. She consumes the plant and becomes the new Black Panther and Wakanda’s only hope for defeating Namor and his army. 

When the army returns to destroy Wakanda, Shuri is ready, and she makes Okoye and other women in Wakanda’s army suits to increase their chances of defeating their enemies. Shuri fights Namor in the desert, and while she gets badly injured, she still maintains enough strength to make him surrender, which is how the movie ends. 

The end credit scene is Shuri visiting Nakia in Haiti. She performs the ritual she was meant to experience with her mother the first time Namor approached them. While her funeral clothes are burning, Nakia brings a little boy and introduces him as T’Challa’s son. 

Overall, I think the movie was well thought out, but the main reason I enjoyed it is because of the focus on Shuri, who was my favorite character in the original Black Panther movie. What I did not like was the Queen dying. They could have accomplished the same goal of Shuri looking independent and strong with the Queen still alive. With her dead, it leaves little room for other movies to be made with just Shuri and T’Challa’s son.