Did T’Challa’s Plan to Open Wakanda to the World Backfire? (2024)

Editor's note: The following contains spoilers for Black Panther: Wakanda Forever.At the end of the first Black Panther film, King T’Challa/Black Panther (Chadwick Boseman) introduced the world to the true nature of Wakanda. He made the decision after Nakia (Lupita Nyong’o), his partner and Wakandan War Dog, and his long-lost cousin N'Jadaka/Erik Killmonger (Michael B. Jordan) separately impressed upon him the importance of sharing Wakandan resources to help Black communities around the world. But the outcome of T’Challa’s decision seems to be a mixed bag for his country, especially after T’Challa’s death in the opening scene of Black Panther: Wakanda Forever.

Opening Up Wakanda to the World

Wakanda is a fictional nation, untouched by colonization and rich with the most valuable, indestructible element in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, vibranium. They are a wealthy country of numerous tribes, with armies, advanced technology, and weapons, plus a central intelligence force (the War Dogs). When T’Challa announced to the United Nations that Wakanda would be sharing its knowledge and resources, the first comment from one of the delegates is about what a "nation of farmers" could possibly offer the world. It’s said with a smirk and a gallon of condescension because even in the MCU, the world is unable to see the achievements of African nations. But, would the incorrect notion of Wakanda as an impoverished nation have protected it from what was to come?

Sometime after that announcement, Wakanda, was featured as the battleground against Thanos (Josh Brolin) and his army in Avengers: Infinity War. That was the first time in the MCU that Wakanda was openly displaying its power and using its resources to protect the world. But as Okoye (Danai Gurira), the head of the Dora Milaje, joked to T’Challa, an all-out war against an alien army was hardly what she had in mind for Wakanda’s grand opening—a Starbucks would have sufficed. Many Wakandans lost their lives in the battle against Thanos and Wakanda no doubt needed to repair all the decimation. We can see the nation looks different in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever.

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T'Challa's Choice and How It Impacts Wakanda Forever

We don’t see the full impact of T’Challa’s decision till the sequel. Wakanda, we learn, has opened resource outposts around the world, but following T’Challa’s untimely death, there are constant infiltrations of these outposts by countries hoping to steal some vibranium. As Queen Ramonda (Angela Bassett) states at the United Nations, she knows that other countries believe that Wakanda is weak now that its king and protector is gone. But Wakanda is not a nation to be trifled with and the Dora Milaje easily defeats these thieves. Despite T’Challa’s claim that the world must protect one another like “one single tribe," it’s obvious that some countries do not consider Wakanda part of their tribe.

Since Wakanda doesn’t use deadly force, the rest of the member states aren’t able to sanction or penalize them. But all that the world needs to organize an attack is a baseless excuse. It's not long before probable cause crops up in the film. The United States of America has found a young scientist, Riri Williams (Dominique Thorne) who created a vibranium detector. Scientists find deposits underwater but they’re killed off. With no survivors, the CIA immediately jumps to the incorrect conclusion that the Wakandans are behind the incident. Communicating with Wakanda isn’t even an option for these people, their plan is to invade and “destabilize” the country. The only reason they don’t is because Agent Everett Ross (Martin Freeman) assures the CIA that he can get an explanation. And the only reason the CIA listens to Ross is because his ex-wife, Valentina Allegra de Fontaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus), is the director of the CIA, and she’s using Ross to gain more information about the Wakandans. Ross may not be a favorite character for many, but at least he acts as a proxy for the blatant racism from the CIA, and he staves off an invasion from the US. It’s not like Shuri (Letitia Wright) has anything else occupying her mind while the CIA was hatching plans behind her back.

Wakanda and Talokan

With Wakanda on the map, another new threat emerges—the Talokanil. The underwater nation’s leader, the veritable god Namor (Tenoch Huerta Mejía), can only see how Wakanda can aid his mission, which is to wage war against the surface world. He and his army are able to enter Wakanda’s borders from the water, giving him unfettered access to the country. When his request to fight the surface world together is denied, Namor decimates the capital, kills Queen Ramonda, and leaves Shuri without any family. Though Shuri is able to defeat Namor eventually and send his army packing, at the end of the film, it’s obvious that Namor intends to ingratiate himself to Wakanda only so far as it benefits Talokan. Namor still has his eye on using Wakandan resources for his own gains. T’Challa could never have envisaged such a threat, but Shuri and the rest of Wakanda are the ones who will have to fight these battles.

In a few short scenes, writers Ryan Coogler and Joe Robert Cole spell out just how dangerous altruism is when it isn’t reciprocated. The existence of Wakanda and its power questions the status quo of Western nations that have always seen themselves as the wealthiest and the most powerful. In the MCU, there are organizations that are so paranoid about maintaining American interests that they target innocent people for potential elimination, be it Project Insight as seen in Captain America: The Winter Soldier, the Department of Damage Control from Ms. Marvel, or Sentient Weapon Observation and Response Division (S.W.O.R.D.) in WandaVision.

Though the real world doesn’t have a Wakandan equivalent, we do have decades-long evidence of Western interference in countries around the world; interference that has led to destabilization and devastation, especially in several Middle Eastern countries. T’Challa had good intentions, but he did underestimate just how power-hungry other nations can be. He truly was too “noble," as Killmonger mockingly tells Shuri on the Ancestral Plane, to realize the dire straits he was putting his country in. T’Challa believed “that more connects us than separates us,” but he may have been wrong. As we know in the real world, people are divisive and refuse to see common ground. There are always some powers that have bad intentions, and in the MCU, it seems Wakanda has come onto the radar of these powers and now has a giant target on it. There are Western nations vying for its vibranium resources and looking for any excuse to invade. Then there’s Namor playing the long game to also weaken the country. Wakanda has heroes like Shuri and the Dora Milaje to protect it, but it looks like an uphill battle still awaits them.

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