No, don’t take this as any kind of conformation. This is just a bit of dream casting on my part. What Marvel will do, and perhaps to their detriment, is put someone other than King T’Challa in the Black Panther costume. (If it ends up being anti-vaxxer transphobe Letitia Wright, I’m out.) It wasn’t necessary. Now that LOKI, SPIDER-MAN: NO WAY HOME, and DOCTOR STRANGE IN THE MULTIVERSE OF MADNESS have firmly established the concept of the Multiverse, it would have been so easy to have a T’Challa from another universe step into the role. That way there would be no need to recast the role made famous by Chadwick Boseman and yet we’d still have a King T’Challa in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
If they’d done the smart thing and listened to me, I even know who that King T’Challa from another universe ought to be. I saw him this past weekend when I went to see Alex Garland’s MEN. Paapa Essiedu is a stage actor, a Shakespearean actor, and a relative unknown. He is also freakin’ fantastic. He would make a *great* Black Panther! I don’t know if he’s tall, but they can fake that. Michael Keaton was a superb Batman and he’s not tall. Just get Essiedu a personal trainer and hand him the costume! Oh, if only…