With the release of Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, Marvel proved it still has the capability to avoid one of the MCU Phase 4’s biggest issues.
Black Panther: Wakanda Forever proved to avoid one of the biggest issues surrounding the majority of Phase 4 projects. After the release of Avengers: Endgame, it was unclear what story Marvel Studios would tell given that film's wrap-up of the Infinity Saga. However, Phase 4, similar to Phase 1, opted to tell more individualized stories than a large, immediately connected narrative.
Outside of the issues Phase 4 possessed regarding a seeming lack of direction, one of the biggest problems was tonal issues with some projects. While Phase 4 certainly had a selection of more serious projects, such as Loki, Moon Knight, Eternals, and Black Widow, many films and TV shows lacked emotional depth. Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, though, completely avoided this issue as the final entry into Phase 4, something many are hoping continues going into the MCU's Phase 5 and beyond.
Black Panther 2 Has One Of The MCU’s Most Emotional Stories
The first way Black Panther 2 avoided the tonal inconsistencies of Phase 4 is by having an extremely emotional story. While part of this was due to Chadwick Boseman's tragic passing, writer-director Ryan Coogler allowed the emotion of this to seep into the film's story rather than ignore it. This allowed for the characters in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever to feel wholly investable and marked for arguably the MCU's most purely emotional story to date.
From the opening funeral scene in which the film, audience, and the characters got to say goodbye to both Boseman and T'Challa to the emotional through line of Shuri's grief at her brother's death, Wakanda Forever featured plenty of tear-inducing scenes. This only continued with the ending of the film, which played as a beautiful tribute to both Chadwick Boseman and his character. Due to Coogler's intense focus on the emotion of the film's story, none of Black Panther: Wakanda Forever's emotional moments were undercut by humor, something that can hopefully continue in Black Panther 3.
Phase 4’s Comedic Issues Were Completely Avoided In Black Panther 2
Aside from the emotional center of Wakanda Forever's story, which was not featured as intensely in many other Phase 4 films, it also avoided the comedic issues that were prevalent throughout Phase 4. With the likes of Thor: Love and Thunder, She-Hulk, Hawkeye, Ms. Marvel, and even Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness coming under fire for their affinity towards humor, Phase 4 was often criticized for being far less serious than Phases 1-3. The MCU's trademark humor became a burden to those projects, allowing any emotional moments of depth they had to be undercut by somewhat juvenile humor, especially in Thor: Love and Thunder's case.
However, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever completely avoided these issues through Coogler's ability to write humor naturally. Coogler - and his co-screenwriter Joe Robert Cole - sidestepped the common Marvel humor that is usually present in most MCU projects, only writing humorous scenes that feel as though they fit both the film's tone and characters. No jokes felt out of place, and each one managed to compliment the wider story rather than undercut any emotion felt. All of this only goes to further enforce how Black Panther: Wakanda Forever managed to avoid Phase 4's tonal inconsistencies.
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