There is a lot of armchair quarterbacking about the state of the Marvel Cinematic Universe these days, and what the company is doing right, and what they could be doing better. One critique I haven’t heard much that I think is fair and perhaps more important than it may appear: The early Marvel movies were heavily connected. Each one seemed to lead into the next and characters didn’t disappear for long. Tony Stark showed up in the very next movie, The Incredible Hulk. Hawkeye was in Thor before he was in The Avengers. Captain America flowed directly into The Avengers, and so on.
These days it’s not oncommon for Marvel to go years between appearances by popular characters. It’s been three years and counting since we saw the Vision at the end of WandaVision; it’s been almost three full years since Shang-Chi’s Ten Rings started giving off a beacon for some reason that is still unexplained. And we haven’t seen the new Black Panther, Shuri, since her debut in the role in Wakanda Forever almost two years ago.
It takes so long for these threads and characters to return that the audience can forget about people and subplots entirely. Will we ever even see Shuri again? Black Panther star Letitia Wright hinted on The View — without giving away anything specific — that “there’s a lot to … a lot coming up” for the character in the MCU.
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Wright also called Shuri one of her “favorite characters,” and described her as a “blessing.”
Whether or not there is ever another direct Black Panther sequel, one assumes Shuri would have to be a key member of the upcoming Avengers sequels; Marvel currently has two such films on their schedule although the first has been delayed already, and is reportedly in the process of undergoing a major creative overhaul after the firing of Jonathan Majors, who was to star as the time-traveling Kang in the films. Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, headlined by Wright, grossed $859 million worldwide.
The next MCU movie, Deadpool & Wolverine, is scheduled to open in theaters on July 26. You can watch Wright’s appearance on The View below.
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