A Post-Thanos Stagnation for Wakanda

    This week's reading could not have been more accurate in its description of superhero media, the name of the game is always to return to the status quo. As the article described, the Marvel cinematic universe has been one of the most egregious examples of this, as most significant events that occur within it have never truly been that significant. Arguably the most permanent of status-quo changes for the MCU is the death of Tony Stark, and it only took years of retconning death after death, world-ending villain after world-ending villain. However, killing off the face of their franchise was clearly a one-time deal, as they've returned to the natural superhero formula-- do something different, but only for a short period. 

    Specifically, I'm considering this in regard to Wakanda post-Infinity War. As Caravan mentioned, it appeared at the time of his writing that Wakanda would never get to change the world like BP 1 promised, and they didn't. It's pretty clear to me that Marvel has assigned Wakanda to its single niche, its one role within its superhero narrative: the fight for Black power.

    I've come to believe that the emphasis on the Afrofuturist aspects of the Black Panther films is coincidental or even in spite of Marvel's intention for the character and its lore, as with BP 2 it's shown that for all of the fighting in space that the others within the MCU participate in, the time travel shenanigans they experience, and all of the magical multiversal occurrences that occur in New York alone, Wakanda was only ever intended to be representative of a powerful African/Black nation in one time and place. This is supported by the fact that the first conflict in the first film is a diaspora conflict, and the conflict in the second is essentially a race war. While characters like Ant-Man get to explore the quantum realm, or Steve Rogers gets to travel back to segregation to live with his girlfriend, Black Panther's characer's get to yet again focus on their race as the only sort of plot they're allowed. They got to fight in the intergalactic war against Thanos, but then they were sent right back t
o defending their homeland from outsiders and that is it.