What Is Marvel Studio’s Best Solution For Black Panther 2 Now?
The death of Chadwick Boseman in August was a terrible tragedy, for his family and friends, and for his fans around the world. It also put Marvel Studios in the difficult position of trying to decide what to do with the sequel to one of the most successful movie launches in the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s decade-plus existence, the incredible Black Panther. Late last week, a series of tweets by Black Panther co-star Letitia Wright (Shuri) made that decision much more difficult.
On Thursday, Dec. 3, Wright retweeted a nearly 70-minute long video by a member of a fringe Christian church that called into question whether or not people should take any upcoming covid-19 vaccine. That isn’t terribly controversial, but the reason Brother Tomi Arayomi, a top leader in the Light London Church, called vaccines into question in the video from his On The Table YouTube channel is because he equates the use of an enzyme called luciferase with Satan, and says that he hopes “to God it doesn’t make extra limbs grow” according to a quote from Deadline. I can’t quote the video directly myself because YouTube has since taken it down for violating terms of service.
To be clear, luciferase is a naturally occurring enzyme that causes bioluminescence in creatures like fireflies. While assays based on luciferase been developed to track the path of drugs and other compounds during clinical trials, I haven’t been able to find anything that says it is being used to track any of the covid-19 vaccines in test subjects — not for a lack of marketing pitches about how much it would help those pharmaceutical firms working on vaccines. But it wouldn’t be a surprising thing to do.
‘What are those’ beliefs?
One would hope that if Wright actually watched the video, she would recognize the claims as something silly. So maybe she just retweeted it without watching. Unfortunately, her further defense of it indicates that’s not the case. Once called out on the video to look up qualified doctors on the subject, Wright tweeted this response: “My point has been made. You said go and look up qualified doctors. I did. They shared. They also got cancelled. So what now?” Again, to be clear, no actual medical professional that is not otherwise besotted by conspiracy beliefs or being paid to back them up has ever been “cancelled” for making claims that support the conspiracy theories brought up by Arayomi in the video Wright retweeted. Crackpot doctors undoubtedly have, however.
Summing up, Wright doubled down on supporting the video and its ludicrous claims couched as legitimate questions. Worse, she never even addressed the completely unrelated claim Arayomi also makes in the video that trans women are not women. According to the site PinkNews, Arayomi and his brother who shares the channel, Tobi Arayomi, have repeatedly made claims that conversion therapy to “fix” LGBTQ+ people isn’t effective enough to work and that eventually God will intervene directly.
It’s not possible to see if Wright has shared any other videos by the Arayomi brothers, or made any statements in support of them, because on Friday Dec. 4 she deleted apparently all her social media accounts. Not the sign of someone who made a terrible retweeting mistake and is desperate to fix it.
Recast Shuri
So what does Marvel do now? The character Shuri was the odds-on favorite to take over the mantle of Black Panther in any upcoming movie sequel, in large part because it is canon in the comic books. Now Marvel has to deal with Wright being almost certainly a conspiracy theory supporter and, if not anti-trans herself, a supporter of people who are. Shuri is one of the most brilliant scientific geniuses in Marvel properties, both comics and movies. Having that character played by someone who defends such outrageously non-scientific claims is just a minor problem in the face of pinning the hopes of the future of one of your most successful sub-franchises on someone who supports such ridiculous claims.
Marvel has made it clear that they would not recast the role of T’Challa, the Black Panther, after Boseman’s death. And I agree with that completely. But if Shuri is to be the next Black Panther in the MCU, it can’t be with Wright playing the role. Wright needs to be let go and any one of the outstanding Black actors that are available should replace her. I would suggest the amazing Dominique Fishback from Project Power, The Hate U Give and The Deuce. But there are dozens, if not hundreds of excellent choices.
It’s not like there isn’t precedent, from secondary characters being recast, like Fandral from Thor (Josh Dallas) to Thor: The Dark World (Zachary Levi), to Mark Ruffalo replacing Edward Norton as a major and important character, the Hulk.
Marvel could make two wrong calls here — not replacing Wright as Shuri, or deciding to not make a Black Panther sequel at all. Let’s hope they make a correct call.
