Black Panther: The Young Prince

T’Challa stalks Sombre into Serpent Valley and wonders whether his nation’s achievements should be based in its technological advancement or the contentment of its people. T’Challa pounces on Sombre, but Sombre soon wraps his acidic hands around T’Challa’s neck. Though not a vampire, Sombre bares his fangs and bites T’Challa’s neck to suck his blood. As he does, a voice from the trees calls out to question why they fight. Sombre is distracted, and T’Challa uses this moment to break free and throw him into a swamp. Sombre sinks, and though T’Challa tries to save him, the villain goes under, a ghastly smile on his face.

T’Challa sees a man and climbs into the trees to pursue him, asking if he knows where Killmonger is. The man questions T’Challa’s need to fight Killmonger, asking what it will achieve. The man introduces himself as Mokadi and leads T’Challa to the river, and points out its massive pollution, blaming T’Challa and Killmonger. Serpent Valley is frozen in time, and dinosaurs still roam its lands and waters. Killmonger fills the river with oil to trap brachiosauruses and tyrannosaurus rexes to use on his assault of central Wakanda. He sends Tayete to help the other men, but Tayete falls into the water and tries to save a small bird.

T’Challa and Mokadi reach a ledge and look over Killmonger’s operation. Killmonger notices T’Challa and frees a tyrannosaurus rex from its cage. At the palace, W’Kabi talks to his son, explaining the friction that exists between him and Chandra, lamenting how much their relationship changes. Monica and Taku walk by, and Monica recognizes W’Kabi’s pain and asks Taku to speak with him, believing he is skilled at connecting with people. In the cells, Taku visits Venomm, and though Venomm is thankful for Taku’s treatment of him, he warns Taku not to get in his way when he escapes.

The tyrannosaurus rex grabs T’Challa and prepares to eat him, but T’Challa breaks free. T’Challa runs from the dinosaur and rolls a boulder onto a tree he bends to the ground. T’Challa lets go of the boulder and it flies up, striking the tyrannosaurus rex in the head, killing it. After the fight, T’Challa realizes that Killmonger once again escaped. He cannot find Mokadi and wonders if he was real, as Mokadi means spirit to the Bomitaba Tribe of the Likuala region. The small bird Tayete tried to save dies.

In the Forest of Thorns in Serpent Valley, T’Challa stops at a river for water and feels intense self-doubt creep in after another failure to capture Killmonger. Behind him, Salamander K’Ruel, another of Killmonger’s henchmen transformed at the Altar of Resurrection, aims an arrow at T’Challa. The arrow has a napalm warhead, and though T’Challa narrowly dodges it, both he and the arrow go crashing into the water, followed by a massive explosion. Afterward, K’Ruel walks to the water, sure that T’Challa is dead, only for the Black Panther to spring out of the water. As they fight, T’Challa grabs K’Ruel, shocked to find the man covered in needles that puncture T’Challa’s skin. The pain overwhelms T’Challa, and he loses consciousness.

T’Challa wakes, tied to a cactus, and listens while K’Ruel mocks him and tells him he will return with Killmonger. K’Ruel expects T’Challa to be dead before that, however, either from the salamanders or the pterodactyls. When K’Ruel leaves, T’Challa succumbs to his pain and hallucinates. He sees himself as a child, with his father, the chieftain T’Chaka. T’Chaka tells his son to enjoy childhood. He emerges from the vision to find a salamander crawling on him and a pterodactyl descending from the sky. The creature rips T’Challa from the cactus and lifts him up.

Taku and Monica walk to Karota’s hut, discussing the woman’s fear of technology and medicine. Taku blames cultural shock from T’Challa’s influx of technology. Karota, angered by Monica’s presence, wants her to leave until Taku explains that T’Challa has been missing for a week, and Monica needs her support. Elsewhere, Killmonger and King Cadaver return to the village of N’Jadaka to find it razed to the ground after T’Challa’s attack. King Cadaver is furious, but Killmonger assures him that they will achieve their revenge when they take the throne.

T’Challa wriggles free from the pterodactyl, only to find himself plummeting toward a field of cacti. The creature circles back and grabs him, but this time, T’Challa manages to climb onto its back and control it, his confidence restored. He finds Salamander K’Ruel in the forest and leaps from the pterodactyl to fight the man. T’Challa is victorious, taking care not to touch his opponent in their fight. T’Challa treks two days in delirium, dragging the body of his enemy back to the palace. He collapses on the steps, where Monica finds him.

T’Challa and Monica talk about what technology did to Wakanda after T’Challa introduced it. T’Challa recognizes that when he brought advanced technology to Wakanda, the goals of everyday life shifted away from survival. He realizes that this changes the culture of Wakanda, as well as peoples’ priorities and goals.

In the palace’s prison, Taku sits with Venomm in his cell, a full year since his capture. Venomm appreciates Taku’s kind treatment but still fights against his imprisonment. W’Kabi joins them and asks Venomm how Killmonger managed to get Venomm, a white man, into Wakanda. Venomm tells them that when T’Challa brought Killmonger back to Wakanda, the chieftain helped Killmonger pack. While T’Challa was with Killmonger, Venomm snuck into the back of T’Challa’s vehicle unobserved. W’Kabi asks why Killmonger despises T’Challa, and Venomm tells him that Killmonger blames T’Chaka for using vibranium and attracting Klaw, who killed Killmonger’s family in front of him. Suddenly, Venomm jumps up, grabs Taku, and puts a knife to his throat. W’Kabi points his gun at them. Venomm forces W’Kabi to drop the gun, and though Taku tries to convince Venomm not to be violent, Venomm attacks them and escapes.

Later, T’Challa and Monica find W’Kabi and Taku and send for medical doctors to help the unconscious W’Kabi. T’Challa assures Monica he knows where Venomm is going and that he will catch him. Venomm returns to the destroyed and abandoned village of N’Jadaka to find his snakes in his pit. Despite his long absence, he does not feel any joy in his return. As T’Challa pursues Venomm, he encounters Kantu, who declares his hatred for Killmonger. T’Challa sees a connection between himself and the boy over the loss of their fathers. T’Challa enters the village and confronts Venomm. Venomm immediately sends one of his snakes to attack T’Challa, and T’Challa finds himself immobilized and crushed by the snake’s coils. T’Challa keeps the snake’s fangs away and smashes its head into a rock. Taku arrives and convinces Venomm to stop the violence, saying that revolutions do not change anything and only result in death. Venomm leaves but assures Taku that revolutions do change society, warning that people tend to lose themselves in revolutions.

Killmonger and his army attack central Wakanda with their dinosaurs, taking T’Challa and his allies by surprise. T’Challa and his men fight back, and T’Challa must use all of his training to swing over a dinosaur to save Monica from being crushed. Taku finds T’Challa, and T’Challa instructs him on directing his soldiers while he sets out to find Killmonger. Before he does, though, Taku tells T’Challa that Killmonger’s men drive the dinosaurs toward the hospital.

As T’Challa tears through Killmonger’s men, he passes Tayete and Kazibe, telling them to get out of the way. They obey and cower, and afterward, Tayete even says he hopes T’Challa defeats Killmonger. Killmonger spots T’Challa from afar and calls to him, saying he is happy the Black Panther is not yet dead, ready for a final battle. He challenges T’Challa to meet him again at Warrior Falls.

W’Kabi lies in the hospital, surrounded by traditional decorations and modern medical equipment. Chandra is there, but their fight continues, and she expresses that she feels lost in his shadow as T’Challa’s second in command. She looks out the window as she leaves but spots the dinosaurs marching. The dinosaurs reach the palace and destroy its entrance. This frees Killmonger’s superpowered allies from their prisons, and Malice, Lord Karnaj, and Baron Macabre escape, leaving Salamander K’Ruel trapped under fallen rubble.

T’Challa defeats both Baron Macabre and Lord Karnaj, while Monica takes down Malice with a punch. Meanwhile, King Cadaver confronts Taku, invading his mind and threatening to rip it apart. Just as the pain reaches its limit, Venomm appears and uses his whip to throw King Cadaver backward, under the foot of a dinosaur, breaking his connection to Taku’s mind. Taku and Venomm reunite, and Venomm says that Killmonger appears to be losing.

T’Challa races up to Warrior Falls, remembering the confidence he felt when he first became Black Panther. He feels that same confidence returning as he leaps toward his final battle with Killmonger. As the two fight, Kantu watches in the background. Killmonger has the upper hand and declares that he does not want to just kill T’Challa but destroy the symbol of the Black Panther as well. He throws T’Challa off the cliff, but T’Challa catches himself and once again attacks Killmonger. Again, Killmonger, the stronger of the two, hoists T’Challa, planning to break his back. Before he can, Kantu comes running in with a scream and shoves Killmonger. Killmonger drops T’Challa and falls from the cliff into the waters below. Kantu and T’Challa watch and share a moment of connection before walking wordlessly away.

Two months after Killmonger’s attack, Monica and T’Challa meet with Taku and a shackled Venomm. T’Challa walks with them to the underground computerized complex, the only area untouched by the battle, to send Venomm back to the US. Taku will fly Venomm back. Elsewhere in Wakanda, W’Kabi’s children watch from a distance as their parents speak. W’Kabi and Chandra plan to separate, with a lack of affection driving them apart. Chandra takes the children and W’Kabi is alone. He tries to wave but remembers that his left arm is now metal.

In the forest, two men hunt leopards, but are ambushed and murdered by a woman dressed in leopard skins and her giant companion. The next day, T’Challa and W’Kabi go searching for the bodies after strange reports from a shepherd. They walk into a clearing and find a pack of hyenas feasting on the corpses. W’Kabi takes his mechanical hand off, revealing a ray gun at his wrist. He fires it to scare the hyenas while T’Challa recovers the bodies. Suddenly, a large hand stretches from the foliage and chokes W’Kabi. A giant of a man appears and drops W’Kabi when T’Challa insists. T’Challa and the man fight, but the man uses a rock to hit T’Challa in the head and knock him unconscious.

T’Challa wakes, bound, to see a woman dressed in leopard pelts, surrounded by leopards and the giant man. The woman introduces herself as Madam Slay, the lover of Killmonger who mourns his death. She blames T’Challa, and her affinity to leopards make them her greatest weapon. She ties T’Challa’s wrists to two leopards, one of which is Preyy, Killmonger’s former pet. She dispatches the leopards, who, sprinting, drag T’Challa behind them through rocks and dirt. They separate on either side of a sharp rock, planning to dash T’Challa against it, but he jumps in time and lands with his feet on their backs.

He returns to Madam Slay’s cave and subdues the giant man. T’Challa tells Madam Slay that Killmonger’s efforts to destroy his idealism do not work. Madam Slay attacks T’Challa, but W’Kabi breaks free and fires his ray gun at her. He does not aim to kill her, but as she dodges it, she falls and hits her head on her throne. W’Kabi, T’Challa, and Mute gather Madam Slay’s body and leave, wondering if the violence and conflict will ever end.