WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Black Panther #24, by Ta-Nehisi Coates, Daniel Acuna and VC’s Joe Sabino, on sale now.
The latest issue of Black Panther finds a battered and bruised King T’Challa making one last stand in Wakanda in order to stave off invasion from N’Jadaka’s imperial army, conquerors from another Wakanda many light years away. The villain, wielding a symbiote and the body of Erik Killmonger, believes while he’s from a different world, the 616-Wakanda is his birthright and must be assimilated into his empire.
However, in Issue #24, T’Challa proves to be as resilient as ever and as he mounts his resistance, there’s one epic sequence that has him paying tribute to one of the most memorable moments of Avengers: Endgame.
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Black Panther rounds up a host of allies to help him fight off N’Jadaka’s ambition, which is ultimately to enslave them all. It stirs up bad memories of the past for his warriors, and they know the evil Wakandan soldiers need to be brought down because their philosophy of conquest will spread across the rest of Earth quickly thereafter.
Unfortunately, N’Jadaka has the numbers on his side and it really does seem like Bast, the panther god, and all the Orishas have abandoned T’Challa. This sets the stage for an apparent defeat, with the king descending from his damaged fighter jet, facing his nemesis and the symbiote-infected soldiers on the battlefield. The tyrant calls his legion “Wakanda evolved,” but the real king refutes, calling N’Jadaka what he truly is: a “slave driver.” And to cap this most perfect of retorts, as T’Challa delivers the line, portals begin opening up at the sides of the Avenger.
It’s quite sentimental as it’s a massive callback to Endgame, where Steve Rogers, after seeing Thor and Iron Man, get hammered by Thanos, tried to use Mjolnir to beat the Mad Titan down. It ended with him squaring up against the aliens by himself, only for Sam Wilson’s epic “On your left!” line, with Wong and Doctor Strange using portals to bring in reinforcements, where ironically the first one out the gates was T’Challa.
In this case, T’Challa’s mother, Ramonda, arrives and the person making all these gateways is Eden Fesi. And in the blink of an eye, T’Challa has people on the ground, proving that the King of Wakanda is never alone.
The icing on the cake, though, is who Ramonda brought — the Originators, the inhabitants of Wakanda that were locked away centuries ago, here to fight for honor, glory and redemption. She convinced them that change is coming and to stand with her son, and as they bear down united as a family, N’Jadaka has the same stunned look on his face as Thanos when the villain believed his victory was certain.
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