Black Panther’s sequel, Wakanda Forever, is a superhero movie, but it is also a lot more than that. In many ways, it’s a quiet meditation on grief.
The movie opens with a funeral scene. The Black Panther—King T’Challa of the African nation of Wakanda—has just died. His kingdom, and his loved ones, are struggling to go on without him.
Ruth Carter, the film’s costume designer, was tasked with conveying this grief through the characters’ outfits. In both Black Panther movies, Carter uses the costuming to bring the audience into the lively, diverse African cultures that make up Wakanda, turning to historians and anthropologists in her research. (Carter won the Oscar for best costume design in 2019 for the first movie and has been nominated again for the sequel.) But in Wakanda Forever, she also uses clothing to express the characters’ inner lives and the bottled-up emotions many of them carry throughout the film.
As she began to delve into the psychology of the three female leads in the movie—King T’Challa’s mother, sister, and lover—she realized that she would need to illustrate how differently their grief played out. Carter skillfully uses costumes to convey both the vulnerability and the strength of these women.
Carter says that much of the sadness we see in the film mirrors the collective grief the cast and crew felt in real life. Chadwick Boseman, the actor who played Black Panther in the first film, died in 2020. From the start of filming, the cast and crew were mourning together. Carter says that the funeral scene was full of raw emotion. “There was all of this energy,” she says. “We all thought, I need to move and dance to celebrate Chadwick. It was cathartic.”
But, at the same time, Carter points out that grief is also very personal. And each of the three women closest to King T’Challa have very different journeys as they mourn.
Queen Ramonda, the king’s mother, played by Angela Bassett, feels she must go through mourning rituals to process her loss, so she can be strong for her people who now rely on her. Throughout the movie, she is portrayed in a white gown with a white headdress. Carter says that the outfit was inspired by African tradition. “White and red are the colors of mourning in African societies,” she says. “Queen Ramonda has the beautiful embroidery and embellishments of a queen, and everything is on a bright white fabric.”
But while the costume conveys power and strength, Carter made very considered decisions to signal that she is also vulnerable and weak. Carter had learned from African historians that family members sometimes shave their heads after a loved one dies. In the first movie, Queen Ramonda had dreadlocks, but in this one, her hair is short and white, peaking out from under the headdress. “I thought it was important to see her Afro,” Carter says. “It’s an Easter egg. If you’re in film school studying this movie, you would see that she had cut her hair.”
Carter was also deliberate about putting Queen Ramonda in sleeveless dresses because her bare arms look defenseless, like she has shed her armor. “There is a theme of exposed arms,” Carter explains. “We have her carrying the casket and sitting at the throne with her shoulders exposed. We’re communicating that through symbols that show these women vulnerable, exposed, but also strong and beautiful.”
Shuri, T’Challa’s sister, played by Letitia Wright, is struggling with her emotions. She doesn’t feel like she can delve into her sadness, or she’ll “burn the world and everyone in it,” she tells her mother. Carter found ways to communicate Shuri’s pent-up grief. In the funeral scene, for instance, Carter dresses her in a shroud, hood, and a cape that has a subtle pattern of four hearts that connect in the middle. It’s like her sadness is hidden in the texture of the garment.
Throughout Wakanda Forever, Shuri wears more muted colors than she did in the first movie, from gray plaid dresses to purple tracksuits. But Carter says that for her more private moments, she wove white outfits into Shuri’s wardrobe—during conversations with her mother or when she’s dreaming— suggesting that Shuri is mourning in private. “We see her looking for the answers to her grief, and she’s wearing white in these moments,” Carter says. “The white clothes of mourning are a through line, continuing the emotion we feel at the funeral.”
Meanwhile, Nakia, T’Challa’s romantic partner, played by Lupita Nyong’o, has chosen to leave Wakanda to grieve alone. In fact, she doesn’t even come to the funeral. In the movie, we see her in Haiti, running a school. She’s wearing a peach sundress that’s distinctly bright compared to Ramonda and Shuri; later, when she is sent on a mission to save Shuri, she also appears in colorful dress.
Carter wanted to convey Nakia’s ability to grieve freely by herself. “Nakia has this easy, no-nonsense, organic vibe,” says Carter. “She’s away from the world. But at the same time, she’s trying to do something positive with her life and find joy.” This is particularly important for Nakia because it is revealed at the end of the movie that she had a child with T’Challa, and she is trying to give him a happy childhood in Haiti.
The costumes in Wakanda Forever do a lot of work to express the inner lives of the characters, who are each struggling in their own way and on a journey of healing. In many ways, it also allowed the actors—and the audience—to process their own emotions over the loss of Boseman. “I’m really proud to have had the opportunity to celebrate Chadwick,” she says. “This movie really was for him.”
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