With Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, The Marvel Cinematic Universe may have just gotten itself another candidate for the Young Avengers.
Warning - the rest of this article contains spoilers for Black Panther: Wakanda Forever.
In the post-credits sequence of the movie (after the initial credits sequence and before the final credits crawl), after Shuri has burned her ceremonial garb, Nakia walks over to introduce a surprise: her son, Toussaint, played by actor Divine Love Konadu-Sun.
Nakia then goes on to tell Shuri how she and T'Challa decided it best to grow up away from the pressures of the throne. This comes before Toussaint himself reveals that the young Prince’s real name is T’Challa, in honor of his late father, Chadwick Boseman's King T'Challa.
But what does the future hold for him?
Azari, Son of Black Panther
In the comics, Black Panther’s son, Azari, first shows up in "Avengers No. 1," which first hit shelves in 2010. His mother was the one and only Ororo Munroe, better known to many as the X-Men team member Storm.
He also had a starring appearance before that in 2008's animated movie Next Avengers: Heroes of Tomorrow. This saw several other legacy heroes, including the Asgardian Torunn and James Rogers, team up with the teenage Wakandan as a version of the Young Avengers to free the world from the tyrannic grip of Ultron.
In the comics, the new young hero is the son of T’Challa and Storm and has inherited his father’s Heart-shaped herb abilities, alongside his mother’s electrokinesis.
The story of that movie, despite technically being produced by Kevin Feige, the current sitting president at Marvel Studios, was considered not canonical to either the MCU or even comic continuity. The same can be said about the hero's first comic issue as well.
A New Young Avenger?
Seeing how fringe the character of Azari is, Marvel Studios probably isn’t directly drawing from him all that much, if at all.
After all, one key element of the character is how he can control lightning the way his mother can—which would require Storm to be around. When it comes to the MCU, obviously, this isn’t the route they were able to take.
Seeing that he’s a young legacy character, however, he could easily join the roster of the MCU’s Young Avengers, or whatever the eventual group decides to call themselves. Though, there are two hiccups with this possibility.
For one, Toussaint appears quite young in the pst-credits tag—far younger than the other candidates for the team that have been introduced. Secondly, he’s really just a kid with nothing to add to the table in terms of usefulness or a power set yet.
However, as the years pass, this could easily change. By the time he is a young adult or older, he could be posed to basically become the MCU’s defacto T'Challa. Maybe Marvel Studios has another big time-skip in the cards that can help him in the same way The Snap helped out Cassie Lang.
Sadly, he probably also won’t get the benefit of magically being reincarnated as an older version of himself, unlike like Wanda’s children, Billy and Tommy.
T’Challa’s MCU Legacy
In the end, Marvel Studios probably isn’t fully sure what they’ll end up doing with the character. Its biggest priority with this post-credits scene was most likely honoring Chadwick Boseman himself and keeping his legacy alive on screen.
The future of his character is likely going to be a big question mark, in the same way that Love from the fourth Thor movie is.
Whenever the Young Avengers do finally take form, Toussaint probably won’t be among the group’s first roster, given his age. But, give it a few more years after that, and he could easily join the fun.
Maybe he’ll even become the youngest person to ever have taken the Heart-Shaped Herb.
Black Panther: Wakanda Forever is now playing in theaters worldwide.
