Black Superheroes: Black Panther (Shuri)

MCU Shuri could never!

Name: Shuri

First Appearance: Black Panther #2 (2005)

History: Shuri is the younger sister of T’Challa, only daughter of King T’Chaka, and thus a princess of the nation of Wakanda. Because she is the younger child of the king there was no expectation of her taking the throne or the mantle of Black Panther but the young girl desperately desired the title. She trained for years to achieve this goal, particularly after her father’s murder and her uncle being chosen to succeed him. Unfortunately, her overprotective mother interfered with her attempt challenge for the mantle and by the time she arrived she discovered that T’Challa had returned from his studies aboard and won the title, and the kingdom, himself

Undeterred, she continued training and hoping for the opportunity to present itself again (aside from a stint being a party girl due to experiencing a traumatic event, but there’ s word limit here). Finally, the day came when T’Challa was mortally wounded at the hands of Doctor Doom and Shuri was unexpectedly chosen to undergo the trial to succeed her brother. She competed the trials, but she was denied the powers of the Black Panther by Bast the Panther God who declared her motives to be about pride and not about a selfless desire to protect her people. However, she proved herself worth by risking her life ot battle Morlun in order to protect her wounded bother and the people of Wakanda, earning Bast’s blessing at last.

Shuri rose to become the new Black Panther and the Queen of Wakanda, ruling in her brother’s place when the need arises.

Beta Says: I know that the MCU is a little notorious for making change to characters they adapt into movies, but I’m not sure if we’ve seen many who have deviated from the source material as much as Shuri. In the comics she was a serious  warrior who coveted the Black Panther mantle and went on a years’ long journey before she eventual earned it, while MCU Shuri is jokey genius scientist who couldn’t be less interested in replacing her bother. This is all fine and good except that I fear we could be seeing another example of the original character being replaced with the movie version, with all the interesting aspects of Shuri pre-MCU fading away.

More about the deadlier of the species after the jump.

Sure, give her white hair
No would ever confuse her with Storm, right?

Shuri is kind of a weird character in that she is relatively new to the comics, only appearing since midway through the 2000s, meaning that the majority of the Black Panther comics did not include her. My understanding is that her co-creator Reginald Hudlin wanted to make a character that would allow both his  son and his daughter rt play dress up as Black Panther. While she isn’t really in the conversation for A-list hero, she has continually appeared in books and her dynamic with T’Challa has become akin to a more Wakanda based ruler while her brother does the global superhero bit.  

Now at this point, MCU-Shuri (played by Letitia Wright) is way more well known than her comic book counterpart, but the two couldn’t be more different.  The major differences between the two is that in the movie Shuri is THE science genius of Wakanda. Don’t get it twisted; my understanding is that Comic-Shuri is also a genius…but so is T’Challa. In fact, in the comic T’Challa is one of the foremost scientists in the superhero community,  of the same level of the likes of Mister Fantastic, Iron Man and Ant-Man (I don’t’ know how widespread it is that Moon Girl is totally smarter than all of them these days…) Shuri is apparently as smart as her brother, more or less, but she puts way more emphasis in her warrior skills. In the MCU, T’Challa is not shown to be anywhere near the category of the likes of Tony Stark and Bruce Branner in terms of scientific understanding, so I think the filmmakers opted to use Shuri to take that aspect of the comic versions skillset and turn it up to eleven. We never know for sure, but there’s a strong argument that  Shuri is the smartest person on Earth, while at the same time her combat skills seem to be less developed.

I should point out that I don’t hate this change to Shuri’s character and it’s fun to see sort “oh, that’s cute” to Bruce in Infinity War.

I mean, she's not bad at fighting in the movies

Aside from the science  versus warrior stuff, Comic-Shuri's dynamic with her brother is also pretty different (they’re not even full siblings it he comic), as they have mor a sibling rivalry sprinkled with a with a mix of respect and resentment (but not hostility) while MCU-Shuri is extremely close to her T’Challa and is perfectly happy to be the Q to his James Bond. She even jokes about how uninterested she is in succeeding him. Her journey to becoming the Black Panther and her desperation NOT to do so is the crux of her character arc in Wakanda Forever. Also, Comic-Shuri has powers beyond the Black Panther set. She died but was later resurrected (as comic heroes tend to do) with spiritual/magical powers including a deep connection to the history of Wakanda and the power to turn into a bunch of Crows. This incident also turned her hair white, so she bare even less physical resemblance to her film counterpart.

I don’t have a problem with the characters being so different; I really liked the dynamic between Shuri and T’Challa in the first BP movie and I liked her character arc in the sequel. It must be said that I’m not a giant fan of the comic book version or anything (though I think she seems pretty cool),but I’m sure there are plenty of readers who are a lot more offended by the changes than I would be. The only problem here is that I worry that that Marvel Comics might try to replace the version of Shuri they have with the more recognizable one. I feel like I’ve already seen it, as recent official art artwork of the character greatly resembles how she is in the film rather than how she previously looked. I’m not certain if they have tried to reset her with the “genius scientist “route because, as stated that is Comic-T’Challa’s thing and not hers, but after the nonsense with Nick Fury the Lesser, I’m a bit concerned.   Even Agatha Harkness was vastly re-tooled recently to better fit her performance in WandaVision, so this is not a race issue, it's "Marvel don't give a shit" issue.

Shuri and Ironheat debating who got it worst from fans
(It was Ironheart)

Shuri holds the distinction of being one of the few black female superheroes to star in her own solo film. However this has also made her a target amongst the worst of the MCU fandom who have held her in the same category of contempt as Captain Marvel, She-Hulk, and Ironheart. It’s settled down a lot now but there was time where a to people were FURIOUS  that Marvel was making Black Panther a woman. Their voices were matched by a different group of fans who were mad that T’Challa was being replaced at all.

Let’s take a slight detour here an talk briefly about the tragic death of Chadwick Boseman, the actor who played T’Challa prior to Wakanda Forever and did so expertly. When he passed away Marvel was left with an impossible choice: either recast Boseman’s part with another actor and move forward (which they had done with War Machine) OR write T’Challa out of the MCU, whether that be by his dying or other means. Today a legion of fans will say all sorts so things about how Marvel ruined the films by not recasting, or how Boseman wanted would have wanted them to do so, but the sad truth is that there was no right move here. No matte what Marvel Studios chose to do, fans would have been outraged. We live in the universe where they decided to kill T’Challa and pass his torch to Shuri, but there’s an alternate reality where they recast him where people are equally furious. I don’t care what anyone says, you will never convince me that some part of the fan base doublet’ have been just as pissed off if they hired a new guy.

A lot of this did blow back on Shrui’s rise as protagonist leading to general misogyny that we keep seeing from fans the lats few years but I do think that compared to the venom that came with The Marvels (which was pretty good) and She-Hulk: Attorney-At-Law (which I loved) and Ironheart (…..I didn't like the ending). However I wonder if they had been brave enough to greenlight Black Panther III, would the evolving MUC gang had been able to maintain a level of respect. I suspect not.

The cover feels a little 1990s
She still looks cool

Anyway, time will tell what the future has in store Shuri will have. With Avengers: Doomsday coming up this year there’s every chance that we’re seeing the end of the current MCU and we don’t yet know how the character of Shuri will fit in, whether she’ll continue being Black Panther or even played by the same actor. Comic-Shuri though is probably in danger of eventually being completely replaced by her movie counterpart (Ms. Marvel’s powers and origin changes are all the proof I need of that) but I hope that the people at Marvel have the decency not to toss out over twenty years of character development  just so the twelve kids who might pick up a comic after seeing the films (aka, the mythical “new readers” Marvel is always whining about) don’t get confused.

For more on Shuri check out World of Black Heroes.

That’s it for Black Superheroes Month this year. I hope seeing an all-female edition had been a reminder that diversity in superhero comics shouldn’t simply stop at being black.