Marvel Studios will surely be feeling the pressure on Black Panther 2. In the wake of Chadwick Boseman’s untimely death, the first film has become a symbol of his talents and featured heavily in subsequent memorials. So, how can they tastefully address his absence in the upcoming sequel? Well, current indications are that the studio isn’t going to recast the role and will instead tell the story of his younger sister Shuri taking on the mantle, with T’Challa having died in the period between movies.
Now, however, we’re hearing that Boseman may indeed appear in the pic, with famed leaker Daniel Richtman claiming that Marvel is considering going “the Carrie Fisher route” and creating a CGI double. This is an unnerving prospect, though, particularly as with despite all of Lucasfilm and ILM’s talents, General Leia still looked strangely unnatural in The Rise of Skywalker.
“I hear that Marvel might go the Carrie Fisher route by having a CGI double cameo to give Chadwick’s character closure,” says Richtman.
The best case scenario is that the use of this CGI double is very limited. After all, the tipster claims that they’re doing this in order to “give Chadwick’s character closure,” which to me is a hint that they’re indeed planning on using it sparingly. Perhaps the most tasteful way would be to have T’Challa appear on the purple-tinted Ancestral Plane and offer some advice to Shuri. I think it’d be a mistake for the studio to show the moment of his death, though they’ll still have to explain what happened to him at some point.
Whatever choice they ultimately make, I think it’s safe to assume that it’ll be done with the permission and assistance of the Boseman family. Their statements over the past weeks demonstrate their full awareness of how much the character meant to audiences and on top of that, Black Panther 2 isn’t due for over two years. So, let’s hope the digital likeness technology will have sufficiently advanced by then to prevent the scene from plummeting into the uncanny valley.