Marvel Studios has released the official trailer for Black Panther: Wakanda Forever and it's left us all feeling a little emotional.
The sequel to Ryan Coogler’s 2018 blockbuster Black Panther, is out on 11 November, a little over a month away, the first instalment in the much-loved series since the death of its star Chadwick Boseman following a long and private cancer battle. King T'Challa, rest in peace.
So, you'll forgive us if the sight of Laetitia Wright as T'Challa's little sister Shuri mourning the great man made us come over a little misty eyed.
And you'll understand if our hearts raced as beloved characters, from Lupita N'yongo's Nakia to Danai Gurira's Okoye to Winston Duke's M'Baku, showed up too in a trailer that brought us right back to 2018, when Coogler's first foray into the world of Wakanda changed the game for superhero cinema.
You might even sympathise when we say we were a teensy bit excited by the introduction of the character Namor portrayed by Mexican superstar Tenoch Huerta, described in the trailer as 'the Feathered Serpent God'. From what we can gather, he seems to rule his own hidden nation, based a little on the Lost City of Atlantis, a lot on the Aztecs, the Maya and the Inca, the great civilisations of the Southern American continent. The trailer sets up a showdown between Namor's underwater world and the Wakandans' own armies.
But the best bit? The bit that truly had us whooping and hopping up and down with joy? That would be when the Black Panther, claws out, costume on, roars back onto the screen — and, *spoiler alert*, we learn that Black Panther is a woman. She boasts a rocking new Black Panther suit, to boot. Who is the heir to T'Challa? While the new Black Panther could be anyone from Wright's Shuri to N'yongo's Nakia to Gurira's Okoye, we're leaning very heavily towards hints that it's the former, given that she's the most prominent star on the film's official poster. See you at the box office.