Black Panther: Wakanda Forever's Trailers Spoiled The Film By Breaking A Secret Rule

This post contains spoilers for "Black Panther: Wakanda Forever."

"Black Panther: Wakanda Forever" is a miracle of a movie, one that was plagued by tragedy, impossibly high expectations, and a terrible anti-vax controversy. And yet, somehow, the film did come out, and it wasn't a total disaster!

On the contrary, even if the effects of Chadwick Boseman's death are quite noticeable, the film still manages to deliver some absolutely outstanding moments and stories, starting with Namor. The introduction of Marvel's famous mutant and one of its oldest characters was already something worth getting excited about, but director Ryan Coogler and his team manage to change comic book history forever with one of the all-time best backstory alterations in a comic book movie. Namor is not just a cool antihero, he is a relatable, charming, and utterly tragic character with emotionally resonant real-world connections.

Speaking of real-world connections, "Wakanda Forever" explores the consequences of T'Challa opening up Wakanda to the world and delivers a politically-charged story about imperialism and wars over resources. The scene where Angela Bassett's Queen Ramonda talks to the U.N. and confronts France and the U.S. for trying to exploit Wakanda's vulnerability to steal vibranium is not just outstanding, it easily shows why she is deserving of being the first actor to win an Oscar for their work in a Marvel Cinematic Universe film.

Oh, and if that's not enough, there's also the beautiful way "Wakanda Forever" deals with grief over the loss of T'Challa, which sets a new standard for emotional stories in superhero movies. Unsurprisingly, the loss of Boseman led to a significant restructuring of the film's story, as well as the look for the new Black Panther — one whose identity, it turns out, was spoiled in the film's trailers without anyone noticing.

In the director's audio commentary for "Wakanda Forever" (via TheDirect), Ryan Coogler talks about the decision to make Shuri the new Black Panther. It's arguably the second biggest surprise of the movie (with the biggest being Queen Ramonda's death) and was a carefully guarded secret — one that had audiences speculating for months, thinking it could be anyone from Okoye to M'Baku. There were even some (kind of ridiculous) rumors from people thinking that it could be a resurrected Killmonger. For my part, I thought it could have been Ramonda herself.

But while we had to wait to go to the movies to find out for certain who would don the suit (... or by buying the official LEGO sets that basically ruined the surprise), the biggest clue was right there in the film's trailers all along. Speaking as part of the movie's commentary, Coogler noted:

"It's funny, 'cause in these films, we don't really let anybody wear black except for the Black Panther. It's kind of like Wakandan rules in many ways. So it was funny like watching the ... (laughs) Watching the ['Wakanda Forever'] trailers come out and people saying, 'Who's gonna be the Black Panther?' And that image of Shuri walking in in all black with the necklace was always in those trailers."

He continued, admitting he would "kind of laugh to myself a bit," adding that he had already established this rule in the first "Black Panther" movie. "You know, you don't really see anybody wearing that color predominantly in Wakanda," Coogler pointed out. "Yeah, once the person becomes the Panther, you see they only wear black. Even when they dress casually."

"Wakanda Forever" is not only movie to give up its biggest reveal months before people had a chance to see it, without them even realizing it. Rian Johnson has quickly made a name for himself as a great writer-director of whodunits, between the "Knives Out" franchise and now with the "Columbo"-inspired series "Poker Face." In the first "Knives Out" (again, a whodunit where a big part of the fun is discovering who, well, dunit), audiences could have figured out the killer with a very simple technique — looking at people's phones. As Johnson has pointed out, Apple doesn't allow villains to use iPhones in movies — meaning, if you spot a character with a non-iPhone phone, that's probably the bad guy. 

So there you go. If you would rather just find out a movie's big reveal as soon as humanly possible, then watch out for secret rules and when they are broken during the marketing. You never know when something like clothing colors could prove to be a huge hint.