It appears that Black Panther: Wakanda Forever won't be having one of its core main characters back from its predecessor. Daniel Kaluuya, who played W'Kabi in Black Panther in 2018, will reportedly not be in the sequel of the Oscar-nominated Marvel Studios movie.
In Black Panther, W'Kabi is the best friend and confidant of King T'Challa. While W'Kabi served as head of security for the Border Tribe in Wakanda, he was ultimately convinced to allow Michael B. Jordan's Killmonger into the country and aligned himself with T'Challa's foe.
Kaluuya admitted in a recent interview with Jacqueline Coley of Rotten Tomatoes that his involvement with the upcoming Jordan Peele horror film Nope created scheduling conflicts that prevented him from being involved in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. Coley revealed via her personal Twitter account that Kaluuya admitted in her interview with him that he couldn't be in the movie because he was too busy filming NOPE, which will come out later this summer. Her tweet reads, "BREAKING NEWS: Fresh from my NOPE interview with Daniel Kaluuya he did not reprise his role in #BlackPanther2 due to his schedule conflicts w/ #NOPE!" Judging from that brief blurb, it sounds like Kaluuya didn't necessarily want to abstain from reprising his role, but rather felt devoted to working with the filmmaker who gave him his breakthrough in Hollywood.
Kaluuya and Peele worked together on that surprise hit of 2017, Get Out, a horror-satire movie that helped Peele win an Academy Award for Best Screenplay, so it makes sense that Kaluuya would jump at the chance to work with Peele for a second go-round more than anything else. Again, that's not to say he didn't want to play an important character in one of the most acclaimed superhero movies ever made. However, Peele's writing and directing made Kaluuya, who's an excellent actor, an in-demand star ever since the release of Get Out. Working with him again is about as easy of a choice as it gets in his shoes.
What makes this situation more unfortunate is that Black Panther: Wakanda Forever already suffered a big enough setback with the tragic death of star Chadwick Boseman back in 2020. Doing so obviously forced Marvel Studios to change things up a bit, and not having Kaluuya there only makes for a bigger scramble. W'Kabi helped stage the uprising in Wakanda in Black Panther, which set up the possibility that he could be a potential baddie in the Black Panther storyline in future installments. Evidently, if that would be the case, it won't be right away since he won't be in the next film.
However, odds are, with Marvel Studios' popularity still going as strong as it is, there will be more opportunities for Kaluuya to play the character again in the near future. Black Panther was one of Marvel Studios' most financially profitable films, so unless there's going to be a sudden drop profit-wise in the film's sequel, Marvel Studios will probably be open to more and more installments in the near future. W'Kabi's character presented a sympathetic philosophy even if his goals had resulted in people dying. There is potential there to see what he would be all about if he were to become a villain in the future. We may be a long way away from that but never say never.
Black Panther: Wakanda Forever will be released in theaters on November 11, 2022.
Source: Jacqueline/Twitter