Two weeks from tomorrow, Disney Plus series Marvel’s What If…? will premiere, and while animated superhero shows aren’t typically the projects that generate a massively emotional response from the audience, the comic book adaptation marks the final onscreen appearance of Chadwick Boseman.
Kevin Feige confirmed a while back that the late Black Panther star recorded dialogue for multiple episodes, and we know that one of them will imagine what would have happened if the future king of Wakanda had been scurried into outer space and ended up as the Guardians of the Galaxy’s Star-Lord at the expense of Peter Quill.
It’s a fascinating prospect to say the least, especially when Boseman’s legacy is so closely tied to the incredible critical and commercial success of his one and only solo blockbuster, and in a new interview Seth Green revealed that T’Challa will come face to face with none other than Howard the Duck.
“It’s really cool because it resulted in a scene between T’Challa and Howard. I like the character in the comics, and I like subversive stuff. He’s a punk rock noir detective, at least that’s the way I play it. I think we can all rest assured that Marvel has good plans for all their characters that are going to make sense.”
The star of the infamous 1986 box office bomb, which lives on in the history books as the first live-action feature length blockbuster based on a Marvel Comics property, was brought into official canon by James Gunn in Guardians of the Galaxy, and has made several brief cameos in the years since, and now we know he’s heavily involved in Boseman’s last credited film or television appearance.
It’s a strange set of circumstances to say the least, and only an actor like Chadwick Boseman and a franchise like the MCU could combine to leave fans with tears in their eyes at the prospect of hearing T’Challa interact with an animated anthropomorphized duck in a streaming series such as What If…?, which is designed to bring the most unexpected of combinations to life.