Film guide · 2018
The whole film, start to finish, told scene by scene in words. Read this and you'll know everything that happens.
Contains every spoiler, up to the ending.
It begins with a father telling his son a story. Long ago, a meteorite of vibranium fell in Africa. Four of five tribes united as Wakanda, ruled by the Black Panther, a king given power by a heart-shaped herb. Wakanda hid its wealth, posing as a poor country.
Oakland, California, 1992. King T'Chaka of Wakanda visits his brother N'Jobu in his apartment. N'Jobu is suspected of helping steal vibranium. Outside, kids playing basketball look up at a glowing aircraft.
The present. T'Challa, whose father has just died, goes with the warrior Okoye to bring home Nakia, a spy in the middle of freeing kidnapped people.
Back home, Wakanda is a dazzling, high-tech nation full of flying craft. T'Challa's sister Shuri shows off her latest inventions in her lab.
At the coronation, M'Baku, leader of the mountain tribe Jabari, challenges him. T'Challa wins the fight above the falls and spares M'Baku's life. Crowned king, he meets his father on the Ancestral Plane.
At a London museum, a man named Erik teams up with arms dealer Ulysses Klaue to steal an old axe from Wakanda, made of vibranium.
Learning Klaue will sell the axe at a casino in Busan, T'Challa, Nakia and Okoye go in. CIA agent Everett Ross is there too. After a shootout comes a wild car chase through the streets, with Shuri driving one car remotely from Wakanda.
Klaue is caught, but Erik breaks him out. Ross takes a bullet protecting Nakia, and T'Challa takes him to Wakanda to be healed.
T'Challa learns the truth from the elder Zuri. In 1992, T'Chaka killed his brother N'Jobu, and left N'Jobu's son behind in America.
Erik kills Klaue and brings his body to Wakanda as a gift. His real name is N'Jadaka, N'Jobu's abandoned son. Trained by the U.S. military to kill, he's known as Killmonger.
Killmonger challenges T'Challa for the throne. Above the falls, he kills Zuri, who tries to intervene, and throws T'Challa over the edge.
Now king, Killmonger orders every heart-shaped herb burned. He plans to ship Wakanda's weapons around the world to arm oppressed people.
Nakia saves the last herb and flees to the Jabari mountains with Shuri, Queen Ramonda and Ross. There they find T'Challa, rescued by M'Baku and lying in the snow.
Revived by the herb, T'Challa confronts his father on the Ancestral Plane and tells him he was wrong.
T'Challa returns and civil war breaks out. Okoye's Dora Milaje stand with him, the Border Tribe sides with Killmonger, and the Jabari warriors arrive to help. Ross remotely pilots a jet from Shuri's lab to shoot down the planes carrying weapons.
T'Challa and Killmonger fight in the vibranium mines. T'Challa drives a spear into Killmonger's chest.
T'Challa carries Killmonger up to see the sunset his father once described. Killmonger refuses healing and asks to be buried in the ocean with his ancestors who jumped from the ships, because they knew death was better than bondage. Then he dies.
T'Challa buys the Oakland building where N'Jobu died, to make it a center where kids can learn from Wakanda. Shuri will run it.
At the United Nations, T'Challa announces that Wakanda will share its knowledge and technology with the world.
In Wakanda, Bucky has woken up, with Shuri looking after him. The local children call him the White Wolf.