Forces From the Past Threaten Wakanda in Black Panther: Sins of the King

Season 1, Episode 1

The Omen

T’Challa ran—breathless, heart pounding—as the stairs extended, accordionlike, before him. The walls were close, closer than reality could make them, constructed of his darkest fears. 

He was dreaming of that night again. His fate was at the top of these stairs, this event written already in blood and tears. The part of his mind that didn’t know ran because that was what he did, what he had done, what he always would do. 

T’Challa ran.

 He was panting now, dripping with sweat and desperation, begging time to give enough of itself that he might, just this once, win. 

The door was there at the top, suddenly, just as it had been. Behind it, voices raised in shouts. Men bellowing in Dutch, in French, in Wakandan, their words mingling in his head like a roux. Thick.

 “Wakanda is not mine to give.” He heard his father’s voice, calm, even. “And never yours to take. Not while I live.” 

T’Challa burst through the door in time to see Ulysses Klaue raising a vicious-looking sonic weapon at his father.

“Then I suppose we have to remedy that last bit, eh?” said Klaue. A rattlesnake smile split his pale, bearded face. 

Then: the muzzle flash, like lightning over the veld, his father leaping at Klaue, alive in the heat of the fight. And once more, T’Challa had come too late. 

There was thunder. There was lightning. There were shots ripping through his father and blood streaming like rivers, spattering his sight in red. 

“And that’s the end of King T’Chaka, eh,” said Klaue. “So much for the Black Panther.” 

T’Challa rushed over, cradled his father, covered in his blood. They shared a look, father and son—and in it T’Challa felt his father ebbing away. Then the world was flooded in blood, drowning him— 

T’Challa shook off the cobwebs of the dream-memory. His eyes fluttered open on his sister standing over him, beaming. 

“Admit it, brother,” said Shuri. “I am the deadliest opponent you’ve ever faced.” 

“Again,” he said. A dull pain shot through the right side of his jaw as he pushed himself up from the mat to stand. Shuri was perhaps not his deadliest opponent, but her back kick was something to marvel. “We will go again.” 

“Go get water, Shuri,” Okoye, the lead of the Dora Milaje, said. The princess nodded before trotting off across the gym. Okoye crossed her arms and circled T’Challa. “You’re unfocused.” 

“I was momentarily distracted.” 

“Perhaps my king should take the day off. Today of all days …” 

T’Challa considered how to respond. It was no coincidence the dream-memory came to him on the anniversary of his father’s death. 

Just then his Kimoyo Beads alerted him. He brought up the hologram of James “Rhodey” Rhodes piloting the Avengers Quinjet. Ant-Man, Wasp, and the Vision were seated behind him. 

“Quinjet to Wakandan Palace,” said Rhodes. 

“We have you, Colonel Rhodes,” T’Challa replied. “What is your situation?” 

“Confirmation,” Rhodes said. “It’s Graviton. We thought we’d seen the last of that psycho but no such luck. He’s definitely back.” 

“Define ‘back,’” said Okoye, stepping in closer beside her king. 

“Sat trackers picked him up, ripping across Central African airspace in that gravity bubble he makes to fly in,” said Rhodes. “I’ll give the man this, he’s never subtle.” 

“He believes himself a god,” T’Challa said. “Gods do not hide their light.” 

“What is his destination?” Okoye asked. 

“Based on his trajectory,” said the Vision in smooth, modulated tones, “we extrapolate his target to be the city of Kiplingaard, in Rudyarda.” 

“Rudyarda,” said Shuri, and her expression creased. “Haven’t those people seen enough?” 

“Bottom line,” said Rhodes, “this Quinjet’s burning rubber but, even at top speed, Graviton’s going to beat us by an hour, maybe two. I wasn’t sure if you’d be joining. I know things between Wakanda and Rudyarda are … complicated.” 

“Of course Wakanda will help in any way we can. We’ll alert Eerste Minister Hanzen that I will personally be joining their defenses.” T’Challa switched off the screen, turning to his sister and Okoye. “There is much to do and we have little time.” 

The newly appointed Eerste Minister Hanzen of Rudyarda worked very hard to appear calm and in control on the large video screen. “I appreciate you letting us know, King T’Challa, but our army is strong, well-prepared, and—” 

“Graviton controls a force of nature,” said T’Challa, cutting in. “Your military response will be inadequate.” 

“We advise a retreat and evacuation strategy. You need to get as many of your people out of his way as fast as you can,” said Okoye. 

Shuri slid in beside her brother’s other shoulder, looking grim. “In other words: you need to evacuate Kiplingaard.”

The Eerste Minister leaned back in his chair. He tried to look pensive, but his blue eyes were wide and every muscle in his ex-military figure was taut with tension. “How do we know he’s heading for us? Maybe Wakanda is his target?” 

“Wakanda does not have a prototype of a functioning Particle Bridge,” T’Challa said. 

“If we did, no one would know,” Okoye added in her usual grim tone. 

“How do you—that’s a highly classified project!” the Eerste Minister yelled. 

“The point is, Graviton clearly knows,” T’Challa said with certainty. “He is going to your center of scientific research, Kasteel van Navorsing, to take your prototype.” 

“If he’s as powerful as you say, what does he want with our Bridge?” 

“Before he became Graviton, Dr. Franklin Hall did groundbreaking work on the study of gravity,” said T’Challa. “Much of his research was fundamental to your own scientists’ work in constructing the Bridge.” 

“He can do a lot of tricks now with, well, gravitons,” said Shuri. “A lot. Theoretically the Bridge would allow him to extend his control to photons, electrons, positrons, gluons, mesons, sub-mesons—” 

T’Challa held up a hand, not unkindly, and Shuri nodded. Everyone present got the point. “Graviton already possesses exceptional power,” T’Challa said. “If he takes possession of the Bridge, he will be able to reshape reality at its basic level. He will become the god he believes himself to be.”

“Dear Lord,” Hanzen said. “Why have none of my people told me this?” 

“I am telling you now, in order to convey the importance of our intervention here,” said T’Challa in a low, even tone. He wanted Hanzen calm for this, sober. “And we will intervene, Eerste Minister. I will not allow Graviton to acquire the Bridge.” 

There was much that went unsaid between the two leaders. Hanzen had run on a unity platform that had unveiled concrete plans to fully abolish the vestiges of Rudyarda’s apartheid. So far he’d held to his promises, and T’Challa saw this as an opportunity. He wished to bring their two countries to a new, more prosperous relationship—and he would not watch Rudyarda slip back into the rule of descendants of the Dutch who had originally colonized the land. 

The Eerste Minister ran a hand through his graying blond hair. “All right. Permission for intervention granted. And thank you, T’Challa. I know how difficult it has been to—” 

“What is this rank impiety?” yelled Karim-Salah, a member of the Wakandan Council, as he stormed into the chambers. “T’Challa, you wish to carry on your father’s legacy of opening up Wakanda to the world, I understand. You want to carry on with your super hero friends the Avengers, for the good of the planet, all right. But, involving Wakanda in the internal matters of this colonizer nation? No. Unacceptable.” 

Hanzen went beet red at the councilman’s insult. 

“We have left our past behind us,” he said, and it seemed, had he been able, he would have leapt out of the video screen to confront Karim-Salah directly. “I myself penned the Unity Party’s Referendum on Ethnic and Legal Reform.” 

“Two years of egalitarianism.” Karim-Salah’s contempt was clear in every word. “After centuries of depredation and exploitation of the indigenous population.”

“And what of Wakanda?” said Hanzen bitterly. “Sitting there in your little utopia for even longer, letting the whole world burn, so long as the fire didn’t touch you!” 

“Perhaps that remains our wisest course,” came the angry reply. “You people are—” 

T’Challa again raised a hand and it was Karim-Salah’s turn to snap his mouth shut, the rest of his retort trapped in his throat. He watched his king stalk toward him, like the cat whose name he bore, coming in so close the councilman stepped back. 

“Wakanda,” said T’Challa, his voice a near growl, “will no longer leave our neighbors to suffer at the hands of outside invaders. We are the strongest in this region, on this planet. We have a responsibility to protect the weak.” 

Shuri cleared her throat. “Graviton is on approach to Kiplingaard.” 

T’Challa turned back to the screen. “Eerste Minister, we will be there directly.” 

“Our talk is not finished,” Karim-Salah said. “I will be heard.” 

“It is and you have been,” said T’Challa. He would not be lectured on his father’s legacy on the anniversary of his death. “Right now, I have a nation to save.” 

He turned, ending the conversation, and exited the chamber with Shuri and Okoye trailing close behind. 

Engaging Graviton went essentially as predicted. The Avengers arrived in Rudyardan airspace at roughly the same time as T’Challa’s own jet. As soon as they got within a kilometer of Kiplingaard—the limit of Graviton’s strike range —the monster had casually exploded both jets in mid-flight. 

Combat with Graviton quickly devolved into a brutal stand-off. The Avengers ran hit-and-run patterns, attacking and retreating, harrying the villain, rescuing the odd civilian while Graviton hurled massive chunks of the city at them like missiles. It couldn’t go on like this. 

A block of concrete catapulted toward T’Challa. He twisted his torso at the last second, letting the enormous chunk of masonry breeze past. It shattered against another spinning rock that swirled in the air behind him.

“Nice move, Your Majesty,” said Rhodes. “But gymnastics aren’t getting us any closer to—UGH!” 

T’Challa glanced up in time to see Rhodes pummeled by a giant rock midflight. His War Machine armor took the full brunt of the impact. It seemed unlikely the hit would do Rhodes any real damage, but it sent him spinning down. 

“Vision,” said T’Challa into his communications link. “Please assist Colonel Rhodes.”

“Assistance in progress,” came the cool, modulated voice of the artificial man. His form flashed past T’Challa as he chased after the struggling Rhodes. 

“Nope, nope,” came Rhodes’ voice again, surprisingly calm. As T’Challa watched, War Machine pulled out of his fall and swooped back up to meet the Vision, no longer needed to provide a rescue. “I’ve got it under control.” 

There was a thunderous crash behind him, followed by a choir of screams; the boulder he’d dodged had smashed right through a nearby building. Its passage left an enormous, open crater in its side, providing another view of carnage. There were still civilians present, despite the ongoing evacuation of the city— more lives lost to Graviton’s madness. 

“There are still stragglers in there,” Rhodes said. “Going in to look for injured.” War Machine’s flight path arced, taking him toward the shattered building.

“Leave them be, Colonel,” his sister said, her tone sober. She’d stayed in Wakanda to use their facilities and monitor from afar. “Rudyarda’s military has the city ninety percent cleared. Let them do their job. Graviton is the problem.” 

“The princess is right,” said the Wasp. “We won’t be able to keep him occupied much longer. He’s got the attention span of a goldfish. Anyone have a plan?” 

T’Challa did have a plan—several, actually. The problem was they all involved lethal force and even more collateral damage. Stopping the threat was paramount, yes, but doing so without further loss of Rudyardan life was the true priority. He glanced one last time at the building he’d unwittingly destroyed. 

Dr. Franklin Hall—the man now calling himself Graviton—stood over Rudyarda as it burned; the canopy of its jungle beyond the city’s perimeter glowed with flame and belched monstrous clouds of smoke into the sky. Huge chasms in the earth had been ripped open, some of them partially filled with the dead. The body count would take weeks and the number would be high, far too high. These were Graviton’s victims. 

Despite T’Challa’s warning, the Rudyardan military had engaged. Graviton had sliced through their ground defenses and crushed their air force quickly. Even now, T’Challa saw how he ripped a fighter jet from the sky and smashed it to bits on the landscape below. 

Municipal cadres had rallied to defend the capital city of Kiplingaard but, really, what was the point? Graviton controlled a fundamental universal force. He could increase or decrease the effect of gravity upon any object of his choosing. And he could use this power to create a force field that was nearly impenetrable. 

The Avengers—Black Panther, the Wasp, Ant-Man, the Vision, and War Machine—were no weaklings, but it would take more than brute force to defeat Graviton. A new stratagem was needed, something elegant and, most important, fast. 

We fight with the claws we have, came his father’s voice in his mind. 

Every minute the Rudyardans fought against Graviton was a quest for survival. The inverted limbs and frozen faces of those lost grew the more that T’Challa surveyed the scene. These people might as well have been toy soldiers assembled for Graviton’s amusement for all the resistance they could offer. 

“My density manipulation powers will allow me to breach his protective field long enough to—” said the Vision. 

“Won’t work,” Shuri cut him off. “As soon as you solidified again to hit him, Graviton would crush you to powder. Next.” 

“My sister is correct. Single strikes, even rapidly delivered, will be insufficient to bring Graviton down. This approach gains nothing but all our useless deaths.” 

“He’s nuts,” said Ant-Man. “But he’s not wrong about his power levels. Anything he sees, anything with mass that’s in range, he can obliterate with a thought.” 

T’Challa leapt onto another floating bit of debris for a better vantage point. Graviton was at the center of the cyclone of rubble. 

“Doctor Hall,” T’Challa bellowed over the din. “Stop this madness! You are harming innocent people!” 

Graviton made an offhand gesture—swatting at an invisible fly—and five slabs, sections of what had been an embassy building, shot toward T’Challa like tiny meteors. In the split second it took him to calculate their vectors and velocities, T’Challa leapt and twisted between them—over, under—until he landed on another flying piece. 

He looked across the capital and saw a land unrecognizable after Graviton’s attack. By the time the Avengers had arrived, the death toll was already in the thousands. Too many, T’Challa thought. And yet he couldn’t stop the deaths from mounting even now. Rudyarda had enough pain and blood in its history, one of enslavement and oppression from which it was finally breaking free. 

“I don’t think he’s listening,” came the voice of the Wasp over their communications link. “If Hank and I weren’t shrunk right now we’d be windshield splatter!” 

As if to directly refute this, the swarm of flying ants under the sway of AntMan’s cybernetic helmet blew by his head in a haze of chitters and wings. 

“Speak for yourself!” Hank sounded a little bit harried. “You’ve got your own wings at least!” 

Far below, Graviton stalked toward the Rudyardan Kasteel van Navorsing— their Castle of Research. He gestured again in that same offhand way and sent a hail of stones skyward to T’Challa’s position at ballistic speed. For each one he dodged he was struck by another. But still he moved forward, to stop the killer who’d left this city in ruins. 

“I’d appreciate it if you’d finish this now,” said Shuri. “I’m not concerned about your body but I worked really hard on your habit’s upgrades. If you break it I’ll be weeks in the lab.” 

T’Challa recognized when Shuri fell back on her sarcasm. She was scared, and perhaps he should’ve been, too. Enough hits of this magnitude would eventually wear him down. And a fall from this height, without a fully functional habit, might end him even if the barrage of rubble did not. 

“We’re just lucky he’s easy to distract,” the Wasp chimed in. “As long as he’s focused on fighting us, he’s forgetting why he even came here.” 

A light went on in T’Challa’s mind and, behind his mask, he smiled.

“That’s it,” he said. “Thank you, Ms. Van Dyne.” 

“Thank me for what?” 

“I now have a plan,” said T’Challa, leaping from one floating section of concrete to another. “Shuri, stand by.” 

Graviton was unhappy. They had actually dared to send this tiny squad of second-string heroes to face him? The audacity. The synthetic fighter—the Vision—was at least reasonably formidable. Its ability to decrease its own mass to near zero was a legitimately interesting conundrum … for about ten seconds. Anything with any mass was his to smash into buildings or hurl into the stratosphere, as the artificial man had learned. 

These others—the soldier in Stark’s borrowed armor, the two insect people, and that second-rate African Captain America Cat Person. Were these the best the world had to throw against him? Where was Thor, damn it? The simpleminded brute The Hulk? Even Stark, whose intellect was overblown to say the least, would’ve been a joy to take down in his state-of-the-art battle armor. But instead he was given this, this facsimile. 

He was Graviton, for God’s sake. His mastery of the fundamental force was absolute and he was due far more respect than this. He could sense them skittering like bugs at the edge of his control field planning some suicidal attack. 

He could feel the Particle Bridge as easily as he felt every person and object in just under a square mile. He had a source who alerted him to its construction, but he didn’t need them to know of its power. He’d been halfway around the world when the normals switched it on, felt it building stronger and lengthier particle chains than he could with his powers. Once he had control of the Rudyardan device, he could extend his reach to the horizon and his grasp to the finest of particles. 

Even gods will tremble before me, he told himself. Even Thor will fall. 

And now, finally, he was poised to take it … 

“I am afraid your way ends here, Dr. Hall.” 

Graviton turned toward the voice to find the cat king of Wakanda, the so-called Black Panther, posed before him as if he weren’t a stick to be snapped. Snorting his disdain, he extended his hand and will. While some of the dust began to swirl around the two of them, nothing else happened. The Black Panther, entirely uncrushed, only studied him in irritating silence. Concentrating, Graviton extended his other hand, applying more of his considerable will to snapping this twig. 

The pavement cracked under them, still the Panther stood. Automobile husks and large chunks of masonry flew at the Panther’s position, smashing into each other like meteors dropping from space. The noise was thunderous. Smoke from the impacts billowed everywhere, obscuring Graviton’s view. 

“A hologram,” Graviton said, finally realizing. “Afraid to face me yourself? Good. Cowardice will keep you alive. Once I’m a god, I might even let you remain king of your speck of a nation.” 

Graviton took a step, obviously meaning to resume his progress toward the Kasteel van Navorsing. 

“Do you know how I became king?” said T’Challa’s hologram. 

“You pulled a sword from a stone?” 

“My father, T’Chaka, was murdered by Ulysses Klaue, a man of science warped by greed, ambition, and entitlement.” 

“You’re trying to draw parallels between me and Klaw?” Graviton didn’t break stride but the implied insult refocused his attention. “The man’s a hack!” 

“Klaw killed my father with a sonic weapon, an attack for which we were illprepared,” said the hologram. “I vowed it wouldn’t happen again.” 

“Why do you imagine I care about your pathetic little tragedy?” 

“I studied sonic technology for many years.” The hologram made a motion like pressing a button, and suddenly a high-pitched squeal bored its way into Graviton’s ears. “Specifically, how it might be weaponized.” 

The scream’s pitch rose higher and higher until it was out of any human’s, even Graviton’s, range of perception. It was as if all the sound in the world had suddenly been switched off. All Graviton could hear was the hologram and its damned lecturing tone. 

“Sound is not, in fact, a thing,” it went on. “It’s the result of vibrations moving through different vectors, conductors. Air, water, even rock or metal. Do you know what is an excellent conductor of sound, Dr. Hall?” 

Graviton didn’t respond, of course; he couldn’t. Something had shifted after the hologram stopped talking and now he was too busy howling, soundlessly, falling to his knees on the shattered pavement. His body was in agony. He couldn’t hear the sonics anymore but he could somehow feel them, tearing through his body like wave after wave of steel teeth. 

“Calcium,” said the hologram. “Or, more specifically, human bones.” 

He tried to reach out his hands, send out his gravitational pull, try somehow to stop the infernal pain, but he could barely think. It seemed every atom in his body was spinning, grinding against the other. The weapon, the invisible weapon, whatever it was, was hurting him. Could it kill him? It was so hard to concentrate. He couldn’t even hear his own screams but he could still hear the damned hologram speaking to him, lecturing in that low, growling tone. 

“We never tested it on anything living, of course,” it said. “But we’re pretty sure the pain is ridiculous. Would you agree, Dr. Hall? Is it ridiculous?” 

Graviton’s face contorted in confused rage. “Clever.” He managed to grind out each syllable, fighting the pain to have the last word. His power meant he could make himself heard at least. “So damned clever. You have no idea what’s coming for you.” 

“I’m pretty sure you don’t, either,” said the hologram. 

The image of T’Challa shimmered, flickered, became instead that of a young African woman in an oversized t-shirt and denim jeans. What the hell? As his mind failed to process what he was seeing, the actual Black Panther, the one with his fist raised for a final strike, stepped through the hologram. 

Ah, thought Graviton. I see. Then the punch landed and his whole universe went black. 

The Avengers watched as the S.H.I.E.L.D. Tac-Tech team secured the unconscious Graviton in a portable cryo-chamber and carted him away. 

“Okay,” said Shuri via hologram, “I admit it: I didn’t think that would work.” 

War Machine shrugged and nodded in agreement. 

“It almost did not,” T’Challa said, rubbing his neck. 

“It was a very good plan,” the Vision said, coming to land beside them. “Shuri’s distraction, your diversion, exploiting his sole weakness.” 

“What sole weakness?” Shuri asked.

“His lack of perspective,” T’Challa said. 

Now that it was over, T’Challa had time to take in the real consequence of Graviton’s assault on this city and its people. The bodies of the fallen were mostly hidden by the wreckage of vehicles and destroyed buildings, but they were there. 

“A good plan,” he said, finally. “If only it hadn’t taken so long.” 

Concrete crumbled from the buildings littering the ground. Land was scorched and tendrils of smoke wafted into the air. Inverted limbs and faces frozen in fear or shock, it was hard to tell which, were too many to count. And the ones who were left? No doubt many were grievously injured. If Graviton hadn’t completely destroyed Rudyarda, he had come so close, so very close. And T’Challa hadn’t stopped him in time for so many. 

So many dead, he thought. So much senseless destruction. 

T’Challa kept taking in the scene around him. This wasn’t Wakanda but it could have been. He thought back to Graviton’s final words on the battlefield: You have no idea what’s coming for you. He wondered if this was only the beginning of their troubles.