Wakanda Forever, and Advent

Last week, I went to see Wakanda Forever with my guy. I’m still a Marvel novice (he’s an avid, longtime fan), and I’d avoided spoilers, wanting to come in with fresh eyes. It was gorgeous and impressive: the fight scenes alone were visually amazing. But the plot – although I knew it began with grief – was way heavier than I expected.

There was a lot of death and vengeance, I said to a friend afterward, debriefing the movie (and my reaction to it) while trying not to give the plot away.

Nothing says Advent like death and vengeance! she joked. Taxes, Herod, etc. And though I laughed, her words kept coming back to me all week.

The Marvel universe is, of course, not explicitly Christian: it has dozens of deities, who often out-human the humans in their capricious plotting and scheming. But both narratives – Black Panther and Advent – are, on some level, about what happens when humans pursue power at the cost of oppressing others. There is chaos and darkness, and a lot of yearning for things to be made new, in both Wakanda’s world and ours.

The villains wear different faces, perhaps. Herod is a shadowy figure to most of us, though he was infamous in his day for cruelty and paranoia (and, of course, taxation). The villains in Wakanda Forever are the colonizers: white Europeans who, in that world and this, have seized land and resources for themselves, with little thought to the impacts on native peoples, or any claim those same peoples might have to the land they have inhabited for centuries.

I admit it is uncomfortable – and necessary – to watch movies where people who look like me are the antagonists. It also makes me think, every time, of what Galadriel says at the beginning of the Fellowship of the Ring film: she’s talking about the rings designed for the kings of men, “who, above all else, desire power.”

If power (often via control of valuable resources) is the goal, then governments and rulers will stop at nothing to secure it. Even for those who primarily want to protect their people and homeland, power can be a seductive – and blinding – distraction. Several of the characters in Wakanda Forever get sidetracked by its lure, nearly launching the entire world into a blistering full-scale war.

There is (isn’t there always?) another way, which is the message of Advent: the quiet, messy, upside-down approach of mercy, the confounding way that hope and scrappy underdogs often sneak in to save the day. There is a way, even among warring nations, to choose peace and justice over iron-fist control, even when that justice comes at a heavy price. In Wakanda Forever, we watch several characters grapple with this choice – even as the consequences of others’ choices bring heavy losses and deep pain.

Neither narrative wraps up neatly: the movie ends, of course, and Christmas does come, but neither erases the pain that came before it. Neither ending can entirely negate the realities of oppression and power-seeking, and the losses that cannot be recovered. Death and darkness are real, and sometimes they threaten to overwhelm the light.

And yet: we wouldn’t keep watching superhero movies, or observing Advent, if we didn’t believe the light would triumph somehow. We would turn away from these stories altogether if we didn’t believe – or hope – the light could break through.

We keep telling these stories, trying to make sense of our pain, trying to turn toward mercy and justice and new life, even when the grief is a heavy weight, even when the darkness covers the earth. We believe, somehow, that the light is coming, that redemption is possible, that death and darkness are not the end.

In this season of deep darkness and stubborn light, I’ll keep clinging to that belief – whether via the essays in my Advent book or, unexpectedly, on a journey to Wakanda.

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