National Spoopy Day has come and gone but our fearless cat king shoots to thrill with a vaguely-themed creature feature. Acoustic monsters human and beast aim to trick in the Wakandan suburbs and only the humble Panther can clean the egg off the walls, so to speak.
1. Them Bones
Again, the cold open is entirely unrelated to the rest of the episode with T’Challa getting badgered by Tony Stark on account of his being late to some lame investors meeting about Wakanda, and how technologically superior it is to everyone else. T’Challa and I can’t figure out why he needs to be there, but Tony insists it’ll look good on his college application, I guess. Regardless, T’Challa looks cool as shit flying his super jet in a purple suit and tie probably made from a vibranium weave with a thread count higher than God.
While hemming and hawing and dragging his paws to this rooftop gathering of stuffy old dudes in JCPenney’s finest, T’Challa spots some ne’er-do-wells that need their asses beaten. Turns out it’s some goons knocking over a bank just before supper led by Crossbones and his sick laser-screaming skull rifle. There’s no stated purpose for the theft, it’s just a slow night Tuesday night for Hydra. As Panther rips the goons limb from limb, Crossbones dips out faster than the blood can hit the ground. Wildly barreling down the sidewalk as only the steeliest murder merc can, Crossbones is felled by a clock thrown by Panther who is apparently too cool for a one-liner like “NAP TIME” or “DON’T FORGET TO CLOCK OUT.”
Anyhow, T’Challa makes it to his thing and has a terrible time, I’m sure. The actual episode begins.
2. Kawulo
It would see that this is the closest we’re going to get to a Halloween episode in this season. Panther takes his new hover-bike to rural Wakanda to check out a report made regarding an attack by Kawulo, a horrible beast of legend. The villagers recount their experience with the Hell monsters ransacking their home, and Panther is all manner of smug-ass-skeptical, cussing and spitting about monsters being fake and crap. Determined to prove these idiot farmers wrong, T’Challa stalks off into the night to find the definitely human perpetrators because he’s never fought a shark-man in Atlantis before or anything.
I do appreciate that we’re getting to see a slightly different side of Wakanda, one that’s still tied to the capitol via technology and commerce, but unique in that it’s a superstitious, agrarian village. Panther is all Mr. Big City and stuff, which allows a nice interplay between the two groups providing a fun, if not exactly deep, down-home perspective to those highfalutin science cats downtown.
3. OoOoOoOo
Turns out the monster is just Belgian Imperialism again. Klaw (or I guess we’re still calling him Klaue) is in town with a mind to spook a bunch of farmers and trash their crops like a child with no after-school activities. Trevor Devall (resident Rocket Raccoon) is back voicing Klaue, killing it with his best Sharlto Copely impression which is just an incredible feat. I haven’t seen Klaue since he was Klaw in the original show, but he’s now in his more MCU-appropriate duds with a nice little safari getup that presumably has breathable fabric and those little mesh vent back flaps so even a super villain won’t get sticky in those muggy fall months. I’m not a fan of his ninja-turtle-lookin’ gun arm but whatever, dude’s an asshole.
Klaue trades dukes with Panther for most of the episode in the name of the Shadow Council, natch. He seems to just be a sub-contractor working for N’Jadaka as his actual goal in the episode is revealed to be attaining something for the council from the same cave that he sources his giant mutant bat army.
4. Giant Mutant Bat Army
While digging through caves for whatever MacGuffin N’Jadaka is paying him to find, Klaue finds these giant nightmare bats that have been mutated by the vibranium in the surrounding rock. This sounds like it’d pose a pretty huge problem for the ecology of Wakanda, but maybe they’ve made peace with the occasional murderous creature of agony. Of course Klaue, operating on the only wavelength he knows, enslaves the bats with some sort of sonic collar to mount them and ride into town, sowing a terrible fright and vexing the nearest unassuming folk. The bats are obviously the Kawulo that our villagers were ranting about, which is totally fair because these goddamn things are huge and seemingly only stopped by naturally occurring tuning forks.
5. You Can’t Tuna Bat
Shout-out to the writer who was committed to the episode revolving around sound as much as possible. The farms wrecked in the beginning were covered in sonic netting to protect from insects (definitely not monster bats), Klaue is our villain and he is appropriately weaponizing bats with high-frequency sonic collars to ride around and shoot stuff with their explosive echo location. It’s only fitting that the solution to all of these problems (except the fences, the farmers are on their own on that one) would be a giant tuning fork. In an incredibly convoluted plan, Panther is able to trick Klaue and his giant monster bat into recklessly creating a tuning fork out of a rock (?) and activating it, thus bucking Klaue from his steed and muting the plot. It’s worth mentioning that in the beginning when T’Challa is hover-biking on the edge of the village, he totally flies through a tree also shaped like a tuning fork as to wink at the audience confirming Wakanda’s superior foreshadowing.
