Avengers Assemble, sort-of successor to a much better show, is now in its fifth season! Black Panther’s Quest follows last year’s Secret Wars. We’re sure to have a much more sensible series of events by ridin’ real hard on the the billion-dollar coattails of this years Black Panther which, if you missed, can be explained to you by pretty much any other human on this planet.
On to part 2!
1. Shark Week
I’m really digging this re-imagining of Tiger Shark. No longer a deranged, Namor-DNA-spliced, former Olympian gone mad, Tiger Shark is now a former general of Attuma. As a full on fish man, he better represents a more diverse presentation of Atlantis rather than just another nondescript blue dude walkin’ around in ocean castles. He and his goons (cool crab with claw cannons, kung-fu octopus and burly teen alien that just woke up) are all distinct from the typical Atlanteans we see in comics and earlier in the episode, which I generally enjoy as it works against the single-biomes that make up a lot of cultures, races, regions and planets in comics. I highly doubt this will factor much into the actual narrative but it does flavor Attuma’s reveal of Tiger Shark’s treacherous rebellion on Atlantean/Surface peace treaties.
2. Better Safe Than Shuri
Shuri has a much larger role in this second part, finally capitalizing on Marvel’s newest “it” character. She’s a great fit for the show (which as of this second episode is in need of a little heart), bringing a great deal of relief to T’Challa’s straight man. The end of the last episode would have us believe that Shuri had been brought in to be quickly damsel-ed, however, she quickly proves to be fucking with Tiger Shark intending to lure him to the armory so she can blow him up or something. Not having access to super powers in no way hinders her courage or importance to the team composition, so it’ll be pretty rad to see how she develops in response to all this crazy shit she’s never dealt with before like, say, a bipedal shark man trying to eat her.
3. Bullheaded Cat
Black Panther can too easily get characterized as a stuffy monarch with little charisma but, thankfully, those days are seemingly over. There’s actually a fair amount of nuance in this portrayal of T’Challa. He’s professional with his coworkers but is able to let his personality slip into conversation with Shuri, however, he still struggles with the social burdens of being a young king. Being ever the prideful isolationist, he constantly dismisses offers of help, usually to his detriment. While he’s fully capable of handling himself in most situations, I’d reckon that a major part of his arc this season is in opening up to humility and camaraderie. In this pride, however, is a cool self-assurance befitting a ruler, especially when a dude wearing the American flag stops minding his own business; “I do not need you to tell me how to be a king,” T’Challa claps at Cap.
4. All Your Vase
After the requisite throw downs, Tiger Shark licks his wounds and books it for his main objective: a vase in the Wakandan embassy. Only a few minutes of mystery surround the MacGuffin until it’s revealed to contain a gold bar bearing T’Challa’s family crest. Just as Panther is about to put the screws to Tiger Shark to figure out what the hell he could do with the crest besides pawn it, the crest becomes a MacGuffin yet again when Attuma shows up and obnoxiously shifts the conversation his way. There’s a lot of foundation laid with this two-part premiere and this crest is probably going to be fairly significant considering Killmonger is involved.
5. Waterworld
The appearance of Attuma and his branding of Tiger Shark as a traitor points to a lot of interesting potential future plot threads, namely whatever sort of revolution or political unrest is going on in the ocean. Presented as T’Challa’s antithesis this version, Attuma appears to be more the militaristic autocrat of Atlantis than the nomadic warlord we see in comics. He doesn’t have many lines, but the ones he does set the stage for further geopolitical intrigue; “Atlantis has not broken the peace treaty…not yet.” I’m hoping that this season ends up being a throne war that exposes T’Challa first-hand to the many ways that absolute political power can define a character and their governed. Also hell yeah, we’re definitely going to see a bunch of crap in Atlantis!
