“Oh, great – another broken white boy for me to fix.”
That’s Letitia Wright’s Shuri there remarking on the arrival of a wounded Everett Ross (Sherlock‘s Martin Freeman) into Wakanda. Shortly after T’Challa’s mission to South Korea, the would-be king allows Ross to take shelter in his futuristic kingdom, with Shuri presumably alluding to Bucky Barnes.
Remember, at the tail-end of Captain America: Civil War, the former Winter Soldier found sanctuary and asylum in Wakanda, where Shuri began the process of rebooting Barnes, for want of a better word, which involved creating a “one-to-one digital representation” of Bucky’s brain. Yikes!
Impressive though that may be, a new report from Screen Rant suggests Black Panther‘s reference to the sedated Barnes may be at odds with the ending of Civil War. Because after clashing with Earth’s Mightiest Heroes, T’Challa returns home to Wakanda, only to be named king the very next day. Couple this with Shuri’s aforementioned quote, one which strongly suggests that Bucky is already on ice by the time Black Panther begins, and SR contends that this is actually a continuity error in and of itself.
Why, you ask? Because Black Panther‘s post-credits scene, one which shows the fully-recovered Bucky walking alongside Shuri, doesn’t explicitly clarify when in the MCU timeline it takes place. Common logic dictates that it unfolds shortly after Black Panther‘s finale, thereby laying the groundwork for Avengers: Infinity War.
Screen Rant isn’t convinced, though, and alleges that the time gap between Civil War and Black Panther isn’t long enough for Shuri to have begun work on her “broken white boy.” Then again, Marvel’s post-credits scenes tend to take place weeks, months, and even years after the fact, so this really feels like a mountain out of a molehill. And who’s to say that Shuri isn’t referring to another white person who has taken refuge in Wakanda?