“I have never seen anything like this,” says shadowy government agent Everett Ross (Martin Freeman) at the start of the official Black Panther trailer — and to judge from the trailer footage, Marvel’s next solo superhero movie delivers on that promise. Set to a thrilling hip-hop track that incorporates Vince Staples’ “Bagbak” and Gil-Scott Heron’s “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised,” the trailer shows a whole new corner of the Marvel universe: specifically, the nation of Wakanda, where sci-fi technology meets traditional African culture. After the death of his father the king in Captain America: Civil War, T’Challa (Chadwick Boseman) has returned to his homeland to take the throne. But his world is changing rapidly. Soon T’Challa is drawn into a conflict that threatens not only Wakanda but all of humanity. As his superhero alter ego, Black Panther, he must defend his people against these forces — and defend himself against another contender to the throne, Erik Killmonger (Michael B. Jordan), who has a secret identity of his own. Watch it above.
The trailer for Ryan Coogler’s film builds on the teaser trailer released in June, giving audiences a better sense of T’Challa’s journey from amibitious upstart to true leader. We see him receiving advice from both his mother (Angela Bassett) and Okoye (Danai Gurira), the head of Wakanda’s all-female special forces team, called the Dora Milaje. It appears that the women of the Dora Milaje have a major role in the film; Lupita N’yongo‘s Nakia and Letitia Wright’s Shuri also feature prominently in the trailer. And then, of course, there are the villains. We see Killmonger in his supersuit for the first time (though the toys gave us a sneak peek back in May) and a hint of the relationship between T’Challa’s old enemy and arms dealer Ulysses Klaue (Andy Serkis, in a rare non-motion-capture role). “What happens now determines what happens to the rest of the world,” says T’Challa — and, in fact, what happens in Black Panther will lead directly into the events of Avengers: Infinity War.