Video: Black Panther mostly kept its distance from the relationship between Okoye and W’Kabi. While we got hints here and there of the husband and wife’s bond (before Killmonger’s arrival made things… let’s say complicated), the movie left it in the background for the most part. This deleted scene, however, brings it to the fore.
Okoye doesn’t have time for W’Kabi’s crap. Image: Black Panther (Marvel Studios)
Debuted by USA Today, the clip, introduced by director Ryan Coogler, is set in the wake of Killmonger’s victory over T’Challa, and the apparent death of the latter. And it was meant to be one of the earlier indicators of not just W’Kabi and Okoye being married to each other, but that they were immediately about to find themselves on the opposite sides of Killmonger’s ascendance to the Wakandan throne.
It’s a nice scene, but as Coogler says in the opening, it isn’t one that particularly fits into the flow of the final cut of the movie – and we go on to get a sense of Okoye’s conflict between her duty as a Dora Milja and as T’Challa’s friend anyway in her scene with Nakia. But still, it gives us a little more of these two intriguing characters together, and things can always be improved by the presence of more Okoye.
Black Panther arrives digitally on May 16, and on Blu-ray and DVD May 30.