The New Black Panther and M’Baku Walk the Streets of Disney’s Avengers Campus
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This past Friday was the opening day of Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. However, at the same time she was appearing on screen, visitors to Disneyland Resort’s California Adventure park in Anaheim, CA could see the debut of a new Black Panther in person, making her way through Avengers Campus.
At various points of the day, the new Black Panther could be found up above visitors, walking along the Avengers Headquarters found at the Campus, but she also was spotted simply moving amongst the guests, stopping to take photos and sign autographs for excited fans. And she’s not the only Wakanda Forever character you currently have the chance to interact with.
Since it opened in the summer of 2021, Avengers Campus has provided a lot of synergy with new MCU releases, including having the in person debuts of characters like Moon Knight, Mighty Thor, Ms. Marvel, and Werewolf By Night just as they are first being seen in their respective films, series, or specials. But Wakanda Forever has more tie-ins than any new MCU project since the theme park land opened, which Michael Serna (Executive Creative Director for Disney Live Entertainment) said was by design while speaking to press on opening day of the new experiences.
Serna noted that they had been looking at what they could do for Wakanda Forever essentially from the start. “As soon as the movie was announced, we thought ‘How are we going to integrate this?’, knowing that the Campus was already open, and this is going to really be our first really huge movie that we knew would be huge. So we really wanted to think about how our experiences that we currently had in the Campus were going to either work with [these characters], or we’d have to change them, etc.”
When it came to the specifics, Serna explained, “In the past six months is when we got more information on the film. We knew, obviously, who Black Panther was going to be; those sorts of things became clear to us. That allowed us to craft how we were going to approach this.”
As for their priorities, Serna said, “Obviously, [having] a new Black Panther and someone taking on that mantle was important to the film and it was gonna be important to us. The ability for us to deliver that to our guests is crucial, because we love to remain relevant, to be up to date here in the Campus and be fresh with what you’re seeing in the films and series. So we knew that was number one on our list. And then the rest of it was really exciting things we could add and that we find ways to make it even richer and continue to tell the Wakanda story, which we really love to tell in our Campus.”