Collective grief, liminality, and redressive action in Black fans' embodied engagement with <i>Black Panther: Wakanda Forever</i>

Abstract Marvel's 2022 blockbuster film Black Panther : Wakanda Forever was marked by the death of lead actor Chadwick Boseman in 2020, resulting in the cinematic death of his character T'Challa. For US Black audiences, the imagined nation of Wakanda served as more than entertainment, but a diasporic “home” at a time of deepening anti‐Blackness and Black grief. Based on ethnographic research and semiotic analysis of online and offline fandom, this article argues that Black audiences co‐constructed meaning and redressive, liminal spaces of Wakanda Forever in ways that affirmed Black lifeways, strengthened diasporic connections, and allowed for communal expressions of grief.