Ryan Coogler Talks ‘Black Panther’ Alternate Ending & What Bucky Has Been Up To

Editors Note: SPOILERS for ‘Black Panther’ below.

Now that ‘Black Panther’ has been released and is smashing records left and right, director/co-writer Ryan Coogler has been making the publicity rounds to continue promoting the film. Based on the overwhelmingly positive reaction to the film (you can read our review here,) It seems that everyone is eager to learn more about ‘Black Panther’. We recently saw a really cool video with Coogler breaking down the casino fight scene from the second act of the film. But now, in an interview with The Empire Film Podcast (via Collider), Coogler has spoken out about the alternate ending that we almost got which, surprisingly was the first post-credit sequence that ended up in the finished film.

In the scene, we see T’Challa as he announces to the U.N. that Wakanda plans to share their immense resources with the world, effectively changing the MCU forever moving forward. Here’s what Coogler had to say about the alternate ending:

[quote]“It was [almost the ending]. We played with a lot of different ways to end it. We went back and forth about the U.N., and we had a version where it was the U.N. before the scenes in Oakland at the end. But we really kind of settled on how do we want the movie to end? And it came back to that symmetry, and it came back to the most moving version of it. That’s what we were asking ourselves, ‘Who’s more moved emotionally, that kid or the people sitting in the U.N.?’ Who is that a bigger deal to for T’Challa to walk in, who’s more connected to him?”[/quote]

Coogler goes on to say in the interview how he eventually arrived on the ending of the film:

[quote]“As a kid, growing up, when you see somebody who looks like an older version of you doing something awesome, it’s like, ‘What’s going on?’ That’s kind of what that moment… We kind of went with the less distilled emotion, and the U.N. makes sense afterwards for where Wakanda could be going in the future of this universe.”[/quote]

It’s an interesting conundrum that Coogler was put in with the choice between the two endings. On one hand, you end the film with the alternate ending, offering a great cap to the theme of inequality in the film as well as the plot itself. On the other, you send a much more powerful message (especially to young viewers) by going with the ending that they eventually did.

The second post-credits scene features the reveal of the “White Wolf” to be none other than Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan). The last time we saw Bucky at the end of ‘Civil War‘, he was being put on ice in Wakanda until they could figure out how to fix him. Some speculated that this might lead to some kind of cameo in the film (since he was in the ‘Infinity War‘ trailer), but as we now know, that’s not the case. Walking out of the film, the scene only raised more questions about the continuity of events. Coogler cleared up the timeline, implying that Bucky might have indeed been awake during the event of the film:

[quote]“[A Bucky scene] was something that was always—it was a Shuri thing, because in our world we kind of figured that Bucky Barnes would be her assignment. We kind of drop the hint at that when they bring Ross in and she’s like, ‘Oh another one.’ So we dropped hints in there, but what we kind of decided was that her cracking his mental code, if Shuri’s as smart as she is, that wouldn’t really be a big problem.”[/quote]

Ultimately though, it seems that Bucky’s mental state was the main reasoning for keeping him out of the film until this second post-credits scene, and the film is better off for it. As Coogler so astutely puts it, the inclusion of Bucky would have essentially muddied not only the plot, but the message of the film as a whole:

[quote]“But Bucky would have horrible PTSD, he would need spiritual guidance. The last thing he would need to do is jump into that Civil War, and so that was kind of the thought process there. And it could be potentially problematic if it’s a bunch of Africans fighting and you bring in a White dude, he comes in shootin’ people (laughs). We were aware of that. Bucky’s not trained to neutralize people peacefully, he’s an assassin…”[/quote]

Based on this interview, it seems that the filmmaker ultimately made the right choices. ‘Black Panther’ is currently playing in theaters everywhere.