Ryan Coogler Reveals ‘Black Panther’ Alternate Ending, What Bucky Was Doing During the Movie

Black Panther is tearing up the box office and generating mountains of hype, and rightfully so. Already breaking records a few days removed from its opening weekend, Black Panther is the film everyone wants more of. So here’s something new: director Ryan Coogler recently dropped some info regarding a Black Panther alternate ending. He also spoke a bit about a MCU character’s absence from the film. Spoilers follow.

If you haven’t seen Black Panther yet, get the heck out of here. I’m assuming you have seen the film, though, since it broke all sorts of box office records and people can’t stop talking about it. But if you haven’t seen it yet, this is your last warning: spoilers ahead.

Director Ryan Coogler recently revealed a Black Panther alternate ending, and here’s the kicker: you’ve already seen it.

You’ll recall that Black Panther ends with T’Challa (Chadwick Boseman) and Shuri (Letitia Wright) in Oakland, California, discussing sharing Wakandan technology with the rest of the world. After this, a post-credit sequence shows T’Challa at the U.N., where he confirms he wants to share tech from Wakanda with outsiders for the first time. Speaking with The Empire Film Podcast (via Collider), Coogler confirmed something you may have suspected: the U.N. sequence was the original alternate ending for the film, not a post-credit scene:

“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?”

Coogler then goes on to say why he settled on the film’s real ending, involving T’Challa talking to a kid from Oakland:

“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.”

Where’s Bucky?

When watching Black Panther, did you wonder, “Where’s Bucky?” I certainly did not! But someone might have, and Ryan Coogler has an answer. During the mid-credits scene in Captain America: Civil War, it was revealed that Bucky, AKA The Winter Soldier (Sebastian Stan), had been brought to Wakanda. The plan was to freeze Bucky until they could wipe the last traces of Hydra’s brainwashing from his mind.

While Bucky does appear in one of Black Panther‘s post-credit scenes, he’s not in the film itself. Personally speaking, I think that makes sense – there was no room in the film’s story for Bucky. But if you wanted more bang for your Buck(y) in the film, director Ryan Coogler has an answer about the character’s absence (via Collider):

“[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.”

Coogler also added that Bucky’s mental state played a part in his absence from the film:

“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…”

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