Black Panther Fans Are Confused About How Strong Talokans Really Are In Wakanda Forever

In superhero movies, it's sometimes hard to properly gauge how strong a character would be. In "Avengers," fans get to see three heroes fighting — Captain America (Chris Evans), Thor (Chris Hemsworth), and Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.) — who were previously thought to have vastly different strengths (one is even a god), yet the three manage to hold their own in a three-way fight.

In an interview with Collider, "Avengers: Infinity War" screenwriters Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely were asked why Thor seems to be inconsistent in the third "Avengers" movie, at one point being able to take on the full force of a star and at the next moment nearly being killed by Thanos. "Well, I think he's very durable," Markus explained. "Like, I think literally his flesh is very hard to break. That's why he can survive in space; that's why he can take the thing with the star. But you can still drain him of energy, you can still knock him out, you can still hurt him. So, I think it would be very hard to wreck his body. But I think he has stamina, and the stamina goes up or the stamina goes down based on what he's been through." 

When asked if this was something they discussed at any point in writing the script, Markus joked "No, we did that just now," implying that there was never really a discussion about Thor's power level.

Now fans have another question about power and relative strengths, and it has to do with the newest Marvel Cinematic Universe adventure: "Black Panther: Wakanda Forever."

In "Black Panther: Wakanda Forever," the Talokans' relative strength to the Wakandans' strength left some people with questions. Reddit user u/BossHutch explained their confusion, saying "I was a bit confused, when Okoye was fighting Namor['s] soldiers on the street she stabbed them with mortal wounds and they healed instantly, but when Nakia shot them rescuing Shuri they died and couldn't heal. What's the deal?" Then u/BoiIedFrogs brought up the fact that Nakia was using a sonic weapon when rescuing Shuri and Riri. What sonic weapons are exactly in the MCU, and how they manage to have more power than regular weapons, is never explained in the film. 

Then u/purrinsky chimed in to elaborate on the sonic weapon theory. "Our theory is that, stab/puncture wounds are within the limits of Talokan healing abilities. But sonic weapons probably mangle a wound something bad and is beyond their ability to heal." However, as this user pointed out, the fact that no explanation is given within the film itself is a bit of a problem with the storytelling.

In the same discussion thread, u/pingpong_playa had a different theory that was unrelated to the sonic weapon. "I don't know anything about the physics involved, but I was thinking that it has to do with the different level[s] of pressure being so deep underwater vs on the surface. Kinda like how the same person can jump super high in low [gravity] but not much at all in high gravity." So there are certainly a few ways to explain away the issues with Talokans' powers, but it would have made things a lot easier if the film had offered any explanation.