X-Men Movies Star Wants To Bring a Divisive Black Panther Romance to the MCU

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“I would love to see Storm after her and T’Challa,” Alexandra Shipp revealed to Collider’s Perri Nemiroff while promoting her new movie, Violent Ends. “You know what I mean? I want to see that part of Storm’s backstory brought to the throughline, into her story at that moment. You know what I mean? Because that Storm, that African goddess, we’ve never seen before.” Shipp is, of course, referring to Storm’s long-running romance and eventual marriage to T’Challa’s Black Panther in Marvel Comics, which now has the opportunity to be depicted on-screen in the MCU.

Marvel Studios gained the rights to Storm and the other members of the X-Men after Disney acquired Fox and its properties in 2019. The Goddess of Thunder variant of Storm has already been seen in the animated What If…? series, voiced by X-Men: The Animated Series and X-Men ’97’s Alison Sealy-Smith. With an MCU X-Men reboot in development, however, with Michael Lesslie writing and Jake Schreier directing, it’s possible we’ll get a new live-action iteration of Storm very soon, perhaps in 2028, and Marvel’s focus on a younger roster of X-Men means her full history with T’Challa can be explored.

In Marvel Comics, the orphaned Ororo Munroe met T’Challa while wandering through the Serengeti as a teenager. They formed a close bond and shared mutual feelings, but went their separate ways. T’Challa became King of Wakanda and Ororo became a member of the X-Men, and it was T’Challa’s mother, Ramonda, who eventually brought them back together. They married in 2006, but were driven apart in 2012’s Avengers vs. X-Men event due to their conflicting allegiances. They have reconciled and drifted apart many times since, so it would be great to see this complex and lengthy story depicted in the MCU.

The MCU’s upcoming reset after Avengers: Secret Wars presents the opportunity for a new actor to debut as T’Challa. Alternatively, the young Prince T’Challa (Divine Love Konadu-Sun) from 2022’s Black Panther: Wakanda Forever may have grown enough to explore his first meeting with Storm in the Serengeti. Alexandra Shipp previously explained at WonderCon (via LRM Online) that Storm didn’t need T’Challa in order to give her validity, so her new comments are a change of tone. Even so, Storm and T’Challa’s romance deserves its place in the MCU, and now is the perfect opportunity for this story to be told.

Do you want to see Storm and the Black Panther’s romance in the MCU? Let us know in the comments!