In Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, there’s a brief moment where it’s made clear that Michaela Coel and Florence Kasumba’s characters—Aneka and Ayo, Dora Milaje warriors—are in a relationship. But viewers who watch the film in Kuwait will never see that moment. According to The Hollywood Reporter, the brief scene has been cut from the film for its theatrical run in the Gulf country, removing the only explicitly LGBTQ+ scene in the Black Panther sequel.
In the scene, Aneka kisses Ayo on the forehead. Ayo replies, “Thank you, my love,” making it clear the pair are romantically linked. The scene lasts just a few seconds (par for the course with Marvel and its tepid LGBTQ+ representation record), but was apparently still too much for the Kuwaiti censors. THR also reports that a few other small but key edits were made, including a scene in which a woman gives birth to a child and a character says the line, “A god to his people” in reference to Namor, the powerful Talokan leader played by Tenoch Huerta. All in all, the cuts amount to just over one minute of footage, per THR. A source confirmed the cuts to Vanity Fair, noting they were done to adhere to Kuwait’s cultural sensitivities. The cuts that were made were deemed not critical to the story, and would not have been made if they impacted the storytelling, the source adds.
Thus far, THR notes that Kuwait is the only Gulf country to run that lightly censored version of the film, a sequel to the billion-dollar 2018 hit Black Panther. Kuwait is famously censorious when it comes to its theatrical runs, requiring that scenes including intimacy (regardless of gender), religious references, medical procedures and more be edited out of films, the source tells VF. When the first Black Panther was released, a scene depicting a kiss between T’Challa and Nakia was edited out of the film before it could hit theaters in the country.
In a previous interview, Coel has said that Aneka and Ayo’s relationship was one of the reasons she signed on to the sequel. “That sold me on the role, the fact that my character’s queer,” she recently told Vogue. The Emmy-winning multihyphenate, who is British-Ghanaian, was particularly interested in playing Aneka because Ghana has notoriously oppressive anti-LGBTQ+ laws. “People say, ‘Oh, it’s fine, it’s just politics.’ But I don’t think it is just politics when it affects how people get to live their daily lives,” she continued. “That’s why it felt important for me to step in and do that role because I know just by my being Ghanaian, Ghanaians will come.”
Kasumba has similarly spoken out about the importance of queer representation in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. “When you see that in a production like this, with people you really look up to, it makes a big difference,” she told Digital Spy. In the first Black Panther, there was originally a scene in an early rough cut where Kasumba’s Ayo appeared to flirt with Okoye, the Dora Milaje leader played by Danai Gurira (though Marvel previously clarified that their relationship was not romantic). However, the scene was ultimately cut out of the final film. Wakanda Forever seems to, at last, make good on showing this aspect of Ayo’s life—even if it is as wildly brief and Marvel-safe as possible.
This post has been updated.
Yohana Desta
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