Marvel Knights: The World To Come is a 2025 limited comic book series published by Marvel Comics. The series is written by Christopher Priest with art by Joe Quesada (both of whom worked on initial series in the Marvel Knights imprint).
Set in an Alternate Universe future, the Black Panther is dead, and his successor has thrown the whole Marvel Universe into chaos.
The first issue was released June 04, 2025.
Marvel Knights: The World To Come provides examples of:
- 0% Approval Rating: Twenty-four years since he fought his adopted son Ketema, T'Challa is a wizened monarch sitting alone in his throne room and would've died all by himself if one of his Dora Milaje hadn't come in to bring him a meal. Once dead, a cynical Everett Ross sneers that he'll probably find a way to come back and laments over how he kept being treated like a pawn by the late King, and there are literal in-universe thesis papers that directly blame T'Challa for the death of the old world.
- Black Comedy: The World to Come is not only a celebration of the intensity of the Marvel Knights imprint, but also its audacious wit thanks to the likes of Ross and Achebe.
- Crapsack World: The Status Quo of The World to Come is bleak. A global conflict between the Mutants and the Inhumans has resulted in both factions being annihilated with countless civilian casualties caught in the crossfire. This event would also inadvertently lead to T'Challa being usurped by a white child he adopted after the crisis, who stole his contingency plans to exile every active superhero and villain off the planet, leaving the world defenseless and ripe for conquest.
- Color-Coded for Your Convenience: Ketema's Black Panther suit is dark brown with a tiger-print vest to differentiate it from T'Challa's.
- Corrupted Contingency: After Ketema successfully seizes power over Wakanda as the next Black Panther, the first thing he does is try to gain access to his father's contingency plans so he can exploit them for his own agenda. One of these contingencies was something T'Challa created in grief after the disastrous end of the Race War: Use Lockjaw, who he rescued in the War's aftermath, to banish every paranormal being on the planet to a resource rich "quarantine" zone in which escape is impossible. Ketema decides to use this contingency in particular to exile every active superhero, leaving Earth powerless to stop a Wakandan military campaign from taking over the world.
- Deconstructed Character Archetype: T'Challa/Black Panther himself deconstructs both The Good King and Warrior Prince, which have been intrinsic traits for his character. According to supplementary material in the form of an in-universe analysis of T'Challa and his role within Wakandan society, the very idea that a monarch like him could be considered a hero or a "good" person is a contradiction since his utmost priority will always be the preservation of the Wakandan state by any means necessary. To see the Black Panther as anything but a political creature is to fall for the propaganda and pageantry surrounding his position as head of state. In reality, T'Challa was a Broken Ace whose complete failure to reform Wakanda's deeply-flawed traditions have resulted in Ketema, a demonstrably corrupt individual, becoming his successor with the naive expectation that the boy will not abuse the vast political power now invested into him.
- Forgotten First Meeting: Black Panther and Daredevil have always historically shared an Odd Friendship with one another, but the events of this book reveal that T'Challa and Matt have known each other since they were both kids. T'Challa uses this bond to convince Matt to help him stop Ketema.
- Generation Xerox: Ketema to his adoptive uncle Hunter, the White Wolf. Just like Hunter, Ketema is a white child who was adopted into the Wakandan royal family and is regarded with similar suspicion due to the color of his skin. Ketema likewise secretly covets the Wakandan throne and engages in power plays to seize it for himself, albeit through playing extremely dangerous political games with the country's council and ecclesiarchy rather than relegating himself to doing government wetwork.
- Glass Cannon: Ketema hits as hard as T'Challa, but he's younger, smaller, and leaner. So he can't trade direct blows or take too many of them very well. And since he is not of royal blood, he cannot take the Heart-Shaped Herb to gain the traditional powers of the Black Panther, leaving him with the physical prowess of a normal, albeit skilled, teenage boy.
- Mighty Whitey: Deconstructed. Ketema is a white child who was adopted into the Wakandan Royal Family due to being the biological son of Everett Ross, one of Black Panther's most trusted allies who was presumed to be dead. Over the course of the story, Ketema is shown to be a vain, opportunistic, power-hungry deviant who exploited the political and religious division of his adoptive culture to usurp T'Challa in spite of his whiteness making him an illegitimate heir to the throne. Thus, Ketema's rise to becoming the next Black Panther is not treated by the narrative as an epic moment of triumph, but a trainwreck of a tragedy that signals dark times ahead for both Wakanda and the rest of the world at large.
- Noodle Incident:
- One of the major events that transpired was a global race war that culminated in untold casualties without further context. It isn't until Issue #4 where its finally elaborated that the "Race War" was actually a conflict between the Mutants and the Inhumans that resulted in both factions being wiped out.
- 24 years after defeating T'Challa, his father is back as Wakanda's king and Ketema is nowhere to be found.
- Not Afraid to Die: Ketema challenged his still mighty father to a tribal duel, aiming to either succeed or die trying.
- Realpolitik: Deconstructed. T'Challa has done a lot of skullduggery in the name of national security, which included creating contingency plans against everything from cosmic threats like Galactus to his own allies in the Avengers. Now all of those dark secrets have finally come home to roost in his twilight years after his adopted son Ketema uses those contingencies to banish every superhero off the planet after usurping T'Challa.
- Scatterbrained Senior: Both T'Challa and Ross are barely coherent as the old, wizened, feuding versions of themselves seen at the start of the story.
- Take That!: Ketema's entire character and his rule of Wakanda being explicitly portrayed as a dark period for Wakanda and the world at large is a major one to a portion of the fandom who call for a "White Black Panther" as a rebuttal to traditionally white characters being people of color in adaptations or succeeded by an Affirmative-Action Legacy.
- Turn to Religion:
- Subverted in Ketema's case. The chaos of the societal upheavals that surrounded him in his youth seemingly caused Ketema to seek comfort and direction in Wakandan religions, resulting in him being groomed by Cleric M as a political pawn against T'Challa. But eventually, its revealed that Ketama was simply playing T'Challa and the tribal priesthoods against one another so he can be in a better position to seize power as the future King, and quickly rips out Cleric M's throat in front of an entire live audience once he's finally been crowned.
- Played straight with Matt Murdock, who entered the seminary and rose to become a respected Cardinal in the Vatican after a tragedy made him move on from being Daredevil.
- Tyrant Takes the Helm: Ketema's rule is stated to be "when the wheels came off".