Eyes of Wakanda Ending Explained: How Does the Series Connect to Black Panther?

Disney+ series ‘Eyes of Wakanda’ is an animated show produced by Marvel Studios that showcases how certain events changed the history of Wakanda. The anthology miniseries primarily focuses on the Hatut Zaraze, aka War Dogs, a group of warriors carrying out dangerous missions to retrieve vibranium artifacts throughout historic phases, shedding light on Wakanda’s secret influence on global events across different eras. The title introduces a new Hatut Zaraze in each episode as they all go out in different parts of the world to claim what is rightfully theirs. However, what first appears to be remote missions soon reveals a larger pattern, with each recovery quietly shaping the nation’s future. In the end, these tales blend to reflect how the past directly informs the future of Wakanda. SPOILERS AHEAD.

Eyes of Wakanda Recap

The series begins on the Greek island of Crete in 1260 BC, and the people of that island are facing an attack from the sea raiders. However, they soon learn that they are being attacked by The Lion (Cress Williams), a man who wears a lion mask and wants to unite the world under one banner. As they go to the island, one lone warrior fights his men and goes up against the Lion. However, he is no match for the Lion, who defeats him easily. Consequently, they take the people of Crete in captivity and ask them to join the Lion’s tribe.

Soon, they realize that one of the people they have captured is a Wakandan warrior, Noni (Winnie Harlow), who used to be a member of the Dora Milaje. Noni manages to get away from Lion’s men, doing everything and anything to find the leader. In the meantime, a flashback reveals that the Lion is the former captain of the Royal Guard in Wakanda and has fled the nation with essential artifacts. That’s why Wakanda needs Noni to go after him and bring those artifacts back.

Currently, Noni fights off the Lion’s warriors and defeats them. She eventually meets the Lion, whose real name is Nkati, and he tells her about himself and the Hatut Zaraze. The people of the group above, also known as the War Dogs, are sent to various locations worldwide to execute missions that Wakanda does not want known. When he saw the outside world for the first time, he believed that he could create a world for himself and rule it. As a result, he begins his conquest and now wants Noni to follow him. However, Noni refuses and fights with Nkati. She manages to defeat him and retrieve one of the stolen items. Meanwhile, all the other items get buried in the sea. After returning home, she tells her leader she wants to be a War Dog and starts her journey as one of them.

The next story begins in Ancient Greece and follows the events of the Trojan War. Achilles (Adam Gold) is trying to breach Troy so that the war is finally over and the Greeks can live in peace. However, Achilles is not alone, and a man named Memnon (Larry Herron) is helping him in the war. While they initially breach the kingdom, Memnon uses his telescope or binoculars to look straight into the main chambers and sees the locket around a woman’s neck, which consists of a powerful jewel that belongs to Wakanda.

Although they couldn’t win the war at the time, Memnon is able to send a message to Wakanda about the artifact. Meanwhile, Odysseus stitches a plan to seize the city of Troy by sending a giant wooden horse as a supposed offering. When they leave the wooden horse outside the city, no one knows that Greek soldiers are hiding within its hollow interior and attack immediately. However, Memnon leaves Achilles alone during the battle and secures the artifact. But that leads to a fight between Memnon and Achilles, who feel that the Wakandan warrior can’t return the jewel to his home.

Although Memnon makes him understand that the artifact belongs to Wakanda, Achilles doesn’t listen and engages in a fight. Eventually, the Wakandan kills Achilles and bring the jewel back to Wakanda. After returning to his home nation, he meets Noni, now the Director of War Dogs. Memnon, whose real name is B’Kai, tells the director that he wants to return to the field. The story ends with Noni asking him about what he is looking for out there. The story moves forward with another War Dog, Basha (Jacques Colimon), trying to recover a Wakandan artifact from China in 1400 AD. The artifact is hidden in the Dragon Statue, which is sacred to the people of the mountains.

As a result, he takes the entire statue with him and brings it back to Wakanda. When he returns, his peers find that a masked intruder has come inside Wakanda and is hiding in Basha’s airship. Soon, the warrior reveals her face, and it is Jorani (Jona Xiao), who saved Basha from the snow blizzard in China. Jorani reveals that she wants the Dragon Statue because it means a lot to her people. Basha continues telling her how she can’t take it away, and engages in a fight with her. Initially, she outclasses him, but he uses a Wakandan weapon to stick her to the ceiling.

That’s when she tells about her real identity. Her name is Jorani, and she is the guardian of the mountains. She defeated the immortal dragon Shou-Lao and got her powers from his molten heart, and became the Iron Fist. Ultimately, she takes out the Wakandan artifact from the Dragon Statue and gives it back to Basha, while she leaves with the statue. By the end of the season, all the aforementioned retrievals become an essential part of Wakanda, which is revealed when someone from the future tells the people of Wakanda that their actions will be responsible for the nation’s future.

Eyes of Wakanda Ending: How Does the Series Connect with Black Panther?

In the fourth episode of ‘Eyes of Wakanda,’ the narrative takes a wild turn when it turns out that all the retrievals in the past are related to the future of Wakanda. The fourth story begins in Ethiopia in 1896, where two Wakandans – Kuda (Steve Toussaint) and Prince Tafari (Zeke Alton) – are on a mission to recover the fourth artifact. However, they are in a war, and Kuda believes they should take a step back. But Tafari wants to move ahead with the mission because he can’t return home empty-handed. As a result, he doesn’t listen to Kuda and retrieves the artifact, which is an Axe made from Vibranium. While returning to Wakanda, they come face-to-face with an unknown threat. Initially, they fight, but the hooded figure speaks to Kuda in Wakandan and wants to convey something important to him. The hooded figure introduces itself as the future Queen of Wakanda and the last Black Panther.

According to her, 500 years in the future, the Horde attacked the outside world, and when Wakanda refused to help, it fell apart. However, the Horde learned about Wakanda and attacked the nation. Even though Wakanda is highly advanced, it couldn’t fight the Horde, which came from the edge of the galaxy, and was annihilated. After the attack, the Queen used her Quantum Scanner to see how the artifacts retrieved in the past are becoming the reason for their doom. The only way they can save Wakanda is by putting the Axe back where it was so that someone from Wakanda can find it and secure the nation’s future. Before she can tell them anything else, she returns to her timeline, prompting Kuda and Tafari to think about their mission. Tafari wants to put the Axe back where he took it from. Initially, Kuda doesn’t want to do that, but he understands Tafari’s point of view of saving Wakanda and goes ahead with his plan.

They return to Adwe in Ethiopia, where Tafari found the Axe in a merchant’s home. While trying to put the Axe back inside the merchant’s house, Kuda finds himself in a precarious situation when a part of the building falls on him. Tafari tries to take him out of the rubble, but Kuda tells him to go and complete the mission. Tafari puts the Vibranium Axe in the clock case before saving Kuda. They return to Wakanda and tell the King and Queen that the Axe was destroyed because of the war. The ending of this story ties directly to what happens at the end of the 2018 movie Black Panther. The future Queen told Kuda and Tafari to put the Axe back in place so the outside world knows about Wakanda and its advancements.

The Events of Black Panther Prove That Tafari and Kuda’s Mission Succeeded

In Black Panther, one of Wakanda’s forgotten sons learns about the Vibranium Axe and steals it from the Museum of Great Britain. When he returns to Wakanda, he claims the throne and says that he wants to make the world know about Wakanda’s technological advancements, which would help the needy. For this reason, a fight occurs between the Man and T’Challa, aka Black Panther, in which T’Challa is victorious. But the fight makes him realize that he needs to bring about change.

By the end of ‘Black Panther,’ King T’Challa reveals the true nature of Wakanda to the world, which marks a pivotal moment in the film and the MCU. For centuries, Wakanda thrived secretly as the most advanced society on Earth. T’Challa, however, chooses to break from this long-standing tradition. The catalyst for this change is his confrontation with Wakanda’s forgotten son, who calls T’Challa out on Wakanda’s moral responsibility. He realizes that by hiding, Wakanda has failed those who could have benefited from its knowledge and resources. As a result, he addressed the United Nations, telling the world more about Wakanda and its intent to share its technology and wisdom.

This would help them gain necessary and powerful allies, useful when the Horde attacks Wakanda. So, whatever has been happening in ‘Eyes of Wakanda’ is directly linked to what prompted T’Challa to inform the world about Wakanda. If the Axe had not been put back to its original location, it wouldn’t have made its way to the British Museum, it wouldn’t have been stolen, and Wakanda’s forgotten son wouldn’t have challenged T’Challa for the throne. So, ‘Eyes of Wakanda’ is not only a history lesson about the fictional place but also an important tale about how the nation came to redefine its identity.

Is Wakanda Saved or Destroyed? Does the Queen Die?

The first three episodes of ‘Eyes of Wakanda’ give the impression that it is a story about Wakanda reclaiming what they lost a thousand years ago. It started with Nkati, also known as The Lion, fleeing the nation with powerful artifacts, and Wakanda’s War Dogs trying to find them throughout history. However, it is the fourth and final episode that ties everything to the future of the nation. It has already been established that Wakanda is a highly advanced nation, with technologies that have never been seen before. One of the shining examples is the Quantum Scanner, a machine used to explore and interact with the quantum realm. However, Eyes of Wakanda introduces a machine that allows the Queen of Wakanda to time travel and visit Wakanda in 1896. She meets Kuda and Tafari, telling them about the future of Wakanda and how both of them can save it.

In her story, the Horde, an extraterrestrial insect-like being that invades and consumes planets, attacks Wakanda. Moreover, they serve a powerful being named The Fulcrum, considered a super entity in the Marvel Universe. In the future, the Horde will attack the Earth, prompting the entire planet to unite and fight against them. When Wakanda doesn’t help the Earth, the Horde sets its sights on the nation. Though they fought bravely, most of the Wakandan warriors were killed, with only a few surviving in the end. The Queen used the quantum scanner and traveled back in time to realize that every retrieval of the Wakandan artifacts was linked, and to save their future, they had to break it. That’s why she wants them to put the Axe back where they took it and change Wakanda’s history so that the nation’s forgotten son could find it, and that will become the reason for the world to know about Wakanda and have allies.

In the end, the Queen returns to her timeline and fights off the Horde, but before the episode establishes whether she died or not, it returns to what Tafari and Kuda are doing. It’s highly improbable that the Queen survived the Horde. With her energy fading, she unleashes one final blow so that the Horde doesn’t enter the time portal, and though the title doesn’t confirm her death, her sacrifice feels inevitable. In choosing to stay behind, she ensured that the past was corrected and Wakanda’s future is protected. Her actions echo through time and make her a silent architect of national survival. Moreover, the story of Tafari and Kuda takes place in 1896, and the Queen opens up about the attack 500 years from their timeline, meaning that the Horde will come to attack Wakanda somewhere in the 2300s. So, an attack is inevitable, but now that the world knows about Wakanda, they can help the outside world whenever they attack.

The opening of Wakanda to the world changes many things for its people. In ‘Avengers: Infinity War,’ Thanos brings the war to Wakanda. An epic battle occurs between Thanos’ army and the superheroes, including some Avengers members. Now, this is one of the key advantages of T’Challa’s decision to open Wakanda to the world. By doing so, he not only shared the nation’s knowledge but also forged stronger alliances with the Avengers, which would also give them a fair chance to win the battle against the Horde. In the battle between the Wakandan warriors and alien invaders, the latter didn’t have a chance to emerge victorious. However, with the Avengers involved, the war could have been different, and Wakanda could have even won it, which would have eventually kept the Queen alive.

Who is the Man in the End? How is the Axe Connected to Killmonger?

When Tafari and Kuda complete their mission of putting the Vibranium Axe back in its original location, they believe that they have saved Wakanda’s future. They tell the King and Queen of Wakanda that the Axe was destroyed in the battle between the Italians and Ethiopians. Kuda asks Tafari why he decided to do this and miss a chance to get into history books. He reveals that Wakanda is more important than anything, but he only regrets that he might not be able to see if everything worked out for the better. As soon as he says those dialogues, the series introduces someone standing in what seems to be a museum while looking at the Vibranium Axe. Firstly, it proves that Tarafi and Kuda’s efforts didn’t go to waste, and what they set in motion is a chain of events that will safeguard the nation’s future. Secondly, the Man introduced in the final scene of Episode 4 is none other than Killmonger.

The scene resembles what viewers see in the 2018 movie ‘Black Panther.’ It is the first time Killmonger sees the Vibranium artifact at the museum and steals it to challenge T’Challa. For doing that, he tells Ulysses Klaue about Vibranium and its power so that he would help him in infiltrating Wakanda. Killmonger, whose real name is N’Jadaka, has a history with Wakanda and resents that place because his father, N’jobu, was killed by his brother T’Chaka for aiding Klaue in stealing vibranium. This makes him hate Wakanda, and his resentment grows when he goes outside the nation. When he learns that T’Challa is being named the new King of Wakanda, he wants to reclaim the throne and enter Wakanda. The resentment towards Wakanda is also due to how advanced it is, and yet, it refuses to share its knowledge and resources with the world.

If they did, a lot of problems in the outside world could be eradicated, and people who are in need would get a chance to live their lives in peace. The latter defeats his nemesis during the last fight between T’Challa and Killmonger. Although they wanted to keep him as a captive, Killmonger refused to live a life like that and chose to die. That’s when T’Challa thought about telling the world about Wakanda and its resources. He talked about the nation’s true identity and even established the Wakandan International Outreach Center in Oakland, California. The center is built as a place where Wakanda can share and talk about its knowledge and resources with the people of Earth. So, Killmonger is the nation’s forgotten son who stole the Axe and became a vital part of the nation’s history.