Marvel Animation's Eyes of Wakanda will be the first MCU animated TV series set on Earth-616, with Black Panther storyboard artist Todd Harris serving as showrunner and director. Ryan Coogler, meanwhile, produces the four-part series.
Talking to Entertainment Weekly, he teased a history-spanning adventure that follows the Hatut Zaraze, Wakanda's "Dogs of War," a CIA-like defence group tasked with retrieving Vibranium artefacts from Wakanda's enemies.
"I really liked the idea of everyone's view of history," Harris said. "The story starts off during the end of the Western Bronze Age, and that spark sets off this giant spy-espionage story that reverberates through time. You get Wakanda-grade James Bond, and sometimes a Jane Bond, with the backdrop of all the awesomeness that is Wakanda."
"When an inciting incident releases some of these things into the wild, they've got to, in a very hush hush kind of way, make sure that these things don't turn into a bigger problem," he continued. "We saw what happened when one disc got into the hands of one Super Soldier — it changed the course of the world."
Harris describes Eyes of Wakanda as "anthology adjacent," with a continuous narrative that will have an impact on the wider MCU. The site's report confirms that Iron Fist will appear, though the showrunner wouldn't be drawn too much on that.
"We're all in this together and history has proven that," Harris pondered. "We like to think there are silos of people in history, but there's the Fertile Crescent; the Mediterranean; the intersections between Eurasia, Asia, north Africa, and all the different cultures that all created this mesh. That's what that imagery is supposed to invoke: It's not a rare circumstance that we're all here again together."
"There's a couple of surprises because part of the opportunity here is to sprinkle little pieces of history and go, 'I didn't know that happened.' Part of it is holding a mirror up to some historical theories and some historical facts and some historical preconceived notions," he teased, describing the show as a "globe-trotting adventure."
It's unclear how much of what we see in Eyes of Wakanda will factor into Black Panther 3, though we'd be shocked if the Hatut Zaraze aren't given an expanded role in Coogler's planned threequel.
Throughout Wakandan history, brave warriors have been tasked to travel the world retrieving dangerous Vibranium artefacts. Eyes of Wakanda is their story, and premieres on Disney+ on August 6. You can check out some new stills below.