The late Stan Lee, who passed away last November, will make his final animated appearance in this week's episode of
Marvel's Avengers: Black Panther's Quest.
The Marvel Comics legend will have a cameo role as an Army General in the episode "
T'Chanda," which airs Sunday, January 13. While Lee's role is likely limited, he does provide a very powerful statement about intolerance in the episode, which Marvel goes on to say is
"of particular significance to those who make “Marvel’s Avengers: Black Panther’s Quest” because of how it reflected Stan’s own beliefs."
Speaking to
Marvel.com, Cort Lane, Marvel's Senior Vice President of Animation & Family Entertainment, explained:
“It made an impression, the things that Stan had to say about prejudice and hate. He always stood up. I actually have the Stan’s Soapbox from 1968 that was distributed pretty widely after he passed. He talked about hate and that hate will never win. And that stuck. For me personally, that was the year I was born - I have those comics. That’s always been very meaningful for me. I’ve worked with Stan dozens of times, but we wanted to capture that essence in the speech that the General has in this episode because it’s set during World War II and that’s when Stan started writing comics. A lot of the comics he wrote were about the evils of the Nazis. So without being that explicit, we wanted to capture that. So it had personal reasons for me and for Stan to talk about the evils of hate. We were inspired by that 1968 Stan’s Soapbox column.”
You can watch a clip of Lee's animated cameo in
Marvel's Avengers: Black Panther's Quest, including his speech, below.
Black Panther (James C. Mathis III) discovers secrets about his grandfather, T’Chanda, in an episode that involves scenes set in the 1940s and include Captain America (Roger Craig Smith), Peggy Carter (Hayley Atwell), and the villainous Arnim Zola (Mark Hamill). In his final animation performance, Stan Lee speaks about the evils of hate.
"That particular episode [of "Marvel's Avengers: Black Panther's Quest"] has personal meaning for me. I believe it’s his last recorded appearance in animation," Lane added.
"It’s bittersweet, but I’m so glad we were able to capture a message that was very true to how Stan felt about the world and that inspired him to write a lot of the stories that he did.”
As the synopsis teases, Stan Lee will be joined by fellow guest stars Hayley Atwell and Mark Hamill. Lee actually recorded his dialogue for the episode alongside Hamill and the two got together for an interview with Marvel.com, which you can watch below.
"Stan created a real bond with his audience in the bullpen," Hamill said of Lee's connection with fans.
"He had this snarky humor. He would give out ‘No-Prizes,’ because people were always pointing out boo boos and mistakes. And he really had a personality that came across over the pages. He was sort of this avuncular uncle you wish you had. On television it was Walt Disney, and in comic books it was Stan the Man. Excelsior!”
You can catch Stan Lee's final animated appearance when
Marvel's Avengers: Black Panther's Quest airs Sunday, January 13 at 9:00 p.m. ET/PT on Disney XD. While this will be Lee's final voice cameo, we can still expect to see him appear on the big screen in the Marvel Cinematic Universe as he has
reportedly shot scenes for
Avengers: Endgame and
Captain Marvel.