After much consideration, I have put together an official ranking of Black Panther’s characters. Number one: Shuri. Number two: Everyone else. As Wakanda’s princess, Letitia Wright is 2018’s first true breakout. With her micobraids and biting one-liners, she’s the Disney princess we deserve: young, gifted, black, and already rolling her eyes at your ignorance. Shuri is the closest thing we have to being in a group text with the Obama daughters. There should be monuments erected in Shuri’s honor, gossip blogs dedicated to her every move, a million stan Twitter accounts launched in her name!
As the brainiac behind the African nation’s technological advances, Shuri is Dexter without the bitterness, Jimmy Neutron sans clumsiness, Smart Guy in Ivy Park–level athleisure. Black Panther gives T’Challa’s little sis the movie’s most clever one-liners, and positions her as key to Wakanda’s superiority. It’s not insignificant that this movie’s world is rooted in the ambition and finesse of a teenage girl. As Black Panther co-writer Joe Robert Cole told Vulture, “Writing Shuri … she’s so precocious! The idea of her being the smartest person on the planet is something we talked about a lot, and kind of a jumping-off point: What is it like in Wakanda to have technology be something that’s rooted in youth? It kind of turns on its head the paradigm of Western civilization, when you look at the people who are doing the creating.â€
As a result, Shuri’s best lines are delivered almost as throwaways — like when she casually exclaims that Everett Ross (Martin Freeman) is a colonizer. “We had discussions about the word ‘colonizer,’†Cole told Vulture. “But Shuri is the perfect person for that. We had a lot of fun with her taking the piss out of things.†Without further ado, here are Shuri’s best one-liners (and some suggestions for how you can casually deploy them in your own life):
When scrolling through Tinder, opening your DMs, or when a Martin Freeman look-alike approaches you at the bar:
“Great! Another broken white boy for us to fix!â€
When that broken white boy attends the cookout:
— “Is this Wakanda?â€
— “No, it’s Kansas.â€
When there are too many cooks in the kitchen:
“I invite you to my lab and you just kick things around!â€
When you see that Beyoncé is headlining:
“When you said you would take me to California for the first time, I thought you meant Coachella or Disneyland.â€
When he’s really not getting the message, or someone is taking their time:
“This corset is really uncomfortable, so can we all wrap this up and go home?â€
When you’re feeling wise, or just need to tell your BFF that it’s time to move on from her man:
“Just because something works doesn’t mean it can’t be improved.â€
When your big brother — Wakanda’s king — is wearing certified BBQ chef sandals:
“The real question is, what’re thooooooooooooooose?â€
… And when you replace those primitive grilling sandals with ultra-high-tech, stealthy shoes:
“Guess what I call them: sneakers.â€
Re: Donald Trump, the White House staff, Congress, the Supreme Court, American politics in general, or when a white person makes a Sunken Place joke:
“Don’t scare me like that, colonizer!â€
Kyle Buchanan contributed reporting.