“SNL” took Sterling K. Brown back to Wakanda this week, when he got to play an ancestor of “Black Panther” T’Challa living for eternity in the movie’s ancestral plane. Unfortunately, you can’t pick your family, and not all of the people in the ancestral plane are fun to be around.
The sketch introduces a supposedly deleted scene from “Black Panther” in which T’Challa, played by Chris Redd, takes the Heart-Shaped Herb and experiences a vision of his ancestors. In the movie, T’Challa visits the ancestral plane to speak to his father and other ancestors for advice. But in the “SNL” deleted scene, he meets his great-great grandfather T’Kana, played by Sterling K. Brown, and his great-aunt, played by Leslie Jones.
Everyone from T’Challa’s bloodline lives forever in the ancestral plane, and that includes people who married in, Jones says. That explains T’Challa’s Uncle M’Butu, played by Kenan Thompson, who is hanging around the ancestral plane grilling hamburgers.
You can watch the sketch in the video above.
At first, T’Challa is confused that M’Butu is even in the ancestral plane, since he was still alive — but M’Butu explains that he insulted his wife, a member of Wakanda’s warriors, and that was the last thing he could remember.
“I got one question for y’all,” Thompson’s M’Butu says. “Where’s the weed at?”
“We already told you, there is no weed here!” Jones replies.
“Oh you’re hiding it, huh,” M’Butu says.
M’Butu then asks T’Challa if he could borrow some Vibranium, the super-powerful metal unique to Wakanda which makes its amazing technology possible, because he needs “a new ride.”
“Everyone here is riding a war rhino,” M’Butu tells him. “You know what I’ve got? An ostrich!”
Things reach a head when Brown’s T’Kana tries to give T’Challa advice about how to stop civil war in Wakanda. As he does, M’Butu keeps interrupting, trying to feed T’Kana one of the burgers he’s grilling up. T’Challa starts to leave the ancestral plane to get away from M’Butu, despite his ancestors begging him to stay so they have something to distract them from his uncle.