When you sit down to watch a Marvel Cinematic Universe film, you’re doing it for the entertainment, explosions and quips. You’re certainly not watching an MCU flick for any important life lessons or insights into the human psyche. But for some kid in America, watching Black Panther literally helped save his life.
11-year-old Xavier Cunningham (via People) was playing in a treehouse one day when he was attacked by a swarm of wasps, which by the way are absolute bastards and deserves all the flack they get.
In an attempt to escape from those painful, god forsaken insects, Xavier accidentally fell from a ladder to his treehouse and impaled his face onto a foot-long meat skewer that was left out in the open for some unknown reason.
This wasn’t some mere flesh wound either as it pierced through the front of his face and through the back of his skull.
Luckily for Xavier, he didn’t panic, left the skewer in his head as it was, and was rushed to hospital, where doctors were able to remove the skewer once they recovered from the shock of the “one in a million” chance that the object somehow missed the kid’s nerves and brain stem.
When Xavier was asked later how he managed to keep calm and not touch the skewer, he said he learned it from watching Black Panther. Specifically, the fight at the end between T’Challa and Killmonger.
At the climax of the final battle in Black Panther, T’Challa stabs Killmonger in the chest with a dagger. After an emotional final few words between cousins and a moment of understanding while watching the sunset, Killmonger removes the dagger from his chest and dies.
Xavier says after he “watched Black Panther” and saw the part where “he just takes it out and dies,” he “was like, ‘Nope!'” and opted to keep the metal skewer in his head until medical aid had arrived.
He also mentioned how Jesus also played a part in saving his life, but that’s a far less interesting excuse as to how he survived so we’re just going to brush over that and keep the focus on the Black Panther stuff, which is pretty amazing no matter how you look at it.
So there you go, next time someone questions the merit of a Marvel film, the excuse “it may literally save my life” is actually applicable thanks to this bizarre incident involving Black Panther.