Black Panther adds The People vs OJ Simpson's Sterling K Brown, but his role is a mystery

Black Panther has no shortage of great talent already signed; Chadwick Boseman will return as the heroic T'Challa of course, but there's also Lupita Nyong'o, Michael B Jordan, Andy Serkis, Forest Whitaker, and Martin Freeman to take into account. And this week, the movie added Emmy winner Sterling K Brown.

You might recognize Brown from the NBC show This Is Us, or as Christopher Darden from The People vs. OJ Simpson: American Crime Story - the role which nabbed him the aforementioned Emmy. In Black Panther, he'll be playing N'Jobu, who is described as "a figure from T'Challa's past."

Before you start digging through comics to try and figure out what this means for the movie, know that this looks to be a new character for the Black Panther mythos. He could be an amalgamation of other characters from the comics, but nobody named N'Jobu currently exists in Marvel continuity.

Personally, my guess is one of two roles: either N'Jobu will fill the void of Storm's mother, N'Dare, or his advisor, N'Gassi. Storm was married to Black Panther once upon a time, but since the X-Men don't exist in the MCU, rewriting N'Dare to become N'Jobu and fiddling with this part of T'Challa's backstory would make a certain amount of sense. N'Gassi, meanwhile, is a character who served as advisor and right hand man of T'Challa, like a not-evil Jafar from Aladdin.

Of course, I could be totally wrong about both of these. What are your theories? Be sure to leave them in the comments below.

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Images: FX

Sam Prell

Sam is a former News Editor here at GamesRadar. His expert words have appeared on many of the web's well-known gaming sites, including Joystiq, Penny Arcade, Destructoid, and G4 Media, among others. Sam has a serious soft spot for MOBAs, MMOs, and emo music. Forever a farm boy, forever a '90s kid.