Did you catch this hidden tribute to Chadwick Boseman in Sinners?

Ryan Coogler's Sinners pays tribute to the late Chadwick Boseman in the Church scene that appears at the beginning. One of its central conflicts revolves around Sammie, an aspiring blues singer and guitarist, who is also a preacher's son. That leads to its heartbreaking climax. We get a glimpse of it in the film's opening shot. Sammie enters the church with a broken guitar to be confronted by his father.

A frame in that scene pays tribute to the star of Black Panther, the late Chadwick Boseman through a cross that resembles the "Wakanda Forever" gesture. Oscar-winning production designer Hannah Beachler shared the details about this tribute in an X (formerly Twitter) post.

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Beachler revealed the concept art for the church scene and revealed how it serves as a tribute to Chadwick Boseman. The frame shows Sammie and his father at the center with a bright light in between them. There are three crosses around them, one in between and two on both sides. The light beams bouncing off the floor create an X on the wooden background. It resembles the "Wakanda Forever" hand gesture of crossed arms.

In her post, Beachler also mentioned,

"Sammy & his Father are The Father, The Son & The Holy Spirit. The rough-sawn beams the crosses hold are exactly 33 inches apart, the age Jesus died, & the number that represents the end."

With these details that viewers might have missed, the Sinners production designer and the creative team offered a tribute to the Black Panther star, who tragically died in 2020 from cancer. Apart from that, Michael B. Jordan and Ryan Coogler also drew inspiration from their creative collaboration with Chadwick Boseman.

Chadwick Boseman inspired Michael B. Jordan's acting choices for Sinners

47th AFI Life Achievement Award Honoring Denzel Washington - Inside - Source: Getty

Black Panther (2018) brought Chadwick Boseman and Michael B. Jordan into the spotlight through an MCU tentpole project. It has been praised for many reasons, mainly for its representation of black culture and its differing perspectives. Similarly, Sinners has been praised for representing different cultural identities that existed in the Jim Crow era in the American South and their differing standpoints.

The choices they make have a ripple effect on the choices characters make in Sinners. Referring to the same, a Deadline journalist pointed out an observation while speaking with Michael B. Jordan.

"I appreciate how you and Ryan break off pieces of yourself and your roots. Black Panther was a superhero movie, but I teared up when you had your death scene and told T’Challa (Chadwick Boseman) you did not want to be saved, you’drather go the way of Africans who threw themselves off boats than be dehumanized and enslaved. Sinners is a vampire genre movie but the signs are even more palpable."

In the same conversation, Michael B. Jordan reflected on how Chadwick Boseman impacted his creative choices in his vampire horror film.

"Chadwick Boseman means a lot to us, and once Ryan challenged me by asking, what would Chad be doing right now? And shit, man, it broke us up, man. It broke us up, meaning emotionally. But he ain’t had to say nothing else after that. That was one of the buttons that he could push. And I felt [Chadwick] around me during this."

Sinners is out in theaters.