Marvel Animation premiered the first episode of Todd Harris’ Wakanda animated series spin-off Eyes of Wakanda, digging into the history which led to the Black Panther, at the Annecy International Animation Film Festival on Monday.

Opening in the Crete some 3,000 years ago, the first instalment unfolds in the wake of the theft of Wakandan technological treasures fashioned out of Vibranium by a general (voiced by Cress Williams) who has turned rogue and is using them to build his own tyrannical “Lion” Kingdom.

Disgraced female Wakandan warrior Noni (voiced by Winnie Harlow), who has been banished from the kingdom’s female elite forces the Dora Milaje for disobedience, is dispatched on a mission to track-down the general and bring him back.

Noni finds herself up against Lion’s violent henchmen and women in series of fight-to-the-death encounters aboard the tyrant’s grandiose sailing ship, which lies at the heart of a vast naval fleet.

In the process, she learns about the existence of the Hatut Zaraze, an under the radar Wakandan secret service, which will now be charged with the task of retrieving the stolen vibranium artifacts throughout history.

“The show is anthology adjacent. We have the spark or impetus for the show: someone takes something that doesn’t belong to them and like any person or institution, they make a concerted effort to get it back,” explained Harris in a Q&A after the screening.

“Wakanda is a 3,000-year-old society. They have a very succinct self-identity and they’re preserving that,” he continued. “We get the chance to see the kind of persistence and character of Wakandans. The premise of the show is what’s the kind of culture that builds the Black Panther? You see this even in their generals, their sergeants, everyday citizens.

“Everybody in Wakanda is like a physicist… you see their patience over centuries to see work, that they will never be able to see get finished but they believe in their mission as a culture, to see this work through. So we kind of hopscotch through time, as we see these people pursue the goals of their country, which is to preserve the secret of their technology and who they are.”

Harris confirmed that the series would unfold over several different eras as Hatut Zaraze agents embark on missions to trackdown different artefacts.

“They get scattered to the four winds, and it’s like there are tags back in antiquity… this is mostly a spy story. As you met with Noni, it’s people who are in the real world, they have real world experiences, make real world connections, but they also have their nationalist obligation to see the well-being of their people or their culture.”

Describing the world of Wakanda “like Star Trek which is dropped in the middle of Africa”, Harris said he, Black Panther producer Ryan Cooger and the series writers had gone in various directions as they built Wakanda’s ancient history from scratch, while remaining true to sci-fi roots.

“Ryan really just let us go hog wild. He was very inspirational. He really zeroed in on the Sea People of the Bronze Age. It’s a very contested historical point in history, this thing where these people kind of raided everybody. The premises was, what if they were led by Wakandans?  What kind of disruptive force would they be in this era?,” said Harris.

He added that the glue of the show would be the mission and the Wakandan culture, as episodes jumped from different settings and villains through time.

Harris, who worked mainly as a storyboard artist – with his credits including the John Wick franchise as well as movies such as Black Panther, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings and Sinners – said this experience had stood him in good stead for transitioning into animation.

“Feature films is a different animal and live action is, of course, where I live at for the most part but I love animation,” he said.

“Animation gives you opportunities that are just built into the nature of what it is that you can’t quite get in live action. I once said that one of the beauties of animation is that Brooklyn cost just as much as Mars because it’s all art direction, and so you you get Instant buy-in with fantastic concepts.”

The four-part series debuts on Disney+ on August 6, 2025.