In Black Panther, what is the Ancestral Plane?

Question

TLDR

• What exactly is the Ancestral Plane? I am happy to accept answers from the comics if the two planes are related.

After rewatching Black Panther I am more curious about the Ancestral Plane. We do not learn much about it from the MCU film(s) as far as I can tell:

1. You go there by ingesting the Heart-Shaped Herb.
2. You need to be fully covered?
3. It would seem you gain the ability to communicate with the dead...
4. Or you merely have a serious acid trip?

Looking at the Marvel Wiki the Ancestral Plane article does not even mention Black Panther... It seems to really relate only to America Chavez:

Is this because the the Plane from the MCU is completely independent of the Plane from the comics? Below the video on this link the paragraph notes the comics, but the link takes you to the MCU wiki which obviously just rehashes what we see in the film...

Is there a more thorough explanation of the Ancestral Plane from Black Panther? Is there something/ some resource I missed that will shed more light on this?

Answer 1

We may have got a little more colour about the Ancestral Plane prior to Black Panther, in Captain America: Civil War:

T'CHALLA: In my culture death is not the end. It's more of a… stepping-off point. You reach out with both hands and Bast and Sekhmet, they lead you into the green veldt where… you can run forever.

NATASHA ROMANOFF: That sounds very peaceful.

http://transcripts.wikia.com/wiki/Captain_America:_Civil_War

The Ancestral Plane in Black Panther pretty much looks like a veldt? T’Challa sounds like he’s speaking metaphorically about the afterlife (“in my culture”), but that may be the traditional Wakandan caution about revealing too much to outsiders.

As such, the Ancestral Plane may be a literal afterlife, where the actual consciousnesses of dead people go after human death, and which living people can access using the Heart-Shaped Herb. (Perhaps only people who have ingested the herb have their consciousnesses go there after death too, although Killmonger seems to meet his dad there, so perhaps not*.)

Alternatively, as you say, the whole thing may be just one big hallucination, a bit like the cave in The Empire Strikes Back. Or, indeed, some combination of the two. As Taladris commented above, we have seen two other apparent conversations with dead people (reference acknowledged) in the MCU. The Heart-Shaped Herb might be another way to achieve that, whilst the Plane could be our puny human brains interpreting the experience in a way we can understand.

---

^{* As such, since the events of Avengers: Infinity War...}

^{... it might be getting a bit crowded up in there.}

Answer 2

Moon Knight (2022 MCU miniseries) expounds upon the Ancestral Plane, where it is described to be "an afterlife", one of "many intersectional planes of untethered consciousness", and that a person "may perceive this realm as something more easily recognizable to [them]."

Taweret, an Egyptian goddess*, describes the Ancestral Plane in Moon Knight S01E05 "Asylum":

^{* Bast in Black Panther is also an Egyptian goddess.}

Taweret: Welcome, gentle traveler... Travelers, to the realm of the Duat.
Steven Grant: Duat? The Egyptian underworld. This is Taweret, goddess of women and children... and she's guiding us through our journey to the afterlife.
[...]
Marc Spector: Okay. Right. So, this is the afterlife? The afterlife?
Taweret: An afterlife. Not the afterlife. You'd be surprised how many intersectional planes of untethered consciousness exist. [Gasps] Like the Ancestral Plane. Oh! Just gorgeous. Anyway.

Taweret: Because the Duat's true nature is impossible for the human mind to comprehend, you may perceive this realm as something more easily recognizable to you.