Beyoncé’s Search for Home Continues on <em>Black Is King</em>

The final installment in this unofficial trilogy, Black Is King is the most joyful and epic journey of the three. A follow-up to the 2019 soundtrack that Beyoncé curated for The Lion King, the film has been acclaimed for its vivid portrait of Black diasporic beauty—and is best understood by first diving deep into the specifics of the visual story it tells. The film opens with a bird’s-eye view of a basket floating down a river. Beyoncé first appears alone at the water’s edge dressed in flowing white, but in the next scene, she’s cradling a baby. She joins other Black mothers in a ritual blessing of newborns; with this, the women symbolically hand the infants a legacy that will guide them into the world. By the end of the sequence, the baby has grown into a young boy, a human stand-in for the lion cub Simba. As his guide, Beyoncé readies him for a journey into his own history that will prepare him to become king.

Viewers are reminded repeatedly in song, prose, and images that Blackness is inherently regal, even divine. As the film’s narrator and central figure, Beyoncé is opulently adorned, and so is everyone else onscreen. In a monologue about beauty, Beyoncé declares, “Black is king.” In another scene, a woman proclaims, “I can’t say I believe in God and call myself a child of God, and then not see myself as a god.” The production of Black Is King primarily employed African musicians, dancers, choreographers, and designers, and it is their work that helps shape Beyoncé’s vision of a universal Black home. In a sequence set to the Afrobeat pop song “Water,” co-written by the HBCU graduate Nana Afriyie, footage of everyday African people is intercut with shots of the cast. The message is that, across the continent’s plains, cities, and streams, the majesty of Blackness is constant.

The film contains two crisscrossing stories that underscore the sacredness of Black beauty—one narrative is linear, the other curved like a boomerang. The linear story is marked by dialogue from The Lion King, and mostly follows the same order as the songs from the movie’s 2019 soundtrack, The Gift. Across the segments that serve as mini music videos for this arc, the young Simba meets his destiny. He learns the lessons of his father, Mufasa (to the song “Find Your Way Back”); encounters his dangerous uncle (“Don’t Jealous Me” and “Scar”); lives an indulgent life in exile (“Mood 4 Eva”); returns to fight for his throne (“My Power”); and finally reclaims his crown (“Keys to the Kingdom”).

In the second narrative, which is more fantastical and meditative, Beyoncé is a guide on a metaphorical journey toward Black pride. The story’s lessons are made plain by the lyrics of the accompanying songs, which argue, for example, that Black people should heed ancestral wisdom (“Ja Ara é”), remember that they are royalty (“Already”), and honor their mothers (“Brown Skin Girl”). During this arc, viewers learn the origin of the basket on the river. With an apparent climate disaster bringing the world to an end, Beyoncé is revealed as the mother of the lost baby as she sets him afloat on the water. Later, “Simba” is reunited with his mother and father when he floats up to the ancestral plane. The circle of life is nearly complete, and it is this return that drives Simba to reclaim his power.