Chadwick Boseman was diagnosed with Stage 3 colon cancer in 2016 at the age of 39, a diagnosis he chose to keep entirely private. Over the next four years, as his cancer progressed to Stage 4, he continued working at a relentless pace — filming Black Panther, Avengers: Infinity War, Avengers: Endgame, Marshall, and Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, often between surgeries and rounds of chemotherapy. The world watched a superhero on screen, completely unaware of the battle being fought behind the scenes.

A photo taken during the COVID-19 pandemic showed a noticeably thinner Boseman wearing a face covering and leaning on a walking stick, sparking public concern. Even then, he said nothing. On August 28, 2020, Chadwick Boseman passed away at home, surrounded by his family. He was 43 years old. The announcement came without warning, and the shock reverberated across the world. In the years since, Marvel released Black Panther: Wakanda Forever as a tribute to him — he never filmed a single frame of it. After his passing, Howard University, where Boseman had studied and which he had publicly championed, renamed its College of Fine Arts the Chadwick A. Boseman College of Fine Arts in his honor. He never sought sympathy. He never sought attention for what he was enduring. He just kept showing up — for his craft, for his audience, and for a community that found something of itself in the characters he brought to life.