Chadwick Boseman is irreplaceable. The versatile and commanding actor died young, at the age of just 43, after making Hollywood history as the star of Black Panther, Ryan Coogler’s superhero extravaganza that managed to outperform Batman, Superman, Spider-Man, and dozens of others at the box office — a true cultural phenomenon.

Boseman was so firmly identified with the role (which he also played in several crossover films before and after his solo showcase) that there’s a whole superhero movie, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, about the difficulty of moving forward without him. Ultimately the movie chose his character’s sister Suri, played by Letitia Wright, to serve as his successor, and she will appear as Black Panther in the upcoming Avengers: Doomsday. (She’s clearly visible in the film’s trailer.)

But Wakanda Forever also featured a credits-scene asterisk, revealing that Boseman’s T’Challa had secretly fathered an heir — with the same name no less — setting up a “real” Black Panther replacement to eventually turn up in the MCU. Whether this was a welcome and inevitable development that allows Wright’s Suri to remain her own person, a just-in-case backstop, or a shameless bid to make sure the custody of a billion-dollar Disney superhero franchise doesn’t remain with a female character is, uh, up for debate, though two-thirds of the options don’t make Marvel look particularly great. But regardless, Disney announced at this year’s San Diego Comic-Con that the new T’Challa has been cast for a third Black Panther movie, arriving in 2028 (and following whatever timeline shenanigans are inspired by the one-two punch of Doomsday and its follow-up, Secret Wars). That man is David Jonsson.

Unlike Boseman, who was already somewhat familiar to audiences having memorably played both Jackie Robinson (in the hit biopic 42) and James Brown (in the less-than-hit but still high-profile biopic Get On Up), Jonsson isn’t yet a leading-man fixture. His most widely seen role so far was in Alien: Romulus, where he played the synthetic Andy, a brother figure to the film’s lead — amazingly, only his second film role. His first (following some years of TV work) was Rye Lane, an underseen romantic comedy that didn’t receive a theatrical release. It’s an 80-minute charmer that’s currently streaming on Hulu.

But the David Jonsson film that’s currently getting the most attention is The Long Walk, which recently made its HBO Max debut. In this dystopia-set Stephen King adaptation, an annual contest conscripts young men to participate in a marathon of walking, wherein participants must maintain a pace of at least three miles per hour. In a gruesome twist, anyone who drops below this pace (or otherwise drops out of the contest) is shot on sight. The last man standing wins an enormous cash prize and the granting of a wish. The government intends it all to be hopeful and aspirational, while also turning the televised spectacle into a show of violent, brutal force. (Basically, it’s The Hunger Games before The Hunger Games, with far less available strategy. The film is even directed by Hunger Games mainstay Francis Lawrence.) Jonsson and Cooper Hoffman play Pete and Ray, respectively, two contestants who quickly (and perhaps ill-advisedly) become allies and even close friends during their walk.

Despite its perpetual motion, The Long Walk is not an action movie. It’s also saddled with an unfortunate fealty to King’s style, which means in this unspecified future meant to reflect aspects of our current political climate, all of the young male characters still kinda talk like heightened ’50s greasers; they could interact with the kids from Stand By Me (another of King’s long walks, albeit less horrific) with little trouble. The whole thing feels prepackaged with some unearned nostalgia not for a specific time and place but for King’s place in the culture, which interferes with its emotional power.

None of that is the fault of the actors, though, and what makes The Long Walk worth watching is the combination of Hoffman and Jonsson. Hoffman has already taken a high-profile lead before, in Paul Thomas Anderson’s coming-of-age comedy Licorice Pizza, so he’s less of a revelation (though his movie-star bona fides are affirmed, and themselves are surprising given that his late father, Philip Seymour Hoffman, was more actor’s-actor genius than instant star presence). Jonsson, on the other hand, takes a role that could have been relegated to sidekick status and feels like Hoffman’s equal at every step, even though the movie favors the latter’s point of view. Pete and Ray seem drawn to each other because of an innate decency, which some of the other guys share (and all of them are clearly victims of the state), but without such an instinctive bond.

That kind of bond is what’s needed in a new Black Panther — and it’s necessary between the actor and the audience, not just between Jonsson and his co-stars (though that will be highly important, too, considering that he’ll presumably be interacting with a number of established characters in this corner of the MCU). The action stuff has always been secondary with Marvel, not least because a lot of it is outsourced to CG. Boseman had physical presence, but that mattered as much in his dialogue scenes as his fights. The Long Walk required a more subtle form of physicality. Much of its dialogue is shot wide enough to keep Hoffman and Jonsson in the frame together at the same time — it’s hard to do alternating over-the-shoulder one-shots when everyone has to keep moving over three miles an hour — and so both actors have to do more real-time reacting than a typical film, without pulling too much focus from their co-stars. Jonsson does especially well with this. He always looks locked in to his scene partners, especially Hoffman. There’s a scene about 40 minutes into the movie where Pete returns to Ray’s side, even after Ray snaps at him, to help coach him through a particularly difficult uphill climb in the walk, that speaks to his ability to convey both authority and decency. It also speaks to his versatility, as Pete isn’t much like the parts Jonsson plays in Romulus or Rye Lane.

Like Boseman, David Jonsson has got both acting chops and movie-star charisma. Any hesitation about someone essentially taking over the role of Black Panther (even though the character under the suit will be a different person) is understandable. Watching Jonsson in The Long Walk, though, it’s clear that if there has to be a new T’Challa, Jonsson is the right call.

Jesse Hassenger (@rockmarooned) is a writer living in Brooklyn. He’s a regular contributor to The A.V. Club, Polygon, and The Week, among others. He podcasts at www.sportsalcohol.com, too.

Watch The Long Walk on HBO Max