Headscratchers / Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings

Mandarin title

• Wenwu says that "the Mandarin" name was an invention of Killian and not a name he himself was ever known by... except didn't All Hail the King explicitly say that he was previously known as the Mandarin, and that's where Killian got the idea?
  • Considering how stupid Trevor was regarding to his role, Jackson would try to make a direct line between the Mandarin that Trevor played and the Ten Rings that Killian appropriated from. If he said Wenwu, it would go over Trevor's (and the audience's) head. But if he said that the Mandarin is real and he wants his name back, it should have told Trevor that "Oh shit, I made mockery of a real criminal leader." Of course, Trevor still doesn't get it.
  • Maybe Mandarin was one of his names at one point, but not one he's fond of, and one he's eager to downplay. He seemed a little too defensive in that scene.
  • "Mandarin" was a real title for a Chinese official, and in the comics that is the origin. He could have shed the title centuries ago as it fell out of use, and now it is more commonly used for an orange, which is just embarrassing.
  • In Iron Man 3 Prelude tie-in, a man in a chair is called Mandarin, it seems, the prelude comic was made without the author knowing of fake Mandarin concocted by Killian.
• If Wenwu never called himself "the Mandarin", why would he think that Killian and Slattery were trying to impersonate him by using the name...let alone be offended by it?
  • Killian and Slattery still claimed leadership of the Ten Rings, which was his organisation.

Timeline

• Did Iron Man take place before Ying Li died, or after? It's definitely after Shang-Chi was born, but was it a remnant of the organization struggling to retain control, or representative of Wenwu reviving the organization after cutting it loose for ten years?
  • Shang-Chi mentions that he left his father when he was 14 and he’s been gone for 10 years, making him around 24. The film takes place a few months after Endgame, which would put it in 2024, putting Shang-Chi’s birth in 2000. He was 7 when his mother died, which would be 2007. Iron Man took place anywhere from 2008 to 2010.

Who was blipped?

• The Snap is referenced in both dialogue and background details (such as a poster for a support group), but no details are given on who was and wasn't blipped. Shang-Chi, Katy, and Xialing all seem to be on the same page, timeline-wise, so they were probably all either blipped or not (three people all surviving is a 12.5% chance, perfectly possible), but which was it? And what about Wenwu?
  • Perhaps Wenwu was protected from the snap by the rings.
    • No one is protected from the snap. It's was just chance. The snap could have taken whole cities or left whole countries alone.
  • If Shang-Chi or Xialing were snapped and Wenwu wasn't, he definitely would have mentioned it when they were reunited. It's also safe to assume Wenwu wasn't snapped just for the logistical issues he'd have to deal with when he returned to find someone else running the Ten Rings. Ergo, we can probably assume all three of them avoided the snap.
  • When the Hulk appears in the epilogue with his arm in a sling, it suggested that this took place shortly after Endgame, and so if any of them had been snapped they likely still would have been dealing with the fallout.

Tony's kidnapping

• Somewhat related to the timeline question above: now that we have a better understanding of the history of the Mandarin and the Ten Rings, who was behind Tony's kidnapping in Iron Man? Was it Killian pulling the strings all along with fake Middle-Eastern terrorists, or was it a legit Ten Rings faction connected to Wenwu?
  • Likely Wenwu. Tony's kidnapping lands right about the point he was rebuilding the Ten Rings, and would need Tony's weapons.
  • There's also the question of Raza's motivations in Iron Man when he makes a deal with Obadiah Stane and claims to want to "rule the world." Did he not recognize Wenwu's authority over the organization and see his faction as a splinter cell? Or was he lying to conceal the true scope of the organization from Stark, and his deal with Stane was made with Wenwu's approval? If the latter, why would Wenwu let Stark live after he escaped from the Afghan cell — Stark's death would draw a lot of attention, to be sure, but Wenwu clearly has the means at his disposal to take him out clandestinely and prevent Stark from spilling details about the Ten Rings.
  • Tony is a billionaire. A few months in, he's a billionaire with a high tech battle suit. Tony knew very little about them and wasn't really a threat, antagonizing the man for no good reason would have been a rather foolish risk.
  • The question could be YMMV given that the Ten Rings appear to have three various iterations across the MCH history: two Iron Man films, one special and one Shang-Chi film. It's possible that Raza was probably acting alone and working with Stane's backing, and was one of many groups over the years who took the title of the Ten Rings as a means to establish a fearsome reputation for their cabal.

Ta Lo

• It seems as though it's only possible to reach Ta Lo if you are native to Ta Lo and can inherently sense the ‘bubble’ that is safe to travel through or by following a specific path on one specific day of the year. If this is true, how did Wenwu keep safely making his way through the carnivorous forest to visit Li?
  • He didn't. Even in his first visit, he sacrificed (if unintentionally at the time) his guide to get only part of the way through. It wouldn't be out-of-character for him to simply re-hire more guides until he had a general sense of which way to go and then use the rings to protect himself if/when he had to move through or pass a bubble. Or he might have tried to find alternate ways into the village and the maze simply lead him to Li as that was the only way in and out. And certainly after a point of knowing Li for a while, she might have giving him some advice on how to return or guided him in/out herself (as she did when they left).
  • The reason he needed the correct path was because he was planning on bringing his army which wouldn't have be benefit of the rings or be able to move easily within a small bubble (which was barely bigger than a single car). And he needed his army, in part, because he was planning on razing the village but also because he probably suspected that, as powerful as he was, a whole village of people trained as his wife was could neutralize him as his wife did.
  • A simpler explanation — on Wenwu's subsequent visits, Ying Li used some magical power to instruct the forest to guide him to her so they could continue dating. Love works both ways, after all. It would also explain why he wasn't able to return to the village after her death and needed the water map to find a way through the forest maze.
  • Was it ever actually stated that Wenwu returned to the mundane world repeatedly? Could be, he just camped out in Ying Li's waterfall glen for however long their courtship took. It seemed perfectly habitable, and she could bring him food and supplies from the village even if he wasn't welcome in the settlement himself.
• Ying Nan's narrative tells us that the Dweller in Darkness destroyed a large civilization with amazing cities, and Ta Lo is all that remains, and that it happened thousands of years ago. Thanks to exponential growth, Ta Lo should once again be a huge and thriving civilization, not a tiny village with a few dozen people, especially given it's idyllic appearance. Even if you wanted to argue that the giant cities have been rebuilt elsewhere, Ta Lo is guarding the doorway to the prison of the thing that once destroyed their civilization and should be a goddamn fortress, not a tiny, rural village. This is especially true when you remember that Wenwu isn't the first person to try and free the D in D.

Where exactly do the Ten Rings come from?

• According to the narration at the beginning, thousands of years ago, Xu Wenwu found the rings in a crater or stole them from a tomb, granting him immense power and immortality and in the film's post-credits scene, Shang-Chi meets with Wong and notable Avengers (Bruce Banner and Captain Marvel) to determine the mysterious origins of the mighty Ten Rings that he inherited from his father. While none of them can identify where the powerful weapons came from, the answer could lie in their origin from the comics, the rings are pieces of Makluan technology that contain the soul of a powerful cosmic warrior. When the explorer Makluan Axonn-Karr crashed into the Valley of the Spirits, the Mandarin killed him and acquired the rings.
  • The point of the narration is that it's ambiguous, and the point of the mid-credits scene is that the question is suddenly important. The movie does not provide answers, and you shouldn't expect it to. Later movies will handle it.

Why does Abomination look different here?

• It was hinted that Abomination was potentially kept in cryogenic suspension in a prison in Alaska, according to Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. While that Marvel Television show was originally considered canon for the MCU, indications show that its contributions are not strictly relevant. Despite that, the Abomination probably spent quite some time in prison, or at least in custody. It's not even clear how much time has passed for Abomination within the MCU, because there is no confirmation as to whether or not he was erased from existence when Thanos snapped his fingers in Avengers: Infinity War; he was, so he can explain how him escaped, because surely no one in the prison he was in expected him to suddenly re-materialize five years later. Abomination's version of Shang-Chi and the Legends of the Ten Rings has undergone a makeover since The Incredible Hulk (2008). Given that it has been more than 10 years since the last Hulk movie released, it is only natural that it has changed. Visually, Abomination seems more accurate in the comics than in The Incredible Hulk (2008), with a surprisingly more human face. While Abomination is still the same size, his facial features have evolved further since 2008, but it seems that his mutations have gone further since he was in Raft's prison.
  • Considering he seems a lot more in control of himself, it's also possible that he's undergone some experimental treatments to mitigate the worst effects of his transformation. Wherever he'd been confined, keeping Blonsky calmer and reducing his bone-spikes would make it safer for his captors and probably more comfortable for him. (How do you sleep when you can't lie down without your joints' spines ripping up the mattress?)
  • Maybe Bruce got him out to use as a second reference when he did whatever he did to become Professor Hulk.

Why wouldn't Ying Li tell Xu Wenwu about the Dweller?

• You'd think that in six years they spent together the most important aspect of her hometown's lore would've come up, wouldn't it? Especially if he happened to possess the one weapon capable of breaking the gates, and even more so if he forswore that weapon and was keeping it in a box, where anybody could steal it.
  • She probably didn't want to talk too much about the mystical village that he was once tempted to conquer in case he got ideas.
  • How is knowing about a terrible monster locked there supposed to give him "ideas"?
  • To be clear, the ten rings are not "the one weapon capable of breaking the gates". They just happen to be something powerful enough to do the job that the Dweller knew about. Presumably some other MCU artifact or person of sufficient power could have also freed the Dweller.
  • As for Ying Li not telling Wenwu about the Dweller, maybe the residents of the village have a rule to keep the Dweller a secret from outsiders. If Wenwu had been accepted by the village, then she could have told him about it, but that never happened because the villagers rejected him. Note that both Shang-Chi and Xialing were welcomed by the village before they were told about the Dweller.
  • It's also possible that the couple agreed, early on, to leave their respective pasts and secrets completely behind them. Wenwu probably didn't want to have to recount the full, ugly history of his misdeeds to his bride, and so long as she remained by his side, he'd considered never asking her about Ta Lo's secrets in return to be a fair bargain.

Why was Wenwu still forbidden from living in Ta Lo once he removed the rings and left his life of crime behind?

• The only reason ever given for keeping him out was some vague nonsense about him "bringing destruction with him", or something like that. But if he renounced violence and conquest, that solved the problem, didn't it? Also, from a practical standpoint, surely the guardians would be ecstatic to get their hands on the rings and ensure they can never be used against them (maybe have the Dragon guard them)?
  • Wenwu dedicated his very long life to conquest. As his wife said, he could have used the Rings for good. They were merely a tool he used for evil, never the source of it. Giving up the Rings and saying "I promise I'm not evil any more" would not convince the elders of the village. It convinced his wife, but no one else.
  • Convince them of what? That he wouldn't harm them if they let him in? How? Without the rings, he was relatively harmless, and the villagers were far from defenceless anyway, they could've handled him. It just seems so counterproductive in every possible way. On the one hand, he's living peacefully in Ta Lo with his wife, the village's secret's safe, and the rings are safe in elders' custody, everybody's happy, the end. On the other, they remain outside, Ying Li is unhappy, he's in constant danger of slipping back into villany AND he knows the way into Ta Lo, and the rings are in danger of falling into the wrong hands (who said the Dweller couldn't have found another catspaw?). Hell, if they were suspicious of him, wouldn't it make MORE sense to let him live with them, sans the rings, to keep a close eye on him?
  • They were probably worried about the very things that actually happened; that Wenwu's old enemies wouldn't leave him along (which they didn't) and would trace him to Ta Lo (after all, Wenwu managed to find it), and that when Li died, as all mortals do, that Wenwu would go back to his old ways in his grief - which he did.
  • In China they believe in karma, of reaping what you sow. Keeping a man with bad karma around, like a history of sin, is bound to bring bad karma to them. Wenwu's enemies did track him down after all and took the love of his life, so it looks like they had a point.
  • Ta Lo is so wary of outsiders that they put the entrance to their village in a magical cannibal forest. They were ready to chase Shang-Chi away with staves made from dragon scales the moment he set foot on their perimeter. Safe to say they wouldn't want Wenwu there even if he didn't have 1000 years of baggage...which he did.

Why wouldn't the Iron Gang thugs try to kill Wenwu and steal the rings?

• They came seeking revenge for his actions against them. They killed his wife, ok, but why not wait for him to return, ambush him and kill him as well? Wenwu later says that the only reason they dared to attack his home is because they knew he removed the rings, so wouldn't they also want them as well? Especially since leaving like they did was just begging for the exact outcome, with Wenwu coming back, finding his dead wife, putting on the rings and finishing the job?
  • It wasn't about grabbing more power, it was about revenge. They just wanted to send him a message; it's common in gangs. "You hurt us, so we hurt you." If Wenwu was a normal criminal, that might have been the end of it. As for not expecting him to take revenge (or at least not with the Rings), they both underestimated the kind of person he was and probably had no idea he could put the Rings back on. It's not like he publicly announced to the criminal underworld exactly what was happening. People just saw him without the Rings and knew his organization had been dissolved.
  • But that's the point, he was not a common criminal. He was a retired crime lord. Even without the rings, he would still have enough resources and clout to go after them the old-fashioned way, with hired hitmen and such.
  • Ying Li killed dozens of them, them leaving before Wenwu returned was likely less 'Job well done' and more 'Let's get the hell out of here before he comes back and kills the rest of us!'.
  • While she didn’t kill “dozens” (there are about six other bodies) maybe they felt like it was enough to just kill his wife as a way to send a message.
  • Wenwu probably didn't literally mean they feared the rings, but that if he was still wearing them he'd still be the leader of the Ten Rings and thus untouchable to a common gang. If they were fully aware of the rings and what they were capable of they probably would never have risked attacking Wenwu's home; there'd be nothing stopping him from putting them on.
  • I feel it'd be hard to not be aware of what the rings are capable of, since Wenwu was using them constantly. And attacking his home indeed made no sense, since, for all they knew, his wife had the rings or could've put them on quickly, and then they'd be screwed. And yet they attacked and got lucky. The only sensible move was to then search for the rings and/or to wait for Wenwu and finish the job.

Why did Wenwu feel he had to remove the rings?

• The movie says it was his sacrifice, but... why? Disbanding his organisation and renouncing the life of crime makes sense, but what did the rings have to do with it? It was never implied that they influenced him and drove him to violence, did they? He might've had some concerns, like he didn't even want to be tempted by their power, or he didn't want to outlive his wife, but surely the capacity to protect his family had to outweigh them? He had to have realised that he'd made tons of enemies, and that once it was known what he did they'd come gunning for him.
  • It seemed to be more of a symbolic gesture of him leaving behind his old ways. He may have thought the temptation would be too alluring.
  • Also remember that his wife gave up her Supernatural Martial Arts by leaving Ta Lo. She gave up her organization (the village) and her power (the dragon's gift), he gave up his organization (the criminal organization the Ten Rings) and his power (the literal ten rings). It's about balance and being willing to sacrifice the same things to be with each other.
  • Not just that: at one point, Wenwu said he'd found a woman 'worth growing old for'. The Ten Rings kept him from aging, or slowed it down to a trickle. The Ten Rings are how he's lived a thousand years; the residents of Ta Lo are mortal with normal aging. He was trying to avoid one of the biggest issues of a Mayfly–December Romance, with her growing old while he stayed middle-aged at best. He stopped wearing the Rings so they could grow old together... which makes the fact they only had about a decade together even more tragic.

Why would Wenwu send assassins after his kids?

• Wenwu says he didn't believe his people would be able to kill his children. Ok, then why send them at all instead of going himself? They would either fail, and then he'd have to do it himself anyway, or they would succeed, and then he'd have to explain their deaths to his resurrected wife, who most certainly would not see something "they weren't worthy of being my heirs" as a valid reason.
  • Given that Wenwu is implied to have sent the post card to get Shang-Chi to visit Xialing, but he went months without acting on it, sending the assassins was likely more to provoke him into going to Macau, so he could proceed with his plan.
  • Yes, it seems so, but what was the point? Could Wenwu not have simply traveled to San Francisco to retrieve Shang-Chi and/or his pendant?
  • It was a test and a push to action all at once. Wenwu is a thousand year-old martial artist; "I'll throw a bunch of martial artists at it" is basically his go-to answer to problems. He genuinely did not think his men could kill Shang-chi, so this wasn't really any different from challenging him to a spar. Also note that Wenwu's men asked for the pendant first (and continued asking a few times throughout the fight).
  • A test for what? He didn't need them for his plan, just their pendants. The pendants which, by the way, could've very easily got lost or damaged during these pointless scuffles.
    • He may not have needed his children but he clearly wanted them there, whether they wanted to be there or not. So his attitude is basically “You’re coming with me whether you like it or not”, given how he locks them up when they protest.
    • Exactly. So why not simply come to each of them and subdue them personally like he eventually did?
• He probably wanted to see if they’d go along willingly and only got involved personally as a last resort.
  • His first move was sending a postcard with an address and zero explanation. No idea what that was supposed to accomplish. If Shang had set out immediately, he would have just had an awkward reunion with his sister and then he would have gone home. Wenwu's second move was to send deadly assassins after Shang, who ask for the pendant without explaining who they are or why they need it. If Wenwu wants to know if Shang will come willingly, he should just give him a phone call and explain the whole "resurrect your mom" plan. Then, if Shang refuses, you can go for deadly assassins as a backup. But in the film his does it backwards: First he sends assassins, and then he asks Shang to cooperate. The whole thing just feels like an awkward excuse to have more fight scenes.
    • Wenwu didn't necessarily do all that one step at a time. The purpose of the postcard was to get Shang-Chi to go to Macau; realistically, it's pretty hard to abduct someone and leave the world's second most powerful country. If Shang-Chi went willingly things would probably have played out the way they did anyway. When the postcard didn't get the ball rolling he sent the assassins after Shang-Chi (with the expressed belief that they would simply be unable to kill him) in order to force a rendezvous. Wenwu knew his kids wouldn't believe him about Ying Li without some showing of Ta Lao's mysticism, so he couldn't just call them over the phone.
  • It may also be that he didn't say "Go kill Shang and take the pendent." He may have simply ordered his henchmen to "Get the pendent. If he resists giving it to you, take it by force though I don't think you'll succeed that way." As for why send assasins... the Ten Ring is a criminal organization; Wenwu ONLY has assassins working for him in any great quantity, at least at the level of trust we see with Rasorfist et al. Just like Shang, it's not like they're exactly well equipped to be diplomatic about stuff.
    • Which, once again brings us to the original question: why not do it himself? Yes, sure, he's a crime lord, it's ok that he delegates, but this is literally the most important task in the world for him, and sending assassins defeats the entire purpose of rebuilding his family.
    • Wenwu is pretty much the definition of tough love, as we see from the flashbacks. Sending a bunch of martial artists so his kids could beat them up probably WAS his equivalent of going and having a heart to heart with them, just as raising Shang-Chi right involved a lot of hitting a boy with a stick.

Razor Fist's Prosthetic

• Why was his prosthetic appendage only a blade? We've seen so many examples of advanced prosthetics in the MCU, including Klaue hiding a Wakandian sonic weapon within his fully functional prosthetic arm, yet the Ten Rings could not make something similair for him?
  • Razor Fist's prosthetic does seem to be able to swap out different attachments; he replaces his usual blade with one of Ta Lo's dragon scale swords for the final battle, after all. It's not explicitly stated he has actual prosthetic hands he can attach for when he needs to hold or manipulate things rather than just for fighting and we just never see them in the movie, but it shouldn't be ruled out either. Alternately, he's just the kind of guy who really likes having, to use Katy's phrasing, a machete for an arm.

Bamboo Maze

• Wouldn't it be easier to just use a helicopter to fly right over the bamboo maze? The Ten Rings organization has helicopters; they can use it to bypass the maze.
  • For all we know, the forest could probably reach out with giant vine tendrils and destroy aerial attempts.
  • Ta Lo is in another dimension, not just a geographic location on planet Earth. There's probably a ritualistic requirement that you must pass through the forest at ground level if you're to access the passageway there, much like how you can't ever reach Narnia via the wardrobe if you're deliberately looking for it.
  • If the maze is a border between worlds, then it's likely that flying over it isn't possible.
  • Also, the journey through the maze may be part of what allows you to pass from one realm to the other. The forest is the lock and traversing it is the key.

The wind powers of Li and Nan

• The other inhabitants of Ta Lo are merely shown to be skilled martial artists, but Li and Nan are unique in that they are able to harness air currents as part of their fighting style... And in the end Shang-Chi learns to use this power as well. Are we meant to believe this power comes from finding your inner peace, so anyone can use it, but only these three have been able to do that? Or is it some kind of mutant power that runs in their family, which would explain why no one else in Ta Lo has it?
  • Li states her powers came from their dragon, so a better question might be why only they seem to have been granted those powers and how it was Shang-Chi inherited them. Li implies it is in his blood/spirit (that he has a dragon's soul, if I recall right), but this would mean that when she left Ta Lo her powers were not completely taken from her if she was still able to pass them down.
  • We actually see the Dragon use similar powers (albeit water) so it's likely a combination of both technique and perhaps the dragon's own chi, likely taught by the dragon itself.

Why doesn't Nan fight Wenwu?

• Li was able to hold her own against Wenwu, and Nan is implied to be as powerful as her sister was. So when the Ten Rings invade Ta Lo, why doesn't Nan at least try to fight Wenwu instead of just letting Shang-Chi do so? Sure, she seems to think Shang-Chi needs to confront his father, but for all she knows he just isn't powerful enough to defeat Wenwu, and surely stopping Wenwu from releasing the Dweller-in-Darkness is more important than letting the kid work on his daddy issues?
  • My impression was that as one of the two main leaders of Ta Lo she seems to have been needed to direct the rest of the fighters in holding back Wenwu's forces and couldn't run off on her own to follow Wenwu.
  • Nan wasn't chosen to guard the entrance to Ta Lo; Li was. On the other hand, in a mystical Chinese setting, getting older makes you more powerful, not less, so she should reasonably be more powerful now than Li was then. But maybe it's just that they recognize this is something Wenwu's children have to do themselves?

The not-Atrocious Alias

• Why is Shang-Chi considered an idiot (in-universe and out) for making his cover name "Shaun"? Wouldn't it make MORE sense to make your cover name something similar to your real name so you don't accidentally start correcting people? As of December 2021, There are over 45,000 people in America with the first name "Shaun" and over 5,000 in California the state where Shang-Chi was hiding. This isn't like "Obi-Wan Kenobi" to "Ben Kenobi" the new name was smart kept him safe for over a decade. If anything the real failing wasn't the name but rather "Shaun" choosing to live in the city where his last mission was located.
  • You're right, but it's ultimately just banter between friends. It strikes Katy as funny and Shang doesn't think of this point in his defence.

The Mandarin's Secret Identity?

• The fact that Trevor and Kilian were able to easily impersonate the leader of the Ten Rings seems to imply that the leader is a rather secretive individual to the point that two completely unrelated people were able to claim his identity because so little was known about him. All Hail the King also seems to support this. If so, how was the Iron Gang able to so easily find out his identity and attack his home? If they were able to figure it out then surely the US Government/SHIELD and Tony Stark could figure out who the real leader of the Ten Rings is. Also in the movie itself, it doesn't seem that Wenwu is particularly secretive about his role as leader, even to basic henchmen. If he's not that secretive about his identity then how were Trevor and Kilian able to pull of their scheme so effectively?
  • Maybe they didn't identify him as the Mandarin, just as "a local crimelord". After all, when they go to his home, they say "Your husband tried to destroy us.", not "The Mandarin tried to destroy us.".

Wenwu really thought Ying Li would be cool with this?

• So you sent your hitmen to assassinate your children so you can get their pendants to save your wife? All of this so you can return to being a loving family? How does he think his wife is going to react if one or both of their kids were killed by his command? Or leaving them in a prison? Or leaving their son behind to drown?
  • Wenwu doesn't think the assassins have a hope, it's just his version of communication. And being a guy so fixated on martial skill, it's not his "fault" if one of the kids should die along the way, because it just means they weren't strong enough. He's a thousand year old warlord with a selfish, tunnel-visioned desire to have his wife back, which has little to do with her emotions. You can take the man out of the warlord, but you can't take the warlord out of the man, so to speak. Wenwu's settling down wasn't a redemption — in fact, that comes when he sacrifices himself to save one of the kids. Until that point, he is, quite simply, a bad guy, and thinks like one.

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