Fans have been taking a close look at the recent Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings trailers to try and find connections between the upcoming film and previous Marvel hits. There aren’t too many details to be found, but the easter eggs sprinkled within the trailers carry a lot of weight and hit on some major events that happened in the past within the MCU.
There’s one scene in the trailer where Shang-Chi is seen standing in the middle of a fighting pit getting ready to take on his attackers, and a hazy glimpse of a symbol is visible behind him. It’s hard to tell whether or not the symbol is of Captain America’s shield, or the symbol fans saw in Madripoor during The Falcon And The Winter Soldier.
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The only part of the image behind Shang-Chi that’s truly visible is a bit of a curve in the upper corner, as well as a big white star. Obviously, Captain America’s shield is a collection of rings centered around a white star in the middle, so that might seem the right choice. However, the Madripoor symbol is of a crescent moon to the left of a lion with a star above his head, which means this is still a viable option for whatever is in the shadows behind Shang-Chi.
The rest of the Shang-Chi trailer also features wide shots of city nightlife, emphasizing the bright blue and purple lights in many different scenes. Although this might seem like an insignificant detail, the blues and purples of the city in the Shang-Chi trailer look an awful lot like the city of Madripoor from The Falcon And The Winter Soldier. It’s hard to tell where and when exactly Shang-Chi is set as of right now, but there’s a good chance that Shang-Chi ends up on a trip to one of Marvel’s newest hot spots. Not to mention, Sharon Carter’s new position as the Power Broker didn’t get much of an explanation in The Falcon And The Winter Soldier, but Shang-Chi might provide some more insight if the hero finds himself in Madripoor.
The threat of the 10 rings is also something that Marvel has spent years building towards. In the very first MCU Phase 1 film, Tony Stark is captured and held prisoner by a group of terrorists. When his captors are holding him at gunpoint, there’s a red flag behind them with ten small rings all forming a larger, single circle.
This is the same image behind Shang-Chi’s father in the Shang-Chi trailer, meaning Marvel has been hinting to fans all along that the 10 rings would come into play somewhere down the line. In Iron Man 3, a new character called the Mandarin was also introduced, but was eventually outed as nothing more than a fake. The Marvel one-shot entitled All Hail The King Confirmed that there was still a real Mandarin out there somewhere. The Mandarin may actually Shang-Chi’s father, meaning the real evil has been hiding in the shadows for all these years.
Another interesting detail from the trailer is that fans can hear Shang-Chi’s father saying that he gave his son 10 years to live his life however he chose to do so. This could just be a coincidence, but 10 years of freedom in a movie starring an evil father in possession of 10 enchanted rings seems a little too convenient for it to be a happy accident.
The number definitely has some sort of major significance to the plot and Marvel Comics has shown the ten rings to each hold a different type of power. According to the comics, each ring allows the wielder to be in control of 10 different other-worldly abilities, such as flame-throwing or disintegration, which undoubtedly takes a lot of time to master.
The 10 year period where Shang-Chi was allowed to leave his father’s control and live his own life could be when the Mandarin mastered all 10 powers and hatched his evil plan to wreak havoc on the rest of the world. Since Shang-Chi is a superhero origin-story style film, there’s no question that Shang-Chi will learn how to hone his own powers on screen. A few clips from the trailer even showed him controlling water and wearing the rings on his wrist. Given the nature of Shang-Chi’s upbringing, his story will most likely feature him in battle against his father, or his father’s evil army, which was also shown briefly in the trailer.
It’s hard to predict what exactly will happen in the upcoming Shang-Chi film, but his bigger role in the MCU will make him a key player for what’s to come during Marvel’s Phase 4.
Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings hits theaters September 3, 2021.