The pandemic hasn’t just wreaked havoc with the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s production and release schedule, but it’ll have also forced Kevin Feige to get creative when it comes to tying all of the various strands of the mythology together throughout Phase Four.
The company’s Chief Creative Officer confirmed that he’s had to rejig the connective tissue a little, and one notable example was Julia-Louis Dreyfus’ Contessa Valentina Allegra de la Fontaine becoming a late addition to The Falcon and the Winter Solider for her MCU debut once Sam Wilson and Bucky Barnes’ streaming series leapfrogged Black Widow on the calendar.
Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings comes to theaters in just over two weeks, but in a new interview Feige teased that it won’t be too long before we see some of the movie’s major characters back on our screens, even if he had to stop himself from veering into spoiler territory.
“As always, it will become very clear when people see the movie that we are not shy about indicating where the future can go and I think I’ll leave it at that. You will see in this movie, not just the future of… Oh, I almost gave you a spoiler there so I’ve got to be careful with that. But most importantly, it’s the characters. All of the characters that you meet in this movie, a few you’ve met before, most you are meeting for the first time. We know we have a success on our hands when we do a test screening and people come out and ask, ‘When are we gonna see Shang-Chi again?’, or, ‘When are we gonna see the numerous other characters in this movie?’ The answer is soon.”
Once audiences have had a chance to see it for themselves it should be easier to hazard a guess as to where the major players from Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings could show up next. Of course, you could tout Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness as a potential destination for almost any major MCU figure and it can’t be definitively ruled out given the premise, while Destin Daniel Cretton’s martial arts comic book blockbuster is known to possess a heavy fantasy element.
That’s entirely speculative, though, but the fluid nature of the MCU means that it’s always fun for fans to try and figure out who could possibly show up where, and why they’ve decided to cross over into another series.
