For many, Tony Leung's Wenwu was a major highlight of Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, and director Destin Daniel Cretton has now revealed that the character's fate was originally quite different.
Though the movie establishes that "The Mandarin" was a ruthless conqueror over the course of his long life, he does attempt to put his criminal past behind him when he meets Leiko (Fala Chen). Unfortunately, his wife's death is the catalyst for a return to his murderous ways, and, driven by grief, he ultimately unleashes a great evil upon the world in the form of the monstrous Dweller in Darkness.
The creature kills Wenwu, but not before he redeems himself by saving his son and passing on the Ten Rings. Some fans were disappointed to see such a complex and charismatic villain go, and Cretton confirmed that Wenwu actually survived the events of the movie in an earlier draft of the script.
"Some things just work and some things don't," the filmmaker tells ET Online. "We're constantly searching for the version of the story that feels most authentic to the characters. I mean, even though these characters are operating on a very operatic level, there's still things that you try that just feel like cheats. And that was one of them. But, you know, also in the MCU, anything can happen."
A tease that Wenwu could still return, perhaps? His death did seem definitive (having your soul sucked from your body is pretty final), but as Cretton points out, anything can happen in the MCU!
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Mark Cassidy is a writer, photographer, amateur filmmaker, and Rotten Tomatoes-approved critic from Dublin, Ireland.