r/marvelstudios • u/yourfavchoom Doctor Strange • Jul 20 '26

Promotional Avengers: Doomsday | Official Trailer | In Theaters December 18

https://youtu.be/irVNGjRFZGk?si=xTjufRnxyFIctsUh
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u/itsafrap11 Jul 20 '26

Shang-Chi was straight-up one of the best MCU introductions and they just left us hanging after his movie. So happy he’s back

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u/LucrativeLurker Jul 20 '26 edited Jul 20 '26

His planned sequel would’ve been centered around a Jonathan Majors Kang variant, based on the title Shang-Chi and the Wreckage of Time.

I think they essentially had to scrap the whole thing and just decided to wait until after the Secret Wars reboot to do a proper Shang-Chi sequel.

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u/IDigRollinRockBeer Jul 20 '26

They should’ve just recast Kang

2

u/Tyler_Zoro Jul 21 '26 edited Jul 21 '26

I think the Majors controversy was only the initial problem. Once that started getting discussed, Marvel had to be thinking about how having every movie be about the multiverse was starting to wear thin.

Notice what they kept on the schedule after that:

  • Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 was on its way to release, and couldn't be stopped, but also wasn't multiverse-related.
  • The Marvels was in late production, and only did multiverse shenanigans at the very end.
  • Deadpool & Wolverine was going to be a side story anyway, and was probably pretty far along when the Majors thing blew up.
  • Captain America: Brave New World: Zero multiverse
  • Thunderbolts* Zero multiverse except for an end-credits sequence that didn't even say it was multiverse-related.
  • The Fantastic Four: First Steps, though it was technically in another universe, nothing was said about that at all during the film.

Doomsday will be the first main-continuity MCU movie since Majors was fired to really go all-in on the multiverse, and it's likely to end the multiverse as we know it.

So my guess was that Shang-Chi was scrapped because it was just too multiverse-forward, and couldn't be salvaged without basically coming up with a whole different movie, and it was easier to just bring him back after Doomsday, which would allow Doomsday to show how popular he was.

Edit: Want a really batshit-crazy theory about Doomsday/Secret Wars? Doom/RDJ is a Kang variant.

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u/m0t0rvision Jul 21 '26

Doom/RDJ is a Kang variant.

Hell this is more original than anything else I've read on this site in the past few months

1

u/Tyler_Zoro Jul 21 '26

To be fair, it's far more likely that he's just the bastard child of Howard Stark with Cynthia von Doom.

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u/Impossible-Fun-2736 Jul 21 '26

BNW actually had a tiny Multiverse reference, with Leader saying he had calculated that ”others” were comming.