Shang-Chi’s two post-credits scenes hint at Marvel’s future

It’s hard to believe but Shang-Chi and the legend of the ten rings is the first Marvel Studios film to continue the ongoing MCU story since Avengers Endgame.

With Spider-Man: Far From Home in your own corner of Sony and Black widow set in the past, it’s been up to Marvel’s Disney Plus programs to take the path forward. But Shang-chi has one on all of them.

After years of all the roads pointing to Avengers Endgame, Shang-chi points a tempting finger in no particular direction.

[Ed. note: This piece contains spoilers for Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings.]

Image: Marvel Studios

The first of Shang-chiThe two end-credits scenes are essentially about the Avengers standing and perplexed, as we see what happened after Wong, an ally of Doctor Strange, interrupted Shang-Chi and Katy’s dinner.

He and other members of the Avengers have been monitoring a signal beacon emanating from the Ten Rings, which look nothing like the Avengers files. Bruce Banner cannot figure out what they are made of and Captain Marvel does not recognize his design on any of his space adventures.

In the middle of the conversation, both older Avengers are called to retire, and Wong tells Shang-Chi and Katy to get used to this kind of thing. They are now in the world of Big Weird Superhero Stuff.

And then they are going to do karaoke, which is very easy to identify.

Perhaps the most interesting of Shang-chiThe first scene of the credits is that it has no conclusion: The Ten Rings are rare, and if you want to know why, bad luck. This leaves a lot of room for speculation.

What are the Ten Rings and what is their origin story?

Image: Marvel Studios

We shouldn’t expect the MCU’s Ten Rings to have the same origin as in the comics, if Shang-Chi and the legend of the ten rings It’s something to go through The movie makes significant changes to the mythology of the Marvel character, and for good reason. But just for context, this is where the Ten Rings in Marvel Comics come from.

In the comics, the Ten Rings are small enough to be placed on the fingers, not the arms, and each one has a separate power. They were the favorite weapons of the Iron Man villain known as the Mandarin, who inspired the Mandarin in iron Man 3, and therefore the character of Shang-Chi’s father, Wenwu. In the comics, Mandarin got his rings from, bear with me here, an ancient crashed starship that used to belong to a dragon.

The dragon was a Makluan, a race of advanced dragon-like alien shapeshifters from the planet Kakaranthara. If you’ve ever heard of Fin Fang Foom, well, he’s probably the most famous Makluan in Marvel Comics. (He is also a giant green dragon that wears purple pants.)

Then! Is possible that the MCU’s Ten Rings are also alien in origin, and Captain Marvel just didn’t recognize Makluan’s designs.

The Ten Rings could be an eternal artifact

Image: Marvel Studios

To point a little more specifically towards upcoming Marvel Cinematic Universe releases, the next MCU movie to hit theaters will be Eternal, a film that promises to unravel a family of immortal aliens who have been secretly living on Earth for millennia.

The Eternals were created by some of the most powerful cosmic forces in the Marvel Comics universe, and the Avengers have never faced them before. Shang-chi says the Ten Rings were discovered centuries ago under murky circumstances, and if they are Eternal technology, that could explain why Banner and Danvers found nothing familiar about them.

The Ten Rings could be something we’ve never heard of before

But these are still shots in the dark. With no clear threat like Thanos on the horizon of the release schedule, the possibilities of the Marvel Cinematic Universe are wide open with potential. Perhaps the rings are an artifact from another part of the multiverse! Maybe they are divine and will bond with Moon knight and the god Khonshu! They may be homegrown, but they are very rare! Everything is possible!

Oh, and Xialing took over the Empire of the Ten Rings

Image: Marvel Studios

Lest we forget, there is another credits scene to watch Shang-chiand it is much simpler.

Shang-Chi’s sister Xialing fulfilled her dream of creating a criminal empire to rival her father’s, by taking control of his after his death during the film’s climax. Although he told his brother that he was dismantling his father’s work, a final scene shows us that the reality is quite the opposite. He is rebuilding that army in his own image, allowing women to train alongside men for the first time in their history, and covering his father’s compound with colorful graffiti.

Where the origin of the Ten Rings as an artifact seems destined to connect with the wider Marvel Cinematic Universe, the Xialing organization, also called the Ten Rings, will no doubt return in any follow-up to Shang-chi – though whether it will come in the form of a sequel or a sequel to Disney Plus TV remains to be seen. Marvel has yet to announce a Shang-chi continuation.