It’s almost unthinkable that Simu Liu’s Shang-Chi hasn’t appeared in a live-action MCU project in almost 5 years, but at least his future is finally beginning to take real shape. The new Avengers recruit (as he will be next time we see him) is set to finally return in Avengers: Doomsday in a big way, and beyond that, he still has a sequel in production. Marvel fans could be forgiven for believing the ship had sailed on Shang-Chi 2, given the radio silence, but Liu and director Destin Daniel Cretton have dropped breadcrumb updates about their intentions for the majority of the last 5 years. Cynical “scoops” on the project relatively recently claimed the project was not moving forward, but we finally have a firm update.
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While on the press tour for Spider-Man: Brand New Day, Destin Daniel Cretton spoke to Deadline’s Crew Call podcast and confirmed that any reports of Shang-Chi 2‘s cancellation are wide of the mark, though he is aware of how painful the delay has obviously been for fans. “We are developing a second one. You know, what’s going on is what went on with the entire industry since that, you know, that movie came out, like, it was successful, but it actually came out weirdly.” He went on to say that the 5-year delay for the sequel was pretty much unavoidable, no matter how well the first movie did: “It was successful at the time when there was like a new wave of COVID was hitting So it was still successful, but it was also, I think many countries were completely shut down to theaters at the time. So, and, you know, after that, there were just crazy changes all over the place. So it was, it’s just a result of the industry.” This is excellent news, but looking at the current MCU slate, there’s still a fairly major obstacle to address.
Shang-Chi 2 Will be Worth The Wait (But it Might Not Be Any Time Soon)
Simu Liu has also been vocal about his enthusiasm to make Shang-Chi 2. When asked by ScreenRant whether Spider-Man: Brand New Day was part of the reason for the sequel’s delay, Liu batted the suggestion away: “I don’t think anything’s been impacted. I think we’re all… I speak to Destin often and there’s nothing coming out of both of us but excitement to make this film.” That said, you do have to wonder whether Destin Daniel Cretton’s success with Shang-Chi had unfortunate consequences for the timeline of the sequel. The director’s stock rose dramatically, and Marvel Studios has a track record of throwing backing behind their own star creators (like the Russos), which is why we would have neither of the versions of Wonder Man and Spider-Man: Brand New Day we have without Cretton being given more work (and rightly so).
The unfortunate thing for Shang-Chi is that the ending very directly set up a clear logic for the story of the sequel. Shang-Chi and Katy were on the trail of the origin of the Ten Rings, and the ancient artefacts start transmitting a beacon into space. Because of the delay to development of the sequel – and potentially also the changes made when Avengers: The Kang Dynasty necessarily became Avengers: Doomsday – that signal is now likely to take at least 7, 8 or 9 years to actually amount to anything. Assuming that remains the direction of travel after Avengers: Secret Wars. And that timeline assumes Shang-Chi 2 will be one of the first movies to go into production following the conclusion of the Multiverse Saga, which is still no guarantee with the widely expected advent of the Mutant Saga. So even now, it feels like we’re still several years away from seeing the sequel, even if Shang-Chi’s return in Doomsday, and likely appearance in Secret Wars might make that wait easier to take.
Wait, Where Does Shang-Chi 2 Fit in the Mutant Saga?!
Shang-Chi 2 is just one of the MCU projects currently set in a holding pattern that are likely to release after Avengers: Secret Wars. There’s also Blade, which has, once again, gone eerily quiet, the first drop of the X-Men reboot, Black Panther 3 (which feels the most tangible), and Armor Wars, which everyone seems intent on completely ignoring. Forgive me, but I struggle to see a cohesive narrative through-line that brings any of them into the Mutant Saga. So we might end up with a repeat of Phase 4 where everything felt siloed off and the suggestion that what we were watching was actually the Multiverse Saga felt questionable.
But crucially, perhaps it’s ok for Marvel to drop this prevailing idea of self-contained Sagas, and instead focus on mini-sagas. That way, we might get exciting projects like Shang-Chi 2 a little sooner? Whether Secret Wars actually heralds a soft reboot or a reset of the MCU, there needs to be a strategic rethinking of the relationship between individual releases and the event movies that have traditionally been presented as the focal point for every narrative. Or at the very least, Marvel needs to challenge that expectation from fans, so we aren’t confronted with a repeat of a Multiverse Saga that barely acknowledged the Multiverse for a long time, where movies felt shoe-horned into the wider narrative simply because of their chronological positions. Because the alternative of having to wait even longer for Shang-Chi 2 while a wider narrative is worked on to try and develop a cohesive overarching narrative will lead to nothing but more frustration.
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