This article contains major spoilers for Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings.

Phase 4 of the Marvel Cinematic Universe has received acclaim from fans and critics alike for showing the willingness to tackle more complex and compelling themes than ever before. And the latest MCU film, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, is no exception to this trend.

Shang-Chi is, at its heart, a story about family — but not found family like in Guardians of the Galaxy or Black Widow. Rather, it’s a story about biological family, and all the heartache and hardship it can cause. And at the core of that story is the relationship between the film’s central antagonist Xu Wenwu, better known to fans as the Mandarin, and his children Shang-Chi and Xialing.

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Stories about the conflict between children and parents are nothing new to the MCU, whether it’s Gamora vs. Thanos or Star-Lord vs. Ego. But Shang-Chi creates a new twist on this familiar story by defying the audience’s expectations of Wenwu. Rather than portraying him as a power-hungry tyrant like his comic book counterpart, the film instead opts to portray Wenwu as a tragic, sympathetic figure. He doesn’t want fortune, glory, or control — this Mandarin’s greatest crime is that he wants to see his family united once again.

Shang-Chi childhood

The driving force behind Wenwu’s actions throughout the film is his desire to be reunited with his wife, Ying Li. The movie goes out of its way to show that while Wenwu was once a ruthless and fearsome warlord, he settled down and became a loving family man after meeting Ying Li. But after Ying Li was killed by members of a rival gang to Wenwu’s own Ten Rings organization, he became cruel and coldhearted, putting Shang-Chi through brutal martial arts training while completely neglecting Xialing.

Ultimately, both Wenwu and his children are motivated by the trauma brought on by the death of Ying Li. It’s Wenwu’s grief that caused him to fall back into his old criminal ways, and it’s his treatment of his children in the wake of his wife’s death that led them down the path of opposing him in the present day. Shang-Chi despises the cruel killer that Wenwu has become, but he also recognizes the potential in himself to go down that same path. As such, he’s motivated not just by the selfless desire to stop his father from hurting anyone else, but also by his own fear of becoming just like him.

Meanwhile, Xialing’s bitterness towards Wenwu manifests in the opposite way. Because all of Wenwu’s attention after Ying Li’s death went towards molding Shang-Chi into the perfect warrior, she began to feel neglected and abandoned. As a result, she chose to carve out her own path, starting her own criminal enterprise and operating a massive underground fight club. While Shang-Chi desperately wants to avoid becoming like Wenwu, Xialing seemingly aspires to emulate and surpass him. But while they cope with their traumatic childhoods in vastly different ways, both siblings are clearly driven by the hardship endured at their father’s hand.

But once again, this is hardly anything new for the MCU, or the superhero genre in general. Countless other Marvel characters, heroes and villains alike, have motivations rooted in traumatic events. There’s Spider-Man, Iron Man, Star-Lord, Killmonger, and even Thanos, just to name a few. But Phase 4 of the MCU has been taking a different approach to how it portrays trauma. Instead of just exploring how characters are motivated by their traumatic past, it shows them directly confronting it and attempting to overcome it. As such, trauma and grief have been something of a recurring theme connecting every Phase 4 installment so far.

Tony Leung as the Mandarin Wenwu in Shang-Chi

WandaVision centers around Scarlet Witch coping with Vision’s death in Infinity War by creating a new reality where she can escape her past suffering. The Falcon and the Winter Soldier features Bucky regularly attending therapy to recover from his time as a brainwashed killing machine. The title characters of Black Widow and Loki both learn to overcome their traumatic pasts by finding comfort in others. And finally, Episode 4 of What If…? explores how Doctor Strange is corrupted after he’s consumed by his own grief — not unlike what happens to Wenwu.

Before his final battle with Wenwu, Shang-Chi tells Katy that he intends to kill his father out of vengeance for all the evil he’s committed. But during the fight, when he has the chance to land the final blow, he stands down. Instead, Shang-Chi pleads to his father to give up, choosing empathy over vengeance. And sure enough, Shang-Chi’s words get through to Wenwu — but the moment of reconciliation is all too brief, as Wenwu soon meets his end in the jaws of the Dweller-in-Darkness. Yet even so, Wenwu’s love for his son is what allows him to pass his Ten Rings on to Shang-Chi so he can defeat the Dweller.

In the end, Shang-Chi is able to defeat the Dweller-in-Darkness not just because of his physical strength or the power of the Ten Rings, but because he wanted to redeem his father instead of killing him. Though they both come to blows because of their trauma, Shang-Chi and Wenwu both find relief from their pain through their love for one another. Shang-Chi is a story about the complicated nature of family, but it’s also a story about how grief can be overcome not through isolation or anger, but through compassion and connection. That’s something it has in common with the rest of Phase 4 — only time will tell if future MCU projects end up sharing this common theme.

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