Along with introducing a new hero into the MCU family, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings also established a terrific new villain. Wenwu (Tony Leung) was a formidable and complex bad guy who many fans are already calling one of the best MCU villains to date. Wenwu is based on the Marvel comics villain, The Mandarin, who also used ten magic rings to conquer. As Shang-Chi explores the origins of this character, it also delves into Wenwu's connection to the MCU which goes back to its very beginning as the leader of the organization, the Ten Rings. The movie also addresses his role in one of the most controversial moments of the MCU with the introduction of the fake Mandarin.
In the comics, The Mandarin was one of the main villains of Iron Man and was even considered as the main villain in the first movie before Obadiah Stane was chosen. However, the movies continued to hint at his involvement and that he might be hiding in the shadows, ready to faceoff with Iron Man in one of the sequels. As it turns out, fans were only somewhat correct in that assumption.
Wenwu's connection to the MCU goes back to one of the very first moments in the cinematic universe. After his convoy is attacked in Iron Man, Tony Stark is taken captive by a group of terrorists who call themselves the Ten Rings. It is later revealed that Wenwu had been the leader of this organization since the Middle Ages, however, it is unclear what role he played in capturing Stark. Ultimately, their plan to use Stark to build weapons backfires as he builds the first Iron Man suit instead and escapes. However, the Ten Rings remain active within the MCU, operating in the background by helping Ivan Vanko attack Stark in Monaco in Iron Man 2 and attempting to buy the Yellowjacket suit in Ant-Man. It wasn't until Iron Man 3 that The Mandarin revealed himself to the world – or so audiences thought.
Iron Man 3 deals with Tony Stark confronting a dangerous terrorist who is responsible for a number of bombings. The madman would take credit for these attacks in video recordings in which he claims to be teaching "lessons" to the American president. After his home is attacked by the terrorist, Tony Stark is able to track him down and it is revealed that the man posing as The Mandarin in those videos is a fake. Instead of being a mastermind of a terrorist organization, he is a washed-up actor named Trevor Slattery. The real villain of Iron Man 3 is a businessman named Aldrich Killian who developed a formula called Extremis which is meant to be a miracle healer but instead causes its users to become unstable and explode. Killian uses Trevor to pose as this terrorist to take credit for explosions.
The twist was a well-kept secret and resulted in one of the most debated things in the MCU. Some saw it as a very clever way of playing on the audience's expectation as well as introducing the intriguing idea of a terrorist figure who is created by a marketing team. Indeed, The Mandarin as he appears in Iron Man 3 is an odd mix of different iconographies that seems to fit at first, but once the reality is revealed, it became clear how ridiculous it is. He is made to look like some vague "other" to scare the ignorant public who simply sees him as an enemy. And whether intentional or not, it is also interesting that a white actor is cast as a character called The Mandarin, mirroring Hollywood's history of whitewashing. Others found the twist on the character to be a cheap and a waste of a great villain. But as it turned out, the MCU had other plans with the so-called Mandarin.
In One-Shot: Hail to the King, fans are shown what became of Trevor after Killian's scheme was revealed and dismantled. While in prison, he conducts an interview talking about his experiences posing as this leader of the Ten Rings. However, the interviewer turns out to be a real member of the Ten Rings who is capturing Trevor from prison in order to deliver him to the organization's true leader who apparently did not appreciate Trevor appropriating what he had built.
With this tease, it appeared the real Mandarin was out there and fans would eventually get to see the villain in action. But after the One-Shot was released in 2014, it was a long time before Trevor or The Mandarin were heard from again in the MCU. When this storyline was eventually continued in Shang-Chi, they once again played loose with what was established in the comics. As it turns out, while Killian and Trevor used the real Ten Rings to inspire fear, their creation of The Mandarin was a total fabrication and not actually based on Wenwu who had remained in the shadows. In Shang-Chi, Wenwu addresses this fakery and even mocks the fact that they chose to name the leader after "a chicken dish." The movie also ties up the loose end of Trevor as he is revealed to be a prisoner of the Ten Rings who is used as a jester of sorts.
Both versions of "The Mandarin" featured in the MCU differ greatly from the character established in the comics, but that seems like the point in both cases. Like Fu Manchu, who was Shang-Chi's father in the comics, The Mandarin has sometimes been seen as a racist character. Certainly, the name can seem reductive and there are aspects of the character that play on uncomfortable Asian stereotypes. The fake Mandarin was a clever way of using the character in a way that commented on how villains defined as of other cultures can often appear as surface-level creations. This theme is continued with Wenwu who clearly takes elements from the character in the comics yet mocks the name The Mandarin. Together, this makes for one of the most interesting takes on a comic book character.