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Shang-Chi’s father, Wenwu, tries to undo a personal tragedy in a destructive journey comparable to What If…?’s Doctor Strange Supreme.
WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, now in theaters, and What If…? Season 1, Episode 4, “What If… Doctor Strange Lost His Heart Instead of His Hands?,” streaming now on Disney+.
In the space of one week, Marvel Studios unleashed two powerful supervillains in the form of Tony Leung’s Xu Wenwu and Benedict Cumberbatch’s Doctor Strange Supreme. Debuting them almost simultaneously highlights their enormous resemblance to one another, as both embark on futile and destructive missions to restore their lost loves.
In Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, Wenwu is haunted by the voice of his late wife Ying Li (Fala Chen), who tells him that she is alive and captive in her home village of Ta Lo. However, in reality, he is being tricked by the Dweller-in-Darkness, who is impersonating Li so that Wenwu will use his Ten Rings to unlock Ta Lo’s Dark Gate, a multiversal portal keeping the soul-consuming creature at bay.
This is eerily similar to what an alternative universe Stephen Strange endures in What If…?‘s fourth episode, “What If… Doctor Strange Lost His Heart Instead of His Hands?” In his case, arrogance alone convinces him to undo his live-altering car crash, which killed his girlfriend Christine Palmer (Rachel McAdams) instead of fracturing his hands like his cinematic counterpart.
Nevertheless, both Strange and Wenwu are traumatized by the deaths of their lost loves, and dramatically alter their lives to try and set things right. For Wenwu, this means restoring the criminal empire he gave up for his family, training his son Shang-Chi (Simu Liu) into an assassin to exact revenge on Li’s killer, while Strange embarks on the path towards sorcery depicted in the Doctor Strange film, only to diverge from it upon deciding to use the Time Stone for his own ends.
When his initial attempts to save Christine all fail, he eventually travels back to the Lost Library of Cagliostro — his centuries of study into time travel mirroring the years Wenwu spends researching how to enter Ta Lo. Wenwu does not repeat Strange’s grotesque absorption of several magical creatures, but each man still consolidates his power for a quest that is doomed to fail, a fact neither can accept, even from those who care about them most.
Wenwu refuses to listen when Shang-Chi explains the potential chaos from unlocking the Dark Gate, igniting a battle between father and son due to the former’s stubbornness. In What If…?, Strange has a similar fight with himself that only occurred because the Ancient One (Tilda Swinton) had to split him in two to create a version of the Sorceror Supreme willing to stop his misguided counterpart. However, despite remaining strong when tempted by the memory of the person they lost, both Shang-Chi and the “good” Strange’s altercations still reach a tragic conclusion.
While a repentant Wenwu bequeaths the Ten Rings to his son before being killed by the Dweller-in-Darkness, Strange defeats and absorbs his other self before resurrecting Christine, albeit temporarily. Wenwu helps to correct his mistake before losing his life, but Strange literally loses everything except his life, the paradox from averting Christine’s death destroying his universe and trapping him in the pocket of space that remains.
Whether by coincidence or by design, Marvel Studios has invited comparisons between these two characters by releasing their adventures one after the other. However, this does not diminish either one — it instead highlights their sympathetic motivations and how utter destruction can be wrought, even with the best of intentions. They may be driven by love, but Xu Wenwu and Strange Supreme ended up being too conceited to act on it without causing further misery.
To compare Wenwu and Strange Supreme for yourself, catch Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings in theatres and What If…? on Disney+ now.
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