Where Is Shang-Chi And The Legend Of The Ten Rings Positioned In The MCU Timeline?
Where exactly is Shang-Chi and the Legends of the Ten Rings positioned in the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s timeline? Here is where the film takes place and puts it all together in the MCU.
MCU Keeps Shuffling Its Timeline
For the majority of Marvel Cinematic Universe’s run, it showed up as a prominent rule that each film has to set itself in the timeline and explain it significantly to the fans. For example, Captain America: The First Avengers was positioned in Phase 3 where the timeline became a bit complicated. With that being said, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 was placed in 2014, Captain America in 1995, Avengers: Endgame in 2023, and Spider-Man: Far From Home in 2024.
This apparently put the MCU a bit inclined towards the future but delayed the Phase 4 projects as they’re placed right after the events of Endgame. For an instance, WandaVision took place right after a few weeks from Thanos’ snap and The Falcon and the Winter Soldier got placed six months after Bucky Barnes and Sam Wilson said goodbye to Steve Rogers. However, the franchise shuffled its timeline again with the release of Black Widow, as it was placed right after the events of Captain America: Civil War and right before the events of Avengers: Infinity War.
Shang-Chi’s Place In The MCU Timeline
The story of Shag-Chi and the Legends of the Ten Rings began hundreds of years ago. However, the majority of the film took place after the events of Endgame. Thus, it is highly assumed that Shang-Chi is somewhere placed in the late 2023s, similar to Far From Home. But the varying chronology of the phase 4 releases brings quite some confusion. In the film, the story echoed how Wenwu met Li and how they got married and gave birth to Shang-Chi in the late 1996s.
As far as that timeline is concerned, Shang-Chi left the Ten Rings and his father in 2010 and met Katy. Post this; all the events of the film took place in 2020 – that is ten years later. That is why it didn’t gel with the timeline that took place post the events of Endgame, because if that’d been the case, Shang-Chi must have born somewhere after the 2000s and not 1996.
With that being said, putting Shang-Chi and the Legends of the Ten Rings in between 2023 and 2024 will make the most of it and Phase 4 sounds significant. It will allow the franchise to include a new MCU superhero with minimal loopholes in the making. That is how Marvel could jump answering the question of why Shang-Chi didn’t cross Thanos at the end of the Endgame. While Marvel has primarily explored Shang-Chi’s life after Avengers: Endgame, his solo release expands around the events that took place in the past. Thus, a sneak peek into Shang-Chi’s younger days and the narration of the Ten Rings enriched the Marvel Cinematic Universe and its history as well.
Shang-Chi and the Legends of the Ten Rings is premiering now in the theaters.
