The Eternals was a dense and confounding cosmic saga that many considered too far-out even by Jack Kirby standards, and whose most well-known Marvel Universe connections like the Celestials and Thanos (long story) other MCU movies have already borrowed. Shang-Chi had a martial arts comic whose main gimmick (the presence of iconic pulp villain Dr. Fu Manchu) the movie can’t use — and whose replacement, the Mandarin, is a problematic fixture who was already a punchline in Iron Man 3. So why are these two franchises at the forefront of Phase 4? Bob Chipman thinks he knows… and it has something to do with which magic tokens the heroes will hunt for this time around.
This is The Big Picture, talking MCU speculation and the “next” Infinity Stones.