Marvel Studios had to do a hard pivot on Avengers 5 after its chief antagonist Jonathan Majors landed himself in trouble in real life. This included bringing back franchise veterans Robert Downey Jr. and the Russo Brothers to direct back-to-back Avengers movies Doomsday and Secret Wars. Of course now that this is a done deal, fans can’t help but wonder how the MCU would have turned out had Marvel persisted with its original plan of Avengers: The Kang Dynasty. And what were those plans were?
I assume a lot of this will be revealed over time via scoopers and leakers, but some info has begun trickling in. According to Inverse who seem pretty confident on their source, Avengers: The Kang Dynasty was originally slated to have Simu Liu’s Shang-Chi in the lead role. This does make sense given that director Destin Daniel Cretton who helmed Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings was handed the reins of the fifth Avengers movie at one point. Unfortunately, those plans fell by the wayside, resulting in both the director and writer Jeff Loveness parting ways from the project.
Simu Liu meanwhile can only hope for a Shang-Chi sequel. In an interview to the Press Trust of India (PTI), he confirmed that he may not be privy to the finer details, but a sequel is still very much on the cards. Here’s what he had to say:
A lot of it is above my pay grade, but it’s definitely happening. [I’m] just very excited to kind of work on it and it’s going to be amazing. I really can’t say anything beyond that.
Regardless of how Shang-Chi 2 turns out and when it releases, fans can expect Simu Liu to reprise his role in Avengers: Doomsday and Avengers: Secret Wars. For now, these movies are slated to arrive in theaters a year apart on May 1, 2026 and May 7, 2027 respectively.
