Captain America - Civil War: 10 Characters Martin Freeman Could Be Playing
6. Wong
Not kidding. It’s not as if they haven’t race-changed an iconic Asian character to a white man before... Even though they realized that it was such a mistake they had to essentially retcon it with the Hail To The King one-shot, it’s a play against expectations, which Marvel clearly likes to do.
The obvious benefits are there in recreating the Sherlock dynamic between him and Benedict Cumberbatch. Their hero-sidekick relationship has won over so many that it would make sense for Marvel to want to capture that. It would also offer up a fairly major supporting role in the Doctor Strange solo outing that immediately follows Civil War.
They could understandably face some huge blowback for whitewashing the character, both from comic fans and general populace. Kevin Feige seems like too smart a guy to make the same mistake twice and mess too drastically with a character. And with Cumberbatch unlikely to appear in anything but a cameo, if at all, a Freeman appearance as Wong would seem even less likely.
Still, Freeman as a magical, martial artist Asian sidekick? Sign us up.