MCU: 10 Insanely-Powerful Villains Who Could Be The New Thanos
4. The Mandarin
One of the more contentious decisions in Shane Black's otherwise excellent Iron Man 3 was revealing that the Mandarin, THE Iron Man villain, was in fact just some schlubby washed up actor playing pretend. Some argue that this was a clever reinvention of what was - let's be real - a racist caricature of Asian people in the form of a supervillain, while others argued that if they could remove the negative connotations from Red Skull, they could do the same for the Mandarin.
The the MCU pulled the rug out from under everyone all over again by revealing that, yes, there was a real mandarin out there, and he did not like his name being used by some random weirdo.
And now the Mandarin is set to appear in the upcoming Shang-Chi movie. But maybe this won't be the last we see of him. The Mandarin is a big deal, and they've built him up way too much for him to go down in one movie. Maybe The Mandarin is set to take the stage as the new final boss for the MCU? Only time will tell, but it's definitely promising.