Shang-Chi’s appearance in Avengers: Doomsday highlights a key issue for the MCU that the franchise ideally needs to focus on going into the final stretch of the Multiverse Saga. Though the MCU’s Multiverse Saga has had some definite high points for the franchise overall – and some major $1B+ hits – the more mixed results to this era of the franchise show there is room for adjustment and course correction going forward here too.
One of the most frequently referenced complaints regarding this chapter of the MCU is that of its less cohesive nature, since the franchise has focused far less on having the various corners of its world overlap as much as we saw in earlier phases of the MCU. While on some levels this is to be expected from a long-form story that focuses on the entire multiverse, it is something that the franchise also looks to be trying to address following some lower results critically and commercially in the past few years.
Avengers: Doomsday is, of course, one of the MCU’s best chances at starting to handle matters that need a major blockbuster with colossal crossover potential in order to be addressed. Interestingly, the film’s cast list – and the Avengers: Doomsday trailer – have highlighted one issue the franchise will ideally want to manage going forward in particular, which is best evidenced by Shang-Chi’s appearance in the upcoming MCU movie.
Shang-Chi’s MCU Gap Before Avengers: Doomsday Shows The Franchise’s Current Hero Challenge
Avengers: Doomsday features plenty of characters we’ve seen in more recent history – with the Fantastic Four having gotten their MCU debut in 2025, and the New Avengers officially forming at the end of Thunderbolts* in 2024. However, not every hero has been so lucky in this regard.
Shang-Chi is perhaps one of the best examples of this, as despite the character now looking as though he will be a part of the Avengers in this crucial next chapter for the franchise, we won’t have seen the character in the MCU’s live-action world up until then for 5 years, following the 2021 release of Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, which introduced us to the hero.
Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings had a fair box office result – with its $419 million earnings making it almost 3 times its reported budget (as per The Numbers) – and its critical reception also was largely positive, meaning this isn’t a matter of the MCU having avoided the character due to negative reviews.
As such, it’s interesting to note the film’s protagonist has still been off-screen for half a decade in a time period where his character could have otherwise been set up throughout this crucial early period.
Indeed, this serves to highlight how the MCU’s past few years have faced challenges in terms of setting up so many new heroes in a time wherein old and new heroes alike vy for considerable screentime, and show the downsides of this striking period of growth for the franchise and its lore, as well as the need to let these new figures have more in the way of appearances and crossovers.
Avengers: Doomsday & Avengers: Secret Wars Need To Set Newer Heroes Up Fully For The MCU To Properly Live On
Avengers: Doomsday and Avengers: Secret Wars are crucial movies for the MCU, both in that they will revive the franchise’s biggest movie series after it has lain dormant ever since Avengers: Endgame, and because this is the MCU’s first chance to execute a crossover of this scale in the Multiverse Saga, which has largely been without this kind of epic, character-rife story.
Naturally, with this happening after so many new heroes have been introduced to help bolster the MCU after we lost several notable protagonists in Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame, it’s more crucial than ever for these figures to get more screentime and more in terms of their on-screen arcs, since these figures are some that the MCU will need to rely on going forward to keep its audience invested.
Indeed, even if Avengers: Doomsday and Avengers: Secret Wars were to be building up to a total reboot for the franchise – which seems unlikely – this would still be within the MCU’s best interest, since audiences need more time with newer names and mantles that they will be less familiar with in order to begin to replicate the experience of getting to truly know these figures in the way viewers eventually did with the original Avengers over the course of the franchise’s Infinity Saga.