What Shang-Chi Means For Abomination’s MCU Future

Warning: This article contains SPOILERS for Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings.

Shang-Chi & the Legend of the Ten Rings featured the return of Abomination, but what does the future have in store for the MCU villain? For years, The Incredible Hulk film felt as though it existed as a second-tier MCU film. In part, this was because Edward Norton was replaced by Mark Ruffalo as Bruce Banner, with Marvel’s CGI increasingly making the Hulk look more like a Jade Giant version of the actor himself; furthermore, Marvel didn’t have the distribution rights to the Hulk franchise, so they didn’t care to pick up dangling plot threads. All that began to change in Captain America: Civil War, when William Hurt returned as “Thunderbolt” Ross, and now Tim Roth’s Abomination has returned in Shang-Chi as well.

Abomination was one of the competitors in the Golden Dagger fight club, engaging in a battle against Doctor Strange’s ally Wong. But the two proved to be friends rather than enemies, engaged in a little friendly rivalry, with Wong actually opening a portal to transport Abomination back to wherever he came from — possibly the Raft, a maximum-security prison for superhumans introduced in Civil War. As they parted ways, Wong could even be heard to be giving Abomination tips, telling him to remember what they’d practiced; it suggests Wong has actually been training Abomination in some capacity.

It’s important to remember that, while Emil Blonsky was definitely the villain of The Incredible Hulk, he wasn’t entirely in control of his own actions; Blonsky was subjected to super-soldier experiments that clearly altered his brain chemistry, and his body was subsequently transformed by Gamma radiation. The World Security Council considered him a hero, even attempting to force Nick Fury into bringing Abomination into the Avengers Initiative. It’s quite easy to imagine a scenario where Wong learned of Abomination and decided to help him, perhaps by teaching him meditative techniques that allowed him to get his aggression under control. The holding cell containing Abomination may not even be at the Raft at all, but instead at a secure facility maintained by the Masters of the Mystic Arts.

Abomination will return in the She-Hulk Disney+ TV series, although his precise role remains a mystery. Viewers had generally assumed he’d be an antagonist, but if Blonsky has gained a degree of self-control and is working with Wong, then it’s possible he’s fighting for good now — so he could be an ally rather than an enemy. Wong seems heavily involved with the world’s superhero community — Shang-Chi‘s post-credits show him calling up Captain Marvel and Bruce Banner in a holo-conference — so perhaps Abomination will scout out She-Hulk for Wong’s network.

The interesting question is whether or not Abomination will also appear in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. That film boasts a stellar cast, and it will introduce a range of new heroes including Xochitl Gomez’s America Chavez, so it’s quite possible Wong will call upon Abomination for backup. It all depends upon the precise nature of Wong’s network, of course; it could be that Wong is essentially trying to build a custom-response team so he can handpick allies based on the nature of an identified crisis. In that scenario, Abomination may be a powerhouse, but he’s not exactly suited to interdimensional shenanigans, which means he might sit that one out. Still, whatever the case, it seems pretty certain Shang-Chi has simply marked the beginning of a new Age of Abomination.