Marvel Phase 4 Will Finally Payoff A Tease From The First Iron Man

After more than a decade since its first tease in Iron Man, Marvel Studios will finally provide some pay off with regard to the existence of the Ten Rings in MCU Phase 4. The Ten Rings is a terrorist group, who in the first MCU film was in cahoots with Obadiah Stane (Jeff Bridges) in kidnapping Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) during his trip to Afghanistan. While it appeared briefly a few times more in the universe, there are still many questions regarding the organization.

Mainly operating as a shadow group with members from around the world who speak Arabic, Urdu, Dari, Pashto, Mongolian, Farsi, and even Russian, the Ten Rings is a massive threat lurking in the shadows of the MCU. Following their debut in Iron Man, a group representative aided Ivan Vanko (Mickey Rourke) in his quest to exact revenge from Tony. Years later, they made another appearance as one of the organizations who tried to attempt to buy the Pym Tech from Darren Cross (Corey Stoll) in Ant-Man. Meanwhile, a tie-in novel revealed that the Ten Rings have also obtained scans of War Machine's (Don Cheadle) suit after bouts with several of their cells around the world. That said, perhaps the most revealing Marvel Studios has been in terms of the group was through Shane Black's Iron Man 3 and its subsequent one-shot "All Hail the King", where it was established that the group does have a leader, who is none other than the Mandarin.

While the eventual clarification that there is a real Mandarin out there came out following the Iron Man 3 fake-out with Trevor Slattery (Ben Kingsley), the important thing is it effectively establishes that he does exist and he leads the Ten Rings. While they've been mainly keeping a low profile, operating only in small batches, this appears to be about to change, as the Mandarin and the Ten Rings make their formal MCU debut in Shang-Chi and The Legend of The Ten Rings. Directed by Destin Cretton and introducing Simu Liu as the titular hero, Marvel Studios is keeping plot details close to the chest regarding the project, but it's clear that the project will also fully explore what the Mandarin - played by legendary Chinese actor Tony Leung - has been up to, and why he waited so long to come out of the shadows.

While the Mandarin and the Ten Rings are known adversaries of Iron Man in the comics, with the MCU mining a bit of inspiration from print regarding their initial big-screen depiction, they will essentially be Shang-Chi's villains. Given that, it's curious how much their upcoming appearance has a connection to Tony Stark's story and how much of it will be separate from him. There's the possibility that their re-emergence in the franchise is brought forth by Iron Man's Avengers: Endgame death, but it remains to be seen what exactly they want. If Marvel Studios hinge the Ten Rings' appearance on their history with Iron Man, they risk a backlash from those who aren't exactly thrilled that for both of his solo outings now, Spider-Man (Tom Holland) is forced to deal with the repercussions of Iron Man's previous encounters.

That doesn't mean that Marvel Studios should totally ignore the Ten Rings' history with Tony Stark; after all, they did plant those plot seeds with the idea of providing a pay off for them in later films. Time and time again, they've proven that they thrive in playing the long narrative game so there's no doubt they can find a way to reference their initial appearance in Iron Man. It's just that at this point, they have to do it without any involvement from Iron Man considering his death in Endgame.

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