shangchi spoilers: thinking about wenwu and revenge and what it meant to the kids. and shangchi realizing how fucked up his father was and escaping even after he took revenge. but when i first thought that shang chi didn’t kill his mother’s killer, for a moment i thought, “but his mom died, how can he let that person go?”
and then after the final confrontation i realized that of course revenge isn’t intrinsically bad, but at that time as a single parent you can only focus on one thing. either you devote your entire life and your children’s health and wellbeing into this justified manhunt, or you let go for a while and swallow that pain while you focus on being there for your kids because their mom isn’t.
emotional spoiler about shang chi and wenwu under cut
what gutted me, and keeps twisting the knife, is that even though there was some sort of resolution between shang chi and wen wu towards the end, even after wen wu realized his wife wasn’t behind the gates and it was all a lie, and that he should’ve been there for his kids after she died, wenwu just gave up and had no fight in him anymore.
like yes he was snatched up by that soul sucking dweller, but you can’t tell me that someone like wenwu couldn’t have gotten out of that hold. but he didn’t even try, his life just passed before his eyes and he couldn’t bear the thought of dealing with his mistakes without ying li, and so the last thing he does is to pass on the ten rings to his son as an act of reconciliation and love.
but the harder thing to do would’ve been to fight and stay alive, to face his children in quieter times and actually try to make them a family again.
and he couldn’t do that. the fight went out of him and he gave up his kids for the last time
do you think there’s still a sad dusty dance dance revolution pad somewhere in the Xu household, propped (or rolled) up against the side of a wall after the last time the family played it. i mean probably, right? wenwu keeps pictures of his wife around everywhere in his room, his bed looked like the same bed they used in flashbacks, he probably kept everything about their life together.
