My Pitch For Shang-Chi 3's Villain (and Shang-Chi 3)

In the original comics, Zheng Bao Yu, also known as Fah Lo Suee, is the immortal half-sister of Shang Chi, the daughter of Fu Manchu, and the head of her own criminal organization, the Oriental Expenditors, who were a front for the Golden Daggers sect. Under the moniker "Cursed Lotus," she ruled over a narcotics empire that supplied a highly addictive drug known as "Wild Tiger." She's vicious, duplicitous, gaslighting girl boss and honestly, she's still one of my favorite Marvel characters.

You see, as a little Taiwanese-Canadian girl who also loved comics, I didn't have many East Asian superheroes to identify with, let alone a super cool, charismatic, and classy East Asian villainess like her, so I looked up to her a lot.

Unfortunately, like many East Asian villainesses, she's also the very embodiment of the Dragon Lady and Lying Asiatic stereotypes, which is why I understood how Marvel would want to change her into a more heroic and less problematic strong female character in the form of Xu Xialing.

Don't get me wrong, I love Xialing. I adored her arc, I got super invested in the complicated relationship with her father in the first film, and the shot of her sitting on his throne at the end was a sick reference to her history in the comics as someone who attempted to overthrow her father and who grew into a capable leader in her own right.

However, I also feel like there's an opportunity here to make Zheng Bao Yu into a multi-faceted anti-villain who simultaneously subverts and embraces these caricatures as a result of the trauma inflicted upon her and her people rather than simply pretending that she never existed, so I took it.

To craft this character, I combined some elements from the original Zheng Bao Yu, Killmonger, Namor, Darkstrider, Scarecrow, and Azula. Like Killmonger, the death of her father figure will be a catalyst for her turn to extremism, she wants to make the oppressed the oppressors, she would rather die than be dishonored, and she seeks revenge against centuries of racially-targeted violence. Like Namor, she struggles with displacement, she's fiercely protective of who she considers her people, she's immortal, she's worshipped by said people, and her mother is dead. Like Darkstrider, she's a disguise master and has a knack for illusions. Like Scarecrow, she's developed her own form of fear gas, she's creepily calm, and she dissociates between her supervillain and civilian identities. Finally, like Azula, she has major mommy issues, and she has an eventual psychotic breakdown in the final act of my pitch.

As an added plus, I've incorporated some real-life references to the infamous Chinese emperor Qin Shi Huang as well, namely his ruthless means to achieve unification, being abandoned by his father, being betrayed by his mother, and of course his terracotta soldiers.

No good villain is complete without a tragic backstory, so without further ado, let's get the trauma rolling!

Not all of these flashbacks must be fully fleshed-out scenes. Some of them can be touched upon through dialogue or a combination of a voice-over and experimentally artistic visuals. For example, the animated sand figures and N’Jobu’s narration from Black Panther or the living calligraphic paintings in the spirit of Mulan 1998’s opening sequence with the ink moving across rice paper. You could even do a combination of voice-over with an actual scene like Namor’s backstory in Wakanda Forever.

Flashback 1: 1842, Canton. Baoyu develops an obsession with Qin Shi Huang to cope with her opera singer mother's opium addiction. While dying in Baoyu's arms, her mother curses Wenwu for giving her a daughter rather than a son.

Flashback 2: 1881, British Columbia. Baoyu goes to Canada with her adoptive father in hopes of a better life. He falls sick from the conditions in the cargo ships but insists on working. Baoyu is angered by the poor pay for her father's hard labor, but her father argues that as long as their family is together that is all that matters. Then he is killed while detonating a mountain during the construction of the Canadian Pacific Railway. Before Baoyu even gets to mourn him, she is sent back along with the other railroad workers and their families.

Flashback 3: 1871, Los Angeles. Baoyu rescues several Chinese migrant workers from the mass lynching and recruits them into the Oriental Expeditors. They perform a blood oath and she declares that they are her family. This is a good place to throw in some henchmen that are straight from the comics. I feel like Moving Shadow, Midnight Sun, or Ghost Maker would be an excellent right-hand man, and they could talk about some of her experiences. However, I settled on Moving Shadow for stylistic reasons. Just wait 'til I get to the pitch ;)

Flashback 4: 1932, British Columbia. The Oriental Expeditors* are forced to flee when Chinatown is burned down.

*I know "oriental" is an incredibly offensive term. I'm just using it here because that's what her gang is referred to in the comics. Feel free to leave suggestions for what I could change it into. I personally think that it could be replaced with "Yu Gong", or Jade Palace, which I will get into later.

Flashback 5: 1980, Beijing. The Oriental Expeditors flee here after the burning. The one-child policy emerges. While searching for shelter, Baoyu sees an abandoned baby girl and attempts to resuscitate it, but it has already died from starvation. Not only is this absolutely devastating in its own right, but it also retraumatizes Baoyu because it reminds her of her dead mother’s last words. Moving Shadow tells her to visit the Forbidden City, hoping she will find comfort in reconnecting with her roots. They are both distraught to find that it is empty. However, as Baoyu wipes away her tears, her sorrow sharpens into a rage and the fire now awakens in her eyes.

Now, you must be wondering why I merged Bao Yu into Baoyu. I personally interpreted the "Yu" in Bao Yu as the character for jade. You see, in Chinese culture, jade symbolizes justice. However, in this version of Zheng Baoyu's case, that sense of justice is corrupted into vengefulness. It is also a reference to the legendary figure Jia Baoyu. "Jia" is a homophone for false or fictitious, which is reflected in Zheng Baoyu's devious, deceitful nature. Even better, "jia," when spoken in another tone, means both family and home, which are also the main components of her motivation. Finally, it foreshadows her desire to build a new Jade Palace within the Forbidden City. The reason why I kept the surname Zheng is that it's her adoptive father's surname, and she isn't too keen on taking Wenwu's surname after he abandoned her and her mother.

Alrighty, so what kind of personality has arisen from Zheng Baoyu in order to cope with such a great childhood? First of all, being an immortal who does not have the solace or shelter of a secret kingdom, she must be very cunning and callous after bearing witness to so much brutality. To be a leader, she must be charismatic, ambitious, and unyielding in her vision. Unfortunately, as a result of her obsession with Qin Shi Huang and her firsthand experiences with a long history of Asian Hate, she is very vindictive, nationalistic, and paranoid. Namely, she wants to unite the world under a new Middle Kingdom (wherein she is the emperor, of course), and make the West reduce itself to ruins.

This vengeful streak and being neglected because of her gender are her most striking similarities to Xialing. Basically, (and I know this is cliche) she is what Xialing could become if Xialing let that resentment consume her. Additionally, like Shang Chi and Xialing, she has an estranged relationship with Wenwu.

Ironically, even though Zheng Baoyu hates Wenwu, they are both motivated by a love for their family, although she considers all Chinese people and Diaspora to be her family. It would be an interesting callback if she always addresses Xialing and Shang Chi by their Chinese terms of endearment, such as "Ge Ge" and "Jie Jie", and later "Di Di" and "Mei Mei." In the beginning, she does it to establish familial familiarity and to play innocent (a deliberate deconstruction of the demure Lotus flower caricature), but later on, she does it to emphasize her belief that her experience as an immortal makes her superior to them. Plus, it hints at her hatred of the West.

Last but not least, she is a foil to Katy because they are both diasporas.

However, a good villain also needs to be just as dynamic as the hero. You'll see how these details are woven into the basic storyline that I've conceived for my pitch, but for now, here's a super shallow rundown of what schnee went over in his video. Schnee, if you ever read this, thank you so much for sharing this formula!

Externalizing Conflict: The maps, book, and calligraphy in her room. At the climax of the movie, she flashes back between a calligraphic illustration style for her hallucinations, the shadow puppets for her flashbacks, and live action for reality.

One self belongs to the real world (Baoyu), one self belongs to the mad world (The Cursed Lotus).

Mad world breeds conflict: She's torn between her desire to reconcile with her blood siblings and save her spiritual siblings.

World of paradoxes: She wants to return to Ancient China by building a new China, and she wants to bring the Chinese diaspora back home by leading them away from their real homes. She hates her mother for loving a drug more than her but shows her love for the Chinese diaspora by drugging all of them with Wild Tiger.

Extreme action that only makes sense in the mad world: Committing mass psychological terrorism through the release of Wild Tiger.

Build up to extreme action; the breaking point must be just as extreme as the response: The death of the baby girl and finding out that the Forbidden City is empty finally shatters her sanity.

Grief: Her mother, her father, the mass lynching, the burning of Chinatown, and the dead baby girl.

Inception point: Her mother succumbing to her opium addiction and blaming her father's abandonment on her gender.

Spiritual deterioration: Her strained, and then severed relationships with Shang Chi, Xialing, and Ying Nan are signified by the scale-like markings she gets when she ingests Wild Tiger.

Moment of agency: Shang Chi and Xialing beg her not to release the Wild Tiger, but she gives the order anyway.

Now that we've established that Zheng Baoyu is a mental mess, I feel like I should balance it out with some physical prowess. In my version, she's not as good of a combatant as Shang Chi or Xialing, so she probably prefers manipulation over engaging them in direct combat. She's stealthy, she has extensive knowledge of drugs of all kinds, but specifically hallucinogens, she has extensive knowledge of ancient and contemporary Chinese history (the latter of which she lived through), and she is fluent in Cantonese, Mandarin, and English. Also, if she mainly speaks Cantonese it would call back to her origins in Canton and further cement her alienation from her family since Shang-Chi, Xialing, and Wenwu all speak Mandarin.

Onto her powers and equipment. Her primary weapon is inducing hallucinations of dead loved ones with Wild Tiger. The hallucinations are negative for Westerners (Trevor, Razor Fist) and positive for Easterners (Shang Chi, Xialing, Ying Nan, and Baoyu herself). This is inspired by how Western culture fears ghosts but Chinese culture respects them. She could inherit immortality or mutant genes from Wenwu, so she looks much younger than her actual age. She can hypnotize people with the jade pendant on her necklace, and she can incapacitate her victims with her vapors. It would be awesome if the vapor bombs were shaped like lotuses, and the vapor itself had a color scheme that mirrored the palette of the souls that were sucked out of the Dweller-in-Darkness.

What about her costume? Boy, am I glad you asked! The first reason I made her mother an opera singer is because of the symbolic potential you could put into the design. First of all, it would be sick if she actually stole the mask she's wearing from her mother's body because it embodies her subconscious hunger for her mother's approval and ties into her ability to bring back the dead through Wild Tiger's hallucinations.

I'd love to see a green, white, and yellow opera mask that has some lotus designs on it. Even if the audience does not care about these cultural elements, Chinese opera masks themselves are already very diverse and eye-catching in their own right, so it will certainly make her memorable. To be more exact, we could combine the boldness of the Zheng Lun mask and the beauty of the Tan mask. The "Zheng" in Zheng Lun is also a neat reference to Zheng Bao Yu, which serves as the base for my version of the villainess. In Chinese opera, green represents deceitfulness, white represents mourning, and yellow represents ambition, which are all core aspects of her character. Her mask makes her immune to the deadly effects of Wild Tiger, but if she is not wearing it, she will be just as vulnerable to it as her victims.

The green would also go well with the green dress and hat she wears in the comics, although I do feel that the dress itself could be reworked to be less revealing and more like professional lab wear to avoid the stereotype of the seductive Dragon Lady.

As for her troops, it would be amazing if their armor looked like a hybrid between the traditional triad outfits, the armor of the terracotta soldiers in Qin Shi Huang's tomb, and modern military gear.

Furthermore, there could be some Chinese opera in her leitmotif or villain theme as well. Its distinct, haunting sound could be combined with an auto-tuned and reversed tiger roar, and the rhythm of a train chugging along a railway. The simplicity and subtlety of only having a few layers would do a great job of embodying the emptiness she feels, and differentiating her from the triumphant, tanggu drums and fuller, brighter orchestra in Shang-Chi's theme.