All Hail the King

Usually, a retconning happens in order to make other interesting storylines possible. All Hail the King isn’t one of them. While Iron Man 3 made a ton of cash at the box office, it is one of the most divisive Marvel flicks to date. And that is because of the way it dealt with the Mandarin, one of Iron Man’s most well-known foes from the comics.

Basically, in Iron Man 3 it is revealed that there is no Mandarin except for Aldrich Killian. And that is true even if there were quite a few Easter-Eggs in the previous movies concerning him. Obviously, this twist (which saw Ben Kingsley’s awesome character being nothing more than a washed-up actor) angered many fans.

And that is why Marvel came with the All Hail the King One-Shot, in which it is revealed that the Mandarin does exist and that he is actually pissed off. Did we need this One-Shot? Not really. But it did change lots of things that we saw in Iron Man 3.

Will the Mandarin emerge in the MCU? Maybe. But, at this point, I don’t really think so.