Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings Quiz

Answer: Ta Lo

The Legend of the Ten Rings always begins with a man, Xu Wenwu, who located the devices from a tomb or a crater and received the powers of a God. Though he could have used them for good, instead he used them to amass power. His army, which he named The Ten Rings, operated in the shadows for centuries, toppling governments and overthrowing the world from the darkness, changing the course of history.

In 1996, Wenwu travelled to the city of Ta Lo, following a map in search of mythical creatures. What he found there, instead of a warm reception, was a woman by the name of Ying Li, who used her abilities to protect the forests. He wandered the woods to find her and they did fight, but the short battle ended with Ying Li the easy victor.

The two, naturally, fell in love. Departing from Ta Lo together, they would go on to give birth to two children-- Shang-Chi and Xialing-- and Ying Li would tell her son the story of his father and the powers she received from the Great Protector in Ta Lo, powers she would relinquish when she left. If he ever feels lost, she told him, he would always have the pendant she gave him, and it would help him find his way home.

In the present day, Shaun wakes to the sound of his alarm.

Answer: San Francisco

Shaun wakes up and gets ready for work in San Francisco. Joining his friend, Katy, as a valet driver for an upscale hotel, the two of them go off on joyrides in the fancy cars that seem to fall into their laps. Their mutual friend, Soo, suggests that perhaps they're running from adulthood. The two of them privately rationalize their choices before heading out for a night of drunken karaoke. The next morning, when Shaun picks Katy up for work, her family tries to convince the pair to get better jobs over breakfast.

Shaun and Katy catch the bus and things go from normal to tense when a man, speaking Mandarin, spots Shaun's pendant and begins to fight. Shaun fights off several attackers until one emerges from the back of the vehicle, wielding a superheated blade. The fight escalates when this thug severs the brake line, and when the driver is knocked out, Katy has to maneuver the bus to a stop before it crashes into the bay. Shaun manages to protect the other riders and get the foes out before the bus comes to a stop, but he loses his pendant by the end of the battle.

Shaun and Katy return to his place and Shaun realizes that he needs to get to Macau to find his sister. Katy forces him to tell the truth - as much as he can. The men on the bus, he explains, were sent by his dad. She says he'll just have to explain the whole story on the plane.

Answer: Operating a fighting club

After Shaun's mother died, he explains, his father put him through the wringer, training him all the ways he could kill a man while his sister trained in secret. By the time he was 14, his life had changed. His father put him on his first assignment, but he couldn't go through with it. He ran instead, and never looked back. He apologizes to Katy for dumping all of this information on her, but he also notes his name isn't technically Shaun - it's Shang-Chi.

When the pair arrive in Macau, they find a city of bustling nightlife. Pulling up in front of a massive building under construction, they sign in and ascend to what turns out to be the Golden Daggers Club, a fighting ring broadcasting tournaments on the dark web. It's still the address Xu Xialing sent to her brother, however. Jon Jon, who greets the pair at the elevator, says it's time to get them ready to fight. It's non-negotiable as well; when Shang-Chi came into the building, he signed in by signing the contract.

It's all for the best though. When Shang-Chi enters the ring as San Francisco's Bus Boy, he's met by his fearsome opponent - his own sister, Xu Xialing. The two start the fight against Shang-Chi's wishes. It's only after a bit of sparring that he gets her to stop and think.

On the night Shang-Chi was sent on his first assignment, he promised his sister that he would return in three days. In the ring, she knocks him out to end the fight.

Answer: No

Shang-Chi and Katy are brought to his sister's office and he cuts to the chase - it appears the Ten Rings have taken his pendant and are coming for hers. Xialing suggests that she doesn't need his help; after he said he'd be back in three days and he never returned, it took her six years to realize she didn't need him. She left for Macau, started the Golden Daggers Club, and never looked back. Shang-Chi asks why, then, she would send him a postcard. She didn't, however. That's when the power cuts out in the establishment.

Xialing and Jon Jon make for an escape out the back route, leaving Shang-Chi and Katy to escape out the window. While Katy races to the elevator, Shang-Chi buys her some time. It leads to Xialing coming back in the nick of time to save Katy from plunging down the side of the structure, and alongside her brother, they fend off the armed foes. At the last moment, the second pendant is stolen and Shang-Chi gives chase, nearly incapacitating the soldier, but he's stopped from swinging his enemy's blade by his father, Xu Wenwu, who's come to retrieve his children and bring them home.

Answer: The path through the maze

Wenwu brings Shang-Chi, Xialing, and Katy back to the Ten Rings compound in his private helicopter. Shang-Chi is given a solemn welcome while the girls are taken back to Xialing's old room to be kept out of sight and out of mind. It's there that Xialing admits she was never allowed to train with the boys, but from the shadows she watched and learned, and that's what they can do here.

Over dinner, Wenwu admits he gave his children ten years to run free and learn of the world, and now, he claims, Shang-Chi can take his rightful place by his side.

The dinner conversation moves to the power and importance of names, during which Wenwu notes he was known by many names over the centuries, but none more important than when he met Li in Ta Lo and everything changed. She taught him her ways and gave up everything so they could be together. And he gave up the Ten Rings as well, sealing them away so they could have their children. His real name was Wenwu and she was the only one who called him that.

When the kids left, Wenwu was so desperate to find Li in the afterlife that he went back to his studies to research Ta Lo. He wasn't able to find the secret path to the village entrance, but he found what they were hiding: a gate in their mountains behind which Li must be waiting. She spoke to him and told him as much, from beyond the grave, and claimed that her people imprisoned her there as punishment for leaving with Wenwu years ago. He insists - the pendants are the keys. With them, he knows the path through Ta Lo's moving maze, and the time he must visit it to gain access.

This journey is why his kids are home, Wenwu claims. Shang-Chi, Xialing, and Katy disagree that they should venture to Ta Lo at all. That night, Wenwu listens to Li's voice, urging him to come.

Answer: Morris

Shang-Chi, Xialing, and Katy are placed into a cell for defying Wenwu's wishes and they can only wonder what parts of the story are true. Their mom, they reason, could be locked away there. If they don't get to Ta Lo before him, however, they know their father will destroy everything in his path to find out the truth.

A noise from deeper in the cell grabs the trio's attention, and when they check inside they find his father's prisoner, actor Trevor Slattery, who once played The Mandarin, portraying Wenwu in the real world. Trevor proved his worth as an actor and was spared, almost like a jester, but left in his eternal cell. He isn't alone though - a hundun, a faceless, mystical creature he named Morris, remains there with him. Having been captured by Wenwu during an expedition to Ta Lo, it knows Li and wants to go home.

It's then that they break out of the Ten Rings compound through the tunnels, escaping to the garage and getting away in one of the cars. Wenwu, watching from the security office, believes they'll come back once Li is brought home.

Slattery leads the others to the entrance of the maze and they await their chance to get inside the moving pocket that will bring them deeper. Fortunately, with Morris' guidance, translated into Slattery's English, Katy is able to steer the car through the woods. And that's how they emerge into the mystical realm of Ta Lo.

Answer: Dragon scales

Katy drives the car into the edge of a Ta Lo village to find the citizens awaiting them. Shang-Chi, exiting the vehicle, greets the crowd and introduces everyone. While the people of Ta Lo are initially dismissive of the newcomers, it's Ying Li's sister, Ying Nan, who comes to their aid, convincing the others that they are no threat.

Ying Nan, taking the trio on a tour of the village, explains that the people of Ta Lo are guardians of the Dark Gate, having protected themselves and Earth from the evil locked within, the very evil that their father will free if he seeks Li behind it. Thousands of years ago, the Dweller-in-Darkness emerged and destroyed cities of people. It was expected that this power would have headed to Earth's universe to do the same, but the people of Ta Lo were supported by the Great Protector, who joined the fight and saved everyone. The Dweller-in-Darkness knows the Ten Rings have the power to break them free, and as has happened with others in the past, it has lured him from the other side.

And so Shang-Chi, Xialing, and Katy train under the tutelage of the people of Ta Lo, honing their skills to beat Wenwu as only Li could before them. Nan informs her nephew, while training with him in his mother's ways, that he must stop hiding from who he is to unlock his true potential.

Answer: Wenwu

Wenwu and the Ten Rings prepare themselves, meanwhile, as the passage to Ta Lo is expected to open at dawn. As he waits for the sun to rise he remembers the night that Li fought to protect their children, falling to the men of the Iron Gang. Without her powers, she would be no match for the group of warriors. Wenwu would find her already dead when he returned home and blame himself for taking off the rings. It was then that he donned the rings once more, confronting the Iron Gang and insisting on a blood debt as retribution. He would train Shang-Chi to be the ultimate assassin, and when he returned from killing the leader of the Iron Gang, they would rebuild the Ten Rings together.

Shang-Chi admits to Katy that he lied. When he was sent to kill the man who murdered his mother, he succeeded. He fled to San Francisco to start a new life, ashamed of what his mother would have thought of his actions. And now he has to kill his father to save everyone.

When sunrise arrives, so to do Wenwu and the Ten Rings. The people of Ta Lo urge him to stop advancing, but he refuses. Instead, he says, they will burn down the village to get what they need. It leads to a fight between Shang-Chi and his father and Wenwu, outmatching his son, manages to breach the Dark Gate.

Answer: Souls

Once the Dark Gate is breached, the creatures inside begin to emerge and the Ten Rings find that their weapons are useless against them; only the dragonscale weapons stand a chance. It's this that convinces Wenwu's men to fight alongside the people of Ta Lo; if the creatures harvest enough souls for the Dweller-in-Darkness, it will emerge and recommence its onslaught of the universes.

While the fighters station themselves at the edge of the lake and begin their battle, Shang-Chi awakens, deep beneath the water, to the sound of his mother's voice as something stirs below. The Great Protector, risen from slumber, surfaces to greet him and brings him along for the ride, delivering him to the gate.

This leads to another battle between father and son, but this time, empowered by a better understanding of who he is and where he's come from, Shang-Chi fights toe-to-toe with Wenwu, even managing to ease the power fo the rings and control them himself. He casts them aside moments before the Dark Gate breaks open, unleashing the Dweller-in-Darkness once and for all. Wenwu pushes his son out of the way to sacrifice himself and watches on as his soul is taken from his body. Before he's consumed, he relinquishes the rings.

Answer: It's killed.

Shang-Chi, now empowered by the Rings, reseals the Dark Gate with ease, preventing further creatures from escaping into Ta Lo, but the battle is far from over. As the Dweller-in-Darkness swoops in to attack, the Great Protector, led by Xialing, intercepts the beast in an attempt to hold it off. Shang-Chi reunites with his sister as they head back to the village in pursuit of the beast. Though they're able to hold it back, it continues to be fed by its minions, allowing it to become empowered enough to begin draining the soul of the Great Protector. It's Katy, who fires a dragonscale arrow through the neck of the Dweller-in-Darkness from the shoreline, who's able to turn the tide of the battle, allowing Shang-Chi to use the rings to destroy the beast from within once and for all.

Before Shang-Chi, Katy, and Xialing depart, they honour their ancestors and those who fell in battle to save them.

In San Francisco, Shang-Chi and Katy tell the whole story to their friends over dinner. Though Soo doesn't believe a word of the story, they're interrupted by Wong, who emerges from a portal and asks Shang-Chi and Katy to join him in Kamar-Taj.