IGN reports that Marvel president Kevin Feige shared more information in an interview with Rotten Tomatoes about the appearance of villain Abomination in the upcoming MCU film Shang-Chi: Legend of the 10 Rings. The Phase 1 Marvel Cinematic Universe antagonist is returning to brawl with Wong, the sorcerer from Doctor Strange. 

Feige indicates that “Some fans said, ‘This looks like a character they hadn’t seen in many years named The Abomination, fighting a character that looks like Wong.’ And I can say that the reason it looks like that is because that is Abomination fighting Wong”, referring to the release of the final trailer. 

The Marvel chief also talked about how he enjoyed bringing back the obscure villain from 2008’s The Incredible Hulk, who was a part of the initial group of films that set the foundation for the MCU.

In MCU lore, Abomination is Captain Emil Blonsky, a former special-ops commander who has been mutated by injection with a variant of the Super Soldier Serum. He eventually receives a transfusion of Hulk’s blood and transforms into Abomination, proceeding to rampage through New York City.

Paying homage to Phase 1 of the MCU also seems to be on Feige’s radar these days. In the same interview, he mentioned bringing the story back to the original Iron Man, which introduced the original Ten Rings organization. He also discussed the infamous twist that Iron Man 3’s Mandarin was actually Trevor Slattery:

“And going back to Iron Man: We’ve been talking about that when we do bring this character to the screen, [we] only wanted to do it when we felt we could do it supreme justice and really showcase the complexity of this character, which frankly we couldn’t do in an Iron Man movie because an Iron Man movie is about Iron Man; an Iron Man movie is about Tony Stark. So [Iron Man 3 director] Shane Black, in his film and his script that he co-wrote, came up with this fun twist that we love to this day, and it turned out to be Trevor Slattery. Just because that version wasn’t real didn’t mean there’s not a leader of the Ten Rings organization, and that is who we meet for the first time in Shang-Chi.”

And so, Abomination returns in Shang-Chi, fighting Wong in a cage match. The reason why will be revealed when the film hits theaters on September 3, 2021.