Shang-Chi's Spider-Man: Homecoming Cameo Explained | Screen Rant
Warning: Contains SPOILERS for Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings.
Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings features an amusing cameo from a Spider-Man: Homecoming character. The Marvel Cinematic Universe has a new superhero - Shang-Chi, the Master of Kung Fu. As revealed in Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, he is the son of Wenwu, the real Mandarin and leader of the secret society known as the Ten Rings. Shang-Chi completed his first mission for his father, killing the man responsible for his own mother's death, and then decided to build a new life for himself in San Francisco.
Ten years later, Wenwu sent his agents to confront his son, confident they could never kill Shang-Chi. They attacked him on the San Francisco Muni bus that travels through Chinatown, and the result was an action sequence unlike anything seen before in the MCU. Shang-Chi was initially reluctant to escalate matters, until one of the Ten Rings thugs lashed out at his friend Katy, and he broke out his martial arts moves. At first the fight was wonderfully grounded but, of course, it further escalated in the mighty Marvel manner when Razor Fist joined the scrap and began carving the Muni bus apart. Amusingly, the entire clash was filmed by a vlogger and posted online, earning Shang-Chi instant international fame as the social media sensation "Bus Boy."
The vlogger in question was named Klev, played by Zach Cherry. "Yo, whaddup y'all, it's your boy Klev, coming at you live on the bus," he declared as he began the vlog, before stating his intention to rate Shang-Chi's martial arts as he apparently practiced when he was younger. Amusingly, Cherry has played the character before - Klev appeared in Spider-Man: Homecoming, where he got Spider-Man to perform stunts for him. Clearly, Klev has figured out how to make the most of living in a world of superheroes - no doubt he's earned some money from the views of these two videos.
From an in-universe perspective, it's amusing to speculate why Klev was in San Francisco. Perhaps he moved there after Spider-Man: Homecoming - quite a bit of time has passed, including major events such as Thanos' Blip that (temporarily) erased half the life in the universe - so it's not hard to think of a scenario where Klev decided to head away from the Big Apple. Alternatively, he could simply have been on vacation, and he just stumbled into another superhero altercation.
Whatever the truth may be, from an out-of-universe perspective this is a delightful cameo; it's frankly quite disappointing that Klev didn't have a larger part, because he adds an entertaining note of humor to a phenomenal action scene. What's more, the return of Klev also serves to highlight just how weird and wonderful the MCU really is, and how commonplace superhero action is becoming to the ordinary people who live there. Klev's video serves a surprisingly important role in Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, too, because it draws enough attention to make Shang-Chi a potential fighter at the Golden Daggers club when he arrives in Macau - so it was actually a crucial plot point as well as a fun bit of comedy.