Warning: This article contains spoilers for Captain America: The Winter Soldier and Marvel One-Shot: "All Hail the King."

If you've seen Captain America: The Winter Soldier, you know that the movie is going to have a major impact on the Marvel Cinematic Universe going forward. In the short-term, it's going to shake up Agent Coulson and the gang in Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. as they come to grips with the collapse of their parent organization. In the long-term, it directly set the stage for Hydra's role in The Avengers: Age of Ultron and established a new status quo for Cap, Nick Fury, and Bucky Barnes leading into Captain America 3

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The New Heads of HYDRA

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The Real Mandarin

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Red Skull - The Common Factor?

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But while HYDRA is one of the big threats these projects have been developing over the past few years, it's not the only one. We've also seen the threat of the terrorist group The Ten Rings steadily build since the first Iron Man film. The recent Marvel One-Shot short film, "All Hail the King," set those wheels further in motion by suggesting that the one, true Mandarin is out there and planning his big strike against the world.Obviously, there are big plans brewing for both HYDRA and the Ten Rings. But we wonder if these two groups might not be headed for a collision course. Could we be in store for a massive confrontation where the Avengers do battle with a unified HYDRA/Ten Rings enemy? It's possible, and we have several ideas why that would be a good thing for Marvel's Cinematic Universe.Collectively, HYDRA's favorite slogan (not counting whispering "Hail HYDRA" into each other's ears) is "Cut off one head and two more shall take its place. Like the beast of Greek mythology, HYDRA is an organization that never dies. It only grows and evolves and finds new leaders to continue its evil. Some of those leaders are ordinary politicians like Alexander Pierce, and some are crazed, superhuman madmen like Red Skull. It takes all kinds...The mid-credits teaser in The Winter Soldier shows that Baron Strucker and his particular branch of HYDRA will be a major threat in Avengers: Age of Ultron. But that scene also illustrated the fact that HYDRA isn't a singular, unified enemy to the Avengers. It has many branches and offshoots, many of which work independently of one another. Not every HYDRA branch was committed to Pierce's goal of undermining S.H.I.E.L.D. from within, just as not every branch will be involved in Strucker's super-science schemes.So we would expect future movies beyond Age of Ultron to reveal more heads of HYDRA. Baron Zemo is a likely candidate, being the most significant Captain America villain after Red Skull and a frequent HYDRA player. Viper could also be primed for her Marvel Studios debut. She's often served as a head of HYDRA and currently leads the organization in the comics. The question is whether Marvel Studios would have access to her. Viper already appeared last year as a villain in The Wolverine, and it remains to be seen if she's confined to the X-Men franchise or, like Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch, is able to be used by both Disney and Fox. Similarly, we'd like to see the bloodthirsty samurai Gorgon appear in one of these films, but he might also be limited to appearing in the X-Men franchise.Iron Man 3 presented two distinctly different takes on the Mandarin. Bumbling British actor Trevor Slattery played a character designed to strike fear in the hearts of the Western world, while Aldrich Killian transformed his frail body with the power of Extremis and became the power behind Slattery's silly little throne. Neither character shared much resemblance with the Mandarin of the comics (hence the fan controversy in some circles), but both spoke to the idea that the Mandarin is a character whose reality doesn't always mesh with the image he conjures up.But as "All Hail the King" showed, there may be a third Mandarin operating in the shadows, and one who isn't pleased with how his name and reputation have been perverted recently. This is the Mandarin the Ten Rings members have been serving. And he may fall more in line with the version fans know from the comics - a tyrant who hates the Western world and its technology and who wields ten rings of seemingly magical origin.And as this Mandarin rises from the shadows, his path could wind up intersecting with HYDRA. We've already pointed out how future movies will probably be introducing more heads of HYDRA after Baron Strucker. With Mandarin, they could find a new leader to rally around. The goals of the Ten Rings and HYDRA aren't so different at the end of the day. They're both devoted to tearing down traditional power structures and making life as difficult as possible for men like Tony Stark and Steve Rogers. And if Strucker can't overcome the Avengers, maybe the surviving branches of HYDRA will see Mandarin as someone who can get the job done.One of the big mysteries surrounding the Marvel Cinematic Universe right now is the current fate of Red Skull. He was beamed away by the Tesseract in the climax of Captain America: The First Avenger, but unless it left him floating in the cold vacuum of space, we doubt Red Skull is actually dead. He was probably transported somewhere else, left to plot his revenge against Cap and the Allies. A popular theory was that Alexander Pierce would unmask and reveal himself to be Red Skull during the course of The Winter Soldier. It wouldn't be the first time he's masqueraded as an ordinary government official.Obviously, that twist never happened. But we still have to assume there are plans for Red Skull's return, whether they unfold in Captain America 3 or some other project. But what if, and bear with us here, it turned out that Red Skull and Mandarin are one and the same?It would make a certain degree of sense considering how fascinated this version of Red Skull is with advanced alien weaponry. The Mandarin's rings are a textbook example of the old saying, "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." They're highly advanced alien artifacts, each containing a different intelligence and capable of bestowing a unique power on the wearer. It stands to reason that the Tesseract transported Skull to some other part of the galaxy. And whether he wound up in Asgard or somewhere else, he could have found and claimed the ten rings for himself, using the next 70 years to consolidate his new power and plan his revenge.Revealing the Red Skull as Mandarin would serve several purposes. It would maintain that element of surprise and the unexpected that made the Trevor Slattery fake-out so amusing. It would be a quick and easy way of uniting HYDRA and the Ten Rings into one threat. And it would mesh with something Marvel has been exploring in the comics recently, that the idea of the Mandarin is bigger than any one wielder now. Heck, the current storyline in the Iron Man comic has Thor's Dark Elf nemesis Malekith taking control of the rings. He's no less bizarre a choice than Red Skull.