WMG / Kung Fu Panda 3

In Kung Fu Panda 3, Mei Mei will eventually realize Po and Tigress' feelings for each other and step aside.

It seems obvious that the combination of her overenthusiasm, the fact she is betrothed in all likelihood against Po's wishes and the rather unappealing character designs this is how her role in the film's subplot will end.

• I would call this Jossed as Mei Mei being engaged to Po turned out a scrapped idea.
• While there is still some Ship Tease present between Po and Tigress, there's not that many interactions between them. Mei Mei is shown to be a shameless flirt, but nothing comes of it at all.

In the Stinger/end movie plot twist, one character will identify himself as the father of another character(s) to said character(s).

Specifically, a certain Snow Leopard to one or two newborn cubs...

• Jossed. There's no end of film stinger this time around, a surprise, given the last two had one, and the second film was a hook for this one.

Po will suffer a Disney Death at the hands of Kai.

And is sent to the spirit world, where he reunites with his mom and Oogway, and also is where Kai is defeated for good.

• If the junior novelization is accurate, it half-confirms this. There is a trip to the spirit world (with a major twist as to how it happens), Oogway appears there, and it's where Po defeats Kai for good. (Po's mother doesn't appear in person though.)
  • Semi-confirmed, semi-jossed. Po effectively kills himself in order to drag Kai back to the spirit world. He does indeed encounter Oogway again, and eventually returns to the mortal plane.. Curiously, this film also renders a scene from the tv series utterly non-canon as when Po asks Oogway if it's possible to return to the mortal world, Oogway replies that he's never tried. As we know that he reappears as a ghost in Legends of Awesomeness, we can assume that the films do not recognize the series, or at least some parts of it, such as the Oogway's Ghost episode.
    • To be fair, astral projection into the mortal realm isn't necessarily the same thing as actually returning to it like Po and Kai do.

Po will become a literal Dragon Warrior.

While fighting Kai in the spirit world, Po will have an actual dragon spirit manifest itself within or around him in order to win the battle. (Taken from the Chinese trailers that appears to hint at this.)

• Confirmed in an absolutely glorious fashion.

There's a very good reason Tai Lung doesn't appear among the jombies, and it's not because Dream Works wants nothing more to do with him.

It's revealed that the Wuxi Finger Hold only works on mortals, and it sends them into the Spirit Realm. This would explain why there was No Body Left Behind, all good so far. But then why wasn't he among the masters whose chi Kai absorbed? This could be an indicator that something about this will be explored in a future sequel, but if not there are several other possibilities.

• Tai Lung neither died nor went to the Spirit Realm; he was instead left alive and battered, possibly with very little chi left, and fled somewhere else to hide and recuperate. Meaning Kai didn't go after him because he couldn't find him, or because he had so little chi to absorb.
• Tai Lung is hiding (or even imprisoned) somewhere in the Spirit Realm, and that's why Kai couldn't take his chi.
• Tai Lung managed to be the only master who Kai couldn't defeat, so he left him alone to focus on easier prey.
  • This theory seems unlikely. When Kai was unable to defeat Po he declared that he was willing to devote another 500 years to doing so. Kai is not the type to just accept that he can't beat an opponent and move on.
  • True, although note that he seemed very focused on getting Oogway's chi, as the most powerful, to enable him to escape back to the mortal world. Even if he had the patience to wait 500 years, having already done so and being so close to achieving his goal would likely have made him less patient, especially if ignoring Tai Lung and focusing on Oogway would get him there faster. Not to mention having a personal reason for taking out Oogway that wouldn't apply to Tai Lung. So perhaps then it's more that Tai Lung wasn't worth facing in his mind.
  • Tai Lung was a student of Shifu just like Po, and thus a part of Oogway's legacy.
    • It seems Kai would not have known this though; he didn't seem to know who Shifu or the rest of the Five were, and he only went after Po because Oogway told him he was the Dragon Warrior.
• Or, the most likely explanation, after going to the Spirit Realm he was taken before the Lords of Death to be judged and sent to Di Yu, there to work off his karma until the distant day he could be reborn. So he simply wasn't around or available for Kai to attack.
• Possibly Jossed. Fans on Tumblr eventually noticed that one of Kai's unused amulets bears a very strong resemblance to Tai Lung.
  • However, this only raises more questions—not just why Kai never called on him as a jombie, but what happened after Kai was defeated. All the living masters were restored to life; all the dead ones presumably returned to the afterlife. But if Tai Lung had been sent to the Spirit Realm by the finger hold, then presumably he was sent back there afterward. And Then What? This would seem to still leave the door open for sequels, barring the possibility of Tai Lung going before the Lords of Death already described above.
  • Indeed, though it does confirm that he was in the Spirit Realm and captured by Kai in the first place, which dismisses some of the above theories. There were obviously quite a few jombies that Kai didn't use, or else there would have been a heck of a lot more of them. This is likely because it's implied that he has to temporarily give up that chi when he creates them, so it's possible that he didn't use Tai Lung because he was simply too big of a power source to lose, which could also be why he never used Oogway. Since Oogway returned to the Spirit Realm when he was freed, then Tai Lung most likely did as well.
    • Adding onto this, it could just be that we never see him use Tai Lung's jombie. When Kai arrives in the Mortal Realm, one of the six jombies he summons is a boar who we never see again. Seeing as Masters Bear, Croc and Chicken's villages were attacked, it could be inferred that Tai Lung's jombie was simply sent somewhere else, with Kai unaware of Tai Lung's relationship with Po, Shifu or the Furious Five.
    • That makes a lot of sense. After all, since no one knew who Kai was any more, and he had no knowledge of what had been happening in the mortal world for the last five hundred years, he couldn't exactly know who any of them were (he fought the Five and Shifu because they were warriors and masters with great chi; he fought Po for his chi and because Oogway specifically identified him as the Dragon Warrior as he was absorbing him). Also the above point is quite accurate; whatever else could be said about him, Tai Lung was certainly a powerhouse of strength, so it would take a great deal of chi to power a jombie of him.
    • Possibly Kai can't make jombies out of enemies he captures in the Spirit Realm, only those he defeats in the mortal world. The jombies manifest as physical bodies, after all, and it may require too much energy to create a body from scratch for a disembodied spirit: it took generations for Kai even to do so for himself, never mind for a bunch of minions. But he can store the body of a Master inside the corresponding amulet and then release it (now green) when he needs that amulet's occupant to fight mortal beings.
  • I always wondered if Kai was wary of Oogway somehow managing to escape or subvert his control should he ever actually summon him.
    • I wondered that as well. It wouldn't have been surprising if he could.
  • Perhaps in the Spirit Realm, his final punishment (fittingly) was to be Oogway's bodyguard for around a few hundred years or perhaps a century, depending on how serious it was ranked in the Chinese underworld. If Tai was absorbed by Kai before he got to Oogway, he either put up a hell of a fight or didn't do a very good job. Either way, Kai got into Oogway's section of the realm because he'd beaten the fur out of Oogway's last line of defense.
    • While this being a punishment would make it unwilling, the possibility Tai could have realized what he'd done wrong (because of seeing the blank scroll and Po explaining it to him) and thus be doing it willingly (or at least not begrudgingly) is kind of heartwarming, don't you think? In any event, note that in the Tumblr image above, Tai's jade amulet is hanging on Kai's belt right next to Mantis's. This may not mean much (since he captured Crane right after Mantis and his amulet isn't next to Mantis's), but it's possible they are hanging in the order of capture (not counting Oogway, whom he hung around his neck). This would imply Tai was the last one captured before Kai faced Oogway and made it to the mortal world. Considering two or three years passed between the first and second movies, and we don't know how much time may have passed before the third, either it took that long for Kai to find Tai, or it took him that long to defeat him. That You Shall Not Pass! is sounding a lot more likely than the Curb-Stomp Battle.
• The Spirit Realm seems to be a huge place. Tai may simply have wound up in a part of it where Kai never went looking for souls to capture.
• Tai Lung was branded a disgrace to kung fu by his own teachers. Possibly Kai wouldn't consider the sullied soul of such an outcast worthy of his collection, however potent his combat abilities.

Po is a spirit now

There's no fancy "sends you to the spirit realm while allowing you to keep your mortal body" aspect to the Wuxi Finger hold, it just straight up kills you. Like Kai, Po is now a spirit with a strong enough Chi to exist in the mortal realm. No one is going to notice right away until enough time passes for it to be apparent that Po doesn't age anymore.

• The fourth movie will address this, somehow, probably through showing a significant enough passage of time that at least one or maybe multiple members of the Furious Five and/or Mr. Ping are dead, while Po stays the same. His moral lesson this time around will revolve around the acceptance of the passage of time, and Oogwai - as a turtle - will play a significant role in it. Future movies (since Word of God said it is meant to be six movies) will play with this idea further, maybe even showing Po adjusting to industrialization, with the final movie being a passing of the mantle towards the next Dragon Warrior in a version of modern China.
  • The fourth movie shows Mr. Ping, Li Shan and Shifu well and alive (The Furious Five too, due to being confirmed to appear in the movie), and the movie trailer doesn't leans into the above theory territory, meaning it's most likely jossed.

Oogway did intentionally allow Kai to be forgotten, but not for the reason Kai thinks.

Can you imagine admitting publicly that a friend you loved and respected revealed himself to be a genocidal, selfish traitor? Then Kai wouldn't be remembered for any of the good things he did, any of his wasted potential to be a hero- just as a monster who got what he deserved. And that would've been Oogway's fault. So he took the middle path when recording his traitorous friend- to hide the truth in a dusty old scroll that no one would ever see. Oogway didn't have to lie, but he didn't have to build false monuments either.

• Interestingly, the Fan Fic A Different Lesson posited the same notion for why Oogway hid away the identity of Heian Chao and kept anyone from knowing of his corruption or what he had done. Which just goes to show more than one person can consider this to be in-character behavior for Oogway.

Kai didn't turn evil at the Panda Village 500 years ago. Oogway turned good.

When he first returned to the mortal realm, Kai referred to himself as General Kai, Supreme Warlord of All China. According to the legend, Oogway banished Kai to the spirit realm at or near the Panda Village, so Kai would've had to obtained that title BEFORE his banishment. On top of that, Oogway admits to being "a young ambitious warrior leading a great army", and, given that Kai was Oogway's Brother-In-Arms, he would've had to be okay with this, meaning that Kai and Oogway were trying to conquer China. When Oogway and Kai's army was ambushed, from what we see, it looks like the army was wiped out, leaving Kai and Oogway as the only survivors, which means no doctors to help Oogway, who must've been close to death. Traveling for days gave Oogway enough time to reflect on his actions and where his life was going, and the Pandas healing a complete stranger who, likely unknown to them, sought to conquer China, was enough for Oogway to try and turn his life around, abandoning his conquest and instead learning how to manipulate chi, thus setting him on the path to becoming the wise Master we know and love. Kai, however, didn't have that near-death experience, so he never had a change of heart, and he likely planned to use Chi to aid in his and Oogway's conquest, assuming his friend would be on board with the idea. He was surprised that Oogway instead chose to defend the village over helping him, leading to their battle and beginning Oogway's new lease on life.

• It could be a simple case of delusional bragging on Kai's part. He might simply believe that he was/is the Supreme Warlord of All China without any of being founded in reality.
• This makes so much sense. I'm calling it canon until otherwised Jossed.
• And if not Outright Villains, they might have been either Well Intentioned Extremists or Knight Templars, that could explain why Kai sees nothing morally wrong with stealing chi and couldn't comprehend Oogway having a problem with it.

Reason for why Kai was forgotten

The wars that Kai and Oogway fought in their youth was the equivalent of the Warring States period. The kungfu-panda-verse version of Qin Shi Huang after winning the wars and becoming the Emperor expunged all knowledge of his rivals including Kai and Oogway.

Kai is Tirek.

• He has very impressive horns and beard, a vaguely bovine head, and hands. He used to be a tyrant and warlord before being sealed away by the series Big Good. His signature power is the ability to drain the magic from his enemies and empower himself with it. What other explanation is there?
• I don't agree with this WMG. Tirek doesn't have a bovine head, he has the head of a horned primate, like a gorilla or a baboon. And he's a centaur, so he's got four legs below the waist, and Kai only has two legs (not counting his arms). Also, they have totally different colour schemes - Tirek's Red and Black and Evil All Over, Kai has a Sickly Green Glow. If Kai is any creature from the My Little Pony-verse, he's a minotaur.

Kai's "evilness" was partially a side effect of the chi draining technique.

• Before the panda village, Kai apparently had a genuine friendship with Oogway, enough to walk for days to find healing for him. And he must have also had the respect of his soldiers if he was at the head of a vast army, which again implies that he was not the monster he's become since. And chi is the literal essence of life, so it's not improbable that twisting chi the way Kai did warps the mind.
  • Notice that before starting stealing chi, Kai had normal eyes similar to other characters in the series, and they only became green after he started stealing chi, so this theory could be canon.

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