Katy may no longer have the immediate love arc, however she is still burdened by Marvel's writing of female characters.
Spoilers: Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings
Despite the changes occurring in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) — Multiverse (MCM) now, Shang-Chi and The Legend of The Ten Rings still holds true to the struggle of upholding women properly. The MCU has long struggled to find roles that play women as more than props to propel the plot. Despite finding a workaround on that front, Awkafina's Katie still lacks the depth that every character in the MCU should exhibit.
Phase Four of the MCU is changing how Disney/Marvel approaches their movies sociologically. This is seen by their abundance of attention to portraying women, people of color, and individuals under the LGBTQ+ umbrella on-screen. In the history of the MCU, this is a change that fans have left fans longing for years, and it is a welcome sight to finally see, come Phase Four. Shang-Chi and the Legend of The Ten Rings was the first new character franchise introduction to the MCU since Captain Marvel and many fans are applauding MCU's work with Shang-Chi's Katie Chen. This is due to her ambiguous relationship with the male lead, Shang-Chi. Amid the applause, the flaws in the character development of Katie are much less clear, but that doesn’t mean that they aren't still there.
Katie is a brand new character to, not only the MCU, but the world of Marvel as a whole. She is an original to the Marvel Cinematic Universe. This theoretically opens the opportunity for her to be anything needed to develop this movie and the overall universe further.
To immediately differentiate Katie from any other female love interest in the MCU, within the first five minutes, Disney threw in a little clip with Shang-Chi telling Katie's grandmother that they are "just friends". Great, so what does that make her? It makes her the comic-relief of the film. Yes, this is different from a love interest, but is it better, or is it just another secondary role to fill her shoes? Halfway through the movie, the comic relief of the film switches to none other than the original Mandarin, Trevor Slattery, and this finally gives Awkafina's Katie some room to breathe— halfway through the film.
At the beginning of the movie, after establishing that Katie will generally play the comic relief, she then goes on to blindly follow Shang-Chi around the world after finding out he has lain to her for half of their lives and seeing him take down a bus full of his mortal enemies. Why? Sure, maybe she is just curious about a life-threatening mission around the world after the events of Thanos. What does she have to lose, half of humanity again? Big whoop. No, the fan-base is generally in cohesion that there is some form of a romantic connection between Katie and Shang-Chi, even if it's not outwardly spoken, drawing her to follow him into known mortal destruction.
Given that this is still left generally ambiguous, it gives Marvel the opportunity to use her more deeply for character and world building. However, the majority of the time that she is on screen she, instead, cracks a one-liner and then heads off to whatever it is that she is heading off to. Sure, she learns how to use a bow and arrow in a radically unlikely amount of time, landing the big blow to the big baddie in the final act of the movie and then is taken off to join the Avengers in the final scene. However, adding her into the Avengers with a skill that she isn't even remotely familiar with, doesn't make her a well-developed character. It just makes her any Avenger. May we remind the audience that there were 36 of them in Avengers: Endgame.
Long story short, this is not an argument to say that Katie is a bad character. This is not an argument to say that Shang-Chi and The Legend of The Ten Rings is worse off due to the implementation of Katie. This is a statement to say that the Marvel movies can still do better; and that's an incredible thing given their consistently record-breaking movies, including this one. However, blindly following the implementation of Katie due solely to the fact that she is not portrayed as a love interest creates shallow expectations that Marvel could have done better. It creates characters that continue to only have purpose through the main lead. This concept of Peter Parker followed by MJ, Tony Stark followed by Pepper Potts, Scott Lang followed by Hope Van Dyne, is unfortunately continued to be perpetuated by Xu Shang-Chi followed by Katie Chen.
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