A little while ago, Dallas Liu mentioned that he would love his MCU character, Ruihua, to eventually transform into Iceman. But since then, Liu has officially become the Fire Nation’s Prince Zuko in Netflix’s live-action Avatar: The Last Airbender adaptation. And even though he still loves Iceman, and we agree he’d make an exceptional icy mutant, it feels like he’s also in excellent shape to take on the role of the MCU’s Pyro. Honestly, we’d give Liu any future role in the MCU he wants because he’s awesome. But is there an actor out there who would be more ready to play Pyro than Dallas Liu after his turn as firebending Zuko? We don’t think so.
It’s excellent timing to be speaking of Pyro, too. The fiery X-Men character made an unexpected appearance in the MCU’s Deadpool & Wolverine trailer not too long ago. Of course, Pyro appeared as the Aaron Stanford version from the 20th Century Fox X-Men movies. But the appearance of one Pyro means there surely must exist an MCU Pyro—and we vote Liu as our favorite fan cast for the character.
Liu shares his thoughts about the potential MCU casting, noting, “Iceman is a good pick just because I felt like nobody wants to talk about him. But now I would have to say I’m fully Pyro. He’s so bad. So bad.” (Bad meaning good here, obviously!) Liu goes on to say, “I think it’s a lot easier to imagine fire in a fight scene versus ice. You don’t know exactly the shape of it, how fast it’s moving. So yeah, I’m fully just Team Fire in general. The color red, it’s good.” Liu, of course, already appeared in the MCU’s Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings. But in the MCU, characters can always transform into someone new… And so can actors.
Pyro is a pretty cool character, after all. Or do we mean, hot? In our interview, Liu also shares more about his martial arts background and now-scorching resume. Liu broke down what it was like to master fire, explaining, “We’re bending these elements, and obviously, that doesn’t exist in real life. So, we were allowed to be creative in the way that we wanted it to look. We got to use our imagination to imagine what these bending strikes would look like and how the fire would rotate. So yeah, it felt like second nature to me, and the stunt team was nice enough to let me have some input on what these fights would look like.” He adds, “There were a few fire blasts in me and Zhao’s fight that I really got to play with.” Liu also revealed that he has trained with a bo staff and swords.
All this to say, if the MCU needs a Pyro who already knows what it feels like to throw fire around, Dallas Liu is uniquely situated in that regard. But whether it’s fire or ice, we hope to see more of Dallas Liu—in the MCU and everywhere else.