Oogway INVENTED the Dragon Warrior (and 500 Years Prove It)

A thousand years, or five hundred?

In the first Kung Fu Panda, Po is shoving customers out of his dad's noodle shop because today's the day Master Oogway picks the Dragon Warrior. "We've been waiting a thousand years for this!" The whole valley has waited a thousand years for one hero. Then a panda falls out of the sky on a chair full of fireworks, Oogway points right at him, and the universe has brought us the Dragon Warrior. The legend is ancient, the universe picked the panda, case closed.

Except the third film puts a date on it. Shifu reminds Po what he's really carrying: "a 500-year prophecy fulfilled." That same movie opens on Oogway meditating in the spirit realm when an old friend throws a blade at his head. Their battle, Oogway says, ended 500 years ago. Kai is ready for a rematch, and Oogway smiles: took you long enough.

The thousand-year prophecy is 500 years old. It's the same 500 years since Oogway's war with Kai ended. And Oogway knew Kai was coming. My case is that Oogway invented the Dragon Warrior to stop Kai, which makes the valley's most sacred legend a plan. The most famous prophecy in kung fu has an author, and he was standing in the arena that day.

Is it just a continuity slip?

That's the first thing to check. In the third film, 500 is Kai's number. It's how long ago his war with Oogway ended, how long he spent in the spirit realm and how long it took him to get Oogway's chi. The first film came out in 2008 and the third in 2016, so the boring answer is that somebody at DreamWorks lost count. If the number showed up once, I'd agree with you. But the writers set the clock on the war at 500 and then on the prophecy, in the same script. A retcon could have used any number.

Po's thousand years has an easy explanation too. Po is a fan, a noodle-shop kid yelling a legend at people trying to eat, and legends grow when they travel. Shifu runs the palace. Which number would you trust? I'd trust the palace, because the palace has the paperwork.

The scroll with a job description

The only paperwork the palace has on Kai is one scroll written by Oogway. When Kai shows up, Shifu tears the library apart to find it and reads it out. It opens with Oogway saying he once had a brother, and Shifu quickly corrects himself to brother-in-arms. A secret village of pandas healed Oogway with chi and taught him to give it. Kai saw that what can be given can also be taken, so he took it, until Oogway banished him. Should he ever return to the mortal realm, he can only be stopped by a true master of chi.

That's a prophecy with a job description. Somebody has to master chi well enough to beat Kai. In the opening scene, with Kai turning him to jade, Oogway says the job's already taken: "It was never my destiny to stop you." He says that while he's losing. By the finale, Kai has done the math himself, asking the jade charm around his neck, the one that used to be his best friend, if this panda is really the one. So if Oogway already beat Kai once, why did he need a replacement at all?

Who controls the record

When Kai comes back to the mortal world, he gives two farmers his whole resume. General Kai, Supreme Warlord of all China, the Jade Slayer, maker of widows. Nothing. So he tries one last thing: he used to work with Oogway. That gets a reaction. The only name that gets him recognized is his old friend's.

Here's the thing. Shifu is Oogway's own student, and Oogway handed him the whole palace. When Kai's name comes up, Shifu draws a blank. One scroll in Oogway's handwriting is the entire record of the most dangerous warrior in China. Kai tells it differently: he fought by Oogway's side, loved him like a brother, and was betrayed. He's the villain, and he's still got a point. His best friend banished him and then wrote the only version of the story anyone would ever read.

Kai's real crime in that scroll was about chi. He wanted the pandas' gift all to himself. Now look at who still has it by the third film. Po asks his dad to teach him chi, and Li admits the pandas have lost it. Shifu can barely make a flower bloom. Apart from Kai and the chi he stole, the only master we see fighting with chi before the finale is Oogway in that opening duel. He kept the weapon that beats Kai safe in his own hands. The question is who he was keeping it for.

Watch the finger

Go back to that fireworks chair crashing into the arena and watch Oogway's finger. It's heading for Tigress when the chair lands in front of her. Then it stops on the panda. Later, Shifu begs him to reconsider, and Oogway stands under the peach tree and tells him to let go of the illusion of control. The man giving that lesson had already written down what happens if Kai comes back.

The best case against this theory is that Oogway believes in fate, and fate keeps proving him right. A panda really does drop out of the sky. But at the end of the third film, in the spirit realm, Oogway finally tells Po what happened that day, and this time he doesn't mention the universe at all. "I saw the panda who could unite them both. That is why I chose you, Po." On the word "past," the film cuts to the ancient panda chi masters. He'd been waiting for a panda. Tigress had trained for years for that arena, and the job went to the panda who crashed over the wall, from the same people who taught Oogway chi.

Tai Lung never had a chance

About twenty years before the first film, Oogway turned Tai Lung down for the scroll. Oogway was right about what was in his heart. But a Dragon Warrior built to beat Kai with chi was always going to be a panda. When Oogway said no, Tai Lung tore up the valley, and it took Oogway himself to put him down.

Then at the start of the first film, Oogway tells Shifu about his vision: Tai Lung will return. Shifu panics. Oogway stays calm, and his very next decision is that it's time to name the Dragon Warrior. His answer to Tai Lung is the prophecy. And the panda was already in the valley.

Years before that vision, Shen's wolves attacked a panda village far from the valley. Po's mother hid him in a crate of radishes and led the wolves away. That crate turns up behind Mr. Ping's noodle shop with his vegetable delivery, no note. How does a baby panda get from a burning village to the one valley where a tortoise is waiting for a panda? I honestly can't explain that one yet. If you've got a theory, I want to hear it.

Universe mail

The second film ends in a hidden village, with a panda looking up from a shrine: "My son is alive." That's Li, Po's real father. In the third film he walks into Mr. Ping's shop and finds him. When Po asks how, Li says he got a message from the universe. So who mailed it?

The universe version has a problem. From the opening minutes of the third film, Oogway is a jade charm on a cord around Kai's neck, and he stays that way until the finale. Unless jade pendants can post mail, whoever sent that message sent it before Kai ever attacked him. At the end, Oogway clears it up. He sent it. Po's reaction is the best line in the scene: universe mail.

It goes back further. Kai needs Oogway's chi to leave the spirit realm, and he says so. In the first film, soon after naming Po, Oogway tells Shifu his time has come, under the same peach tree, about a minute after the lesson on control. He dissolves into peach blossoms and leaves for the spirit realm, where Kai had spent five centuries collecting every master he could reach. Did Oogway know what was waiting for him? I think so, but I can't prove it. What I can show you is the timing. He left the moment his replacement was in place. The only man who ever beat Kai was also the key to his cell.

Verdict

In the final fight, Po tries the Wuxi Finger Hold, the trick that beat Tai Lung, and it does nothing. Kai is a spirit, and only chi can touch him. Back in the village, the pandas, Mr. Ping and Tigress pour their chi into Po, the same gift a village of pandas gave a wounded young Oogway more than 500 years earlier. The Dragon Warrior wins with chi, exactly what Oogway's scroll said it would take.

Oogway didn't wait 500 years for destiny. He spent them building it. Tai Lung, Shifu and Kai all paid something for a plan that big, and Po started paying as a baby, growing up as the only panda he knew while Oogway knew exactly how to reach his father. When it's all over, Oogway hands Po his staff and calls him his true successor. It's a lovely scene, and it's the last step of a 500-year plan. There's also a second prophecy in these films, from a soothsayer, and it points at the same panda. How those two fit together is in the video above.