Kang the Conqueror Would’ve Fought the Avengers This Weekend

The period of May is typically an important clip for Marvel’s Avengers movies: the archetypal movie came retired May 4, 2012, and Age of Ultron May 1, 2015. Once upon a timeline, alternatively of the adjacent Thunderbolts, this play would’ve marked the Earth’s Mightiest Heroes’ archetypal theatrical reappearance since Endgame.

During its SDCC sheet connected July 23, 2022, Marvel Studios announced Avengers: The Kang Dynasty and Secret Wars would respectively merchandise May 2 and November 7, 2025. The duology was to beryllium the epic person to the Multiverse Saga—begun successful Phase Four with 2021’s Black Widow, and which present dispersed crossed respective TV shows, successful summation to films.

It was that summer’s Loki which genuinely kicked disconnected the full “multiverse” portion of this, and its archetypal play concluded with the uncover of this saga’s large bad: Kang the Conqueror, played by then-rising histrion Jonathan Majors. While the multiverse absorption continued via What If…? and Doctor Strange successful the Multiverse of Madness, Majors wouldn’t really look arsenic Kang successful the films until 2023’s Ant-Man & the Wasp: Quantumania. And that’s wherever things took an unluckily acheronian crook successful existent life.

Just announced successful Hall H:

Marvel Studios' Avengers: The Kang Dynasty, successful theaters May 2, 2025. #SDCC2022 pic.twitter.com/kCxeyYwgN5

— Marvel Studios* (@MarvelStudios) July 24, 2022

On March 25, 2023, weeks aft the releases of the Majors-starring Quantumania and Creed III, the histrion was arrested for assaulting his then-girlfriend, Grace Jabbari. The news, and consequent reports from outlets similar the Rolling Stone implicit Majors’ allegedly abusive behaviour toward erstwhile girlfriends and colleagues, led to Majors being dropped by his absorption institution and PR firm, and his U.S. Army and Texas Rangers ads being pulled. Magazine Dreams, his bodybuilding play picked up by Disney’s Fox Searchlight subsidiary arsenic a imaginable Oscars frontrunner, was besides dropped and near successful limbo for 2 years until it was picked up by Briarcliff Entertainment and released this past March.

Amid the archetypal allegations and proceedings playing out, Marvel didn’t talk overmuch astir Majors, who by that constituent lone had already completed filming on Loki’s second season. Hours aft helium was recovered blameworthy of assaulting Jabbari, Marvel officially parted ways with the actor, aboriginal retitling Kang Dynasty—which was past to beryllium directed by Shang-Chi’s Daniel Destin Cretton—into Doomsday, with the large villain relation present filled by a returning Robert Downey Jr. arsenic Doctor Doom. Once Downey and the caller rubric were revealed, the penning was connected the wall: Kang was done, and present Marvel could play astir with the heaviest of villainous dense hitters.

It truly can’t beryllium said capable however hard Marvel was pushing Kang astatine the time. Not lone was helium the prima of 2 Timeless one-shots teasing assorted comic events happening successful 2022 and 2023, the villain’s been a recurring subordinate successful Jed Mackay and CF Villa’s Avengers book. Quantumania’s marketing teased the movie arsenic the commencement of a “new dynasty,” and it ended with a legion of Kangs gathered unneurotic and hollering successful joyousness astatine the chaos they were astir to wreak. The institution was all-in connected the villain to pb its multiverse push, and successful the end, those plans were thoroughly dismantled by thing wholly retired of its control.

Unlike Thanos, whose pre-Avengers: Infinity War appearances were 2 little post-credits scenes, Kang was much salient successful the Multiverse Saga successful a mode that meant pivoting distant from him would beryllium adjacent parts awkward and hilarious. In retrospect, the villain was not being acceptable up to travel disconnected arsenic a morganatic menace to anyone, really: successful each of his appearances, Kang oregon a variant of him dies aft being hyped up (often by himself) arsenic a mighty unit the others are powerless to stop. In reality, helium gets done successful by a knife, ants, Pym particles, and aggregate instances of spaghettification, not to notation his different counterparts being handled offscreen by the Time Variance Authority. According to Loki’s executive shaper Kevin R. Wright, Majors’ allegations weren’t a factor into however things yet shook retired with his character(s), truthful it’s hard to cognize if Kang was ever going to get a existent W successful his titular film, oregon however his communicative would’ve been furthered successful Secret Wars.

Like the Inhumans earlier him, it’s doubtful Kang volition marque a instrumentality to the MCU immoderate clip soon, oregon astatine slightest not until years from now. With Majors’ past hovering implicit the relation and the quality not adding up to overmuch altogether, his little clip present is simply a capper to an epoch that Marvel is each excessively blessed to determination connected from. For anyone lamenting what could’ve been, there’s ever Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes.

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