Kang
Actor Jonathan Majors has been convicted of misdemeanor assault and harassment, a verdict issued by a jury Monday afternoon. While sentencing is not until February, where Majors faces up to a year in jail, Disney wasn’t going to wait. Within 90 minutes of the news, Major was fired from his role as Kang in the MCU, ending months of speculation of whether Disney would stick with the actor or drop him like many other projects and his own agency had after his arrest.
While it’s possible Disney may have fired Majors eventually anyway, based on behavior alone and not beholden to a legal judgement, his conviction left them essentially no choice. Now, the question for the MCU becomes whether Majors is replaced, with Kang getting recast with a new actor, or if Marvel moves on from the Kang saga entirely.
It’s time to move on.
While Majors was compelling as Kang, the Kang saga and the multiverse set-up for Avengers: The Kang Dynasty, has been poor. Kang’s biggest role was a variant of himself starring as the villain in Ant Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, one of the MCU’s worst overall features. His more compelling turn was in Loki season 2, though that show offers a convenient way out of the Kang mess, as you could read Loki’s “Yggdrasil” ending as closing the book on Kang’s multiverse dominating ambitions.
Quantumania
Of course there are loose threads, like the Council of Kangs being revealed in an Ant-Man post-credits scene, or other variants reference in a single line at the end of Loki. But that does not necessitate his story continues from here. It’s unclear who would even take the role, now associated with Majors to a degree where it would be hard to separate him from it. It’s not exactly Terrence Howard being recast with Don Cheadle. Fans immediately recommended someone like John Boyega take the part, and the actor promptly posted a reaction that indicated he would not be at all interested. Even if the multiverse means a different looking Kang “makes sense,” it feels like the role is too toxic and the storyline is baseline pretty uninteresting, and it’s time to look elsewhere.
There are rumblings that Marvel may already been doing this, given that they had to have been considered this situation would probably happen for months now. There’s a report that The Kang Dynasty is now just being referred to as “Avengers 5,” indicating it could be retooled into something else entirely, a lead-in to Secret Wars. Or Secret Wars may just be two parts.
The biggest alternate villain being proposed is Doctor Doom, a more iconic Marvel villain than Kang, and one that makes sense to debut soon with both the Fantastic Four coming up and Doom’s role in Secret Wars in the comics.
Doctor Doom
While we don’t know what Marvel had planned for cameos or post-credits scenes, it’s hard to even know where Kang was supposed to appear in Marvel’s upcoming slate of MCU films, which includes Deadpool 3, Captain America 4, Thunderbolts and Blade. It’s entirely possible the plan was to mostly ice him outside of small bits and pieces until The Kang Dynasty anyways.
Marvel’s best bet is to cut Kang entirely. If that means more delays and retooling for future projects, so be it, and honestly, more breathing room between Marvel projects is what the MCU needs anyway, and what it will get in part next year when Deadpool 3 is the only theatrical offering.
But Majors is too linked to this role now, and Kang isn’t a good enough storyline to be worth fighting for. Give us Doom, or something else.
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