At San Diego Comic-Con (SDCC) 2024, Marvel Studios announced the new title of Avengers 5, the next avengers movie will be Avengers: Doomsday and it formally replaced Avengers: The Kang Dynasty. Doctor Doom as the main villain of this avengers movie as well as Avengers: Secret Wars instead Kang. Robert Downey Jr also returns to MCU as Doctor Doom and will be the main villain of the multiversal saga. Ever since the exciting revelation that Robert Downey Jr. (RDJ) will portray Doctor Doom in the next Avengers movie, “Avengers: Doomsday,” fans have been buzzing with questions. The most pressing one being: What happened to Kang and his anticipated storyline in the MCU?
The Story of Kang in the MCU
The story of Kang in the MCU has been concluded, although many fans might not have realized it. When the Multiverse Saga was introduced, Kang and his variants, like Immortus, He Who Remains, and Rama Tut, were central to the narrative. He Who Remains, the major variants of Kang, was brilliantly introduced in the first season of “Loki,” where Jonathan Majors’ performance as Kang was so phenomenal that it became impossible to imagine anyone else in the role.
Kang’s Role in Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania
Then in Ant-Man in the Wasp: Quantumania, the entire story revolved around one of Kang’s variants, Kang the Conqueror, and in the post-credit scene of this movie, we also saw the Council of Kangs, which was lifted exactly from the pages of the comic book. This setup that the Council of Kangs will appear in Avengers Kang Dynasty and the movie will completely set up Kang’s variants, establish the entire focus on these characters. You can say that by now, Kang was well built up, the fans were fully invested in the story, whether people liked this movie or not, but Jonathan Majors as Kang was perfect to everyone, and everyone was very much invested in its story.
The Turning Point: Legal Troubles for Jonathan Majors
However, a major turning point occurred when Jonathan Majors faced assault allegations from his girlfriend, leading to a court case. From here, you can say that Marvel went into panic mode. If Majors were found guilty, Marvel would have no choice but to replace him, which would disrupt Kang’s storyline. Or Marvel have to recast him to continue with the Kang story. To mitigate this uncertainty, Marvel cleverly crafted an ending in “Loki” season two that allowed for both potential outcomes.
Loki’s New Role in the Multiverse
In the season finale of Loki Season 2, Loki becomes the ruler of the multiverse, granting all characters and timelines free will, except for Kang and his variants. This narrative choice made sense both in real life and within the MCU. With Loki ruling the multiverse, everything has changed. he does not allow any timeline to be pruned now, and this multiverse is allowed to grow with free will. with the TVA’s new responsibility being to monitor and control Kang and his variants.
All the timelines branches that are made keep growing, he does not stop them, he only stops Kang and his variants’ free will. And for this, he has now completely transformed the TVA where their responsibility is now only to keep an eye on Kang’s variants. We also see in the ending that Mobius mentions Kang, so in a way, the TVA has kept Kang and his variants under control, because they know as soon as Kang is free, he will start traveling in timelines again, trying to rule the multiverse. The whole TVA together has kept an eye on Kang and his variants and is involved in controlling them.
This is a kind of open ending of Kang’s character where Marvel Studios deliberately did this so that in the future if Jonathan Majors is not proven guilty, then they would say that the TVA is not able to handle Kang and his variants, they are not being controlled, and this story would extend in Avengers Kang Dynasty.
Jonathan Majors’ Legal Outcome and MCU’s Response
Since the court has given its decision, Jonathan Majors was proven guilty, and he got a year in jail, so now they will show that the TVA has easily controlled Kang and all his variants, and now a new threat in the multiverse, Doctor Doom, has arrived, which RDJ is playing.
The Future of Kang’s Story
So this way, Kang’s ongoing story also goes on hold and remains convenient for Marvel in the future, they can resume the same story of Kang anytime they want to continue, but if this Jonathan Majors incident had not happened, then they would not make any changes to the story, maybe they introduce Doctor Doom but would not reveal who is going to play it.
But due to all these events happening in a hurry, they had to change quickly, switch quickly, which will challenge them to start setting up Doctor Doom’s character around quickly, which was already around Kang, and perhaps that’s why they chose RDJ, which already gives them a lot of hype, and this casting also makes sense because the character of Doctor Doom uses a lot of technology like Tony Stark, and on top of that, it’s the multiverse, obviously, existing characters’ variants will exist in different universes.