Marvel Studios has reportedly talked about replacing Jonathan Majors as Kang the Conqueror, and the character himself, in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
The news comes from an apocalyptic article from Variety, which takes a deep dive into everything plaguing the powerhouse studio at the moment. “Marvel is truly fucked with the whole Kang angle,” a top dealmaker who has seen the final Loki episode, in which Kang is truly established as the big bad. “And they haven’t had an opportunity to rewrite until very recently [because of the WGA strike]. But I don’t see a path to how they move forward with him.”
Additionally, at the studio’s annual retreat this past September, Marvel creatives and leadership discussed multiple options for fixing the issue. The studio may pivot away from him as a villain despite the conclusion of Loki‘s second season evidently making this even harder to do. If they do that we could see some other big villains replace Kang, like Dr. Doom.
There is also the re-casting route, which gets much easier when you’ve established a multiverse where you can pluck infinite versions of any character out of thing air. Even if they didn’t have that excuse, the studio already has shown a willingness to recast when they swapped Terrence Howard with Don Cheadle in Iron Man 2. Obviously, that’s a far less complicated switch but shows Marvel Studios Kevin Feige is willing to do it.
Majors has, of course, been an issue for a while now with charges of domestic abuse stacking up against him and going to trial soon. The studio has had a policy of wait-and-see for a while now but the actor is an integral piece to the future of the MCU as he’s playing Kang the Conqueror, who has been set up to be the big bad guy in both Ant-Man: Quantumania and Loki. The issues aren’t just with Majors’ legal troubles but also the fact that Quantumania landed with a thud, with Kang not having the same impact that Thanos garnered. That puts them in a very big pickle that execs aren’t sure how to get out of.
Nothing has been decided yet, but with Majors heading to court soon, there’s a decent chance he won’t be part of the MCU’s future going forward.
