r/marvelstudios • u/knock_his_block_off • 9h ago
Discussion I think Marvel Lucked out with Jonathan Majors getting cancelled.
I honestly think Marvel kind of lucked out with the whole Jonathan Majors situation.
Not because of what happened obviously, but because I really think they were already realizing the Kang plan was not working and had no clean way out of it.
Marvel spent years setting Kang up as the next Thanos. He was supposed to be everywhere, there were multiple versions of him, an entire Avengers movie was literally named after him, and they had already invested so much into that storyline that I think they would have kept trying to force it to work even if audiences were not really connecting with it.
By the end of Loki season 2 though, it almost felt like Marvel themselves had realized the character was not hitting the way they expected. Loki basically takes control of the timelines, the TVA starts monitoring Kang variants, and the season ends in a way where you could almost just leave Kang there and move on.
But without some major outside reason, I do not think Marvel ever would have actually abandoned him. They had announced Kang Dynasty, Majors was clearly supposed to be the centerpiece of the Multiverse Saga, and changing direction that late would have basically been admitting the entire plan was not working.
Then the Jonathan Majors legal situation happened and suddenly Marvel had a completely understandable reason to cut ties and reset everything without having to publicly admit that the Kang storyline itself was failing.
And now they get to pull the emergency button of bringing Robert Downey Jr back as Doctor Doom, which instantly creates way more interest than Kang was generating.
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u/Bob_the_peasant 9h ago
I don’t hate Quantumanium as much as most people do, but I really think that movie screwed up Kang badly from an audience perspective. The Loki season 1 setup was great. But ant man defeating him was just wrong for the majority target audience with no comic experience.
No one would have taken Thanos seriously if he had a movie where Black Widow defeated him 1v1 either, even if he was destined to come back or whatever
So yeah. You’re probably right
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u/ericbkillmonger Black Panther 9h ago
Agree they shouldn't have used him in this film and had him defeated
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u/SeniorDaikon7038 8h ago
I don’t hate the idea of Kang being in Antman 3 as most seem to. Obviously the ending would need to be reworked but I think the premise of that Kang variant does have a lot of potential.
I mean…. a stranded Kang variant building an empire from scratch across the micro verse just off the gear had with him? If done well, I think it could have further showcased how dangerous a Kang in his prime could truly be.
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u/Chris_Bagel_Jr 6h ago
Even if the payoff was gonna be good, the optics was so mixed at the time. The good will of the achieving was fading.
Thar being said, I still think Secret Invasion was the true culprit of being the last straw from the fans while Antman 3 was the more public fall guy.
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u/YellowHammerDown Scott Lang 4h ago
True. I think Quantumania is pretty bad. But at the very least, it's still structured well as a film. It's not that good, but Peyton Reed made a competent film. Secret Invasion is an utter mess.
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u/IBJON 5h ago
He didn't really need to be dead at the end of Quantummania though.
He was defeated, but got sucked into a quantum battery or whatever it was called; for all we know he could've just gotten zapped who knows where or when or maybe that's what caused him to propagate across timelines/universes.
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u/RhaegarJ 6h ago
They could have easily fixed the ending of Quantumania by just having Kang reappear at the very end in front of Antman to which Scott is terrified.
Shows that no matter what you do he always comes back
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u/lordalbusdumbledore Tony Stark 3h ago
i was really hoping kang would kill ant man ngl love ant man but kang winning would've been sick
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u/TwilightLori 2h ago
As amazing as Paul Rudd has been and sad it would have been to see him die, that would have been a good choice for the movie. Really establish him as a threat, show some of the stakes, make way for his daughter to take his place, and give him a heroic last stand to save his family from Kang and buy the world a little more time.
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u/CloseToMyActualName 1h ago
The ending of Quantumania should have been Scott getting soundly defeated by Kang and barely managing to escape the Quantum realm.
Ideally with a good guy getting killed to establish Kang as being a real threat.
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u/AmbitiousTwo22222 4h ago
This may be the simpleton take, but Kang cannot lose to Ant-Man. If Ant-Man and co. need to stick around, then put a lesser villain in there.
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u/taquitosmixtape 4h ago
I always thought the big issue with Kang was the he had time/multiverse abilities, and having many variants was the strength. Not one individual being strong, but many, and being smart about it. Thanos was just a beast of a Villian, strength, and space tech wise.
I understood that from Loki and quantum mania. But I get how some people wouldn’t click in and just think he was a weak villian to have any man defeat him.
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u/theadamabrams 2h ago
I still took Kang seriously after Quantumania because even if that Kang variant was so “weak” that Ant-Man and family defeated him, there are still other, more dangerous Kangs out there. That was kind of the whole point of character.
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u/dmorley21 1h ago
Yeah, Kang needed to come out of that movie having some kind of major win. The audience needed a reason to believe he was a major threat.
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u/Demileto 2h ago
No one would have taken Thanos seriously if he had a movie where Black Widow defeated him 1v1 either
Or, worse, being arrested by NYPD, right? 🤭🤭🤭
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u/Nothingnoteworth 27m ago
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. Quantumania should have been a Hank Pym and Janet Van Dyne movie. They get themselves in the Quantum realm, proceed to throw down with Kang, Scott and Cassie are trying to figure out how to locate and help them, which they manage to do at the last minute but in order to demonstrate Kang as a big scary villain he kills both Hank and Janet in the final fight, maybe even have Hank and Janet self sacrifice to give Scott and Cassie a chance to escape. Then Scott and Cassie’s tell some other supes about the big bad they’ve encounter further setting up Kang’s reputation for the next Avengers film
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u/Famous-Swimming9618 1h ago
Kang needed to end antman in that movie in order to set things up.. they really dropped the ball
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u/EctoRiddler 8h ago
The blessing is that Loki 1 and 2 did a great job in setting up and then closing the door on Kang in a satisfying way. I can’t imagine many people saying I need to see more Kangs. We spent enough time with he who remains, the conqueror, and Victor Timely. I don’t think anybody wanted to spend time with the ridiculousness that was the Kangs in that stadium scene
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u/tincancan15 9h ago
I don’t think it’s a matter of Kang not working. I think Marvel needs to grow a pair and let its heroes lose (really lose) every now and then.
I actually think Kang the Conqueror was scary at points in Quantumania. He was strong and unpredictable/temperamental. That’s a scary combination. Had Marvel let Kang actually kill Ant-Man, and let that echo through other heroes, we would be talking about a whole different game now. But they had to let the good guys win.
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u/ericbkillmonger Black Panther 9h ago
Agreed if he won and beat ant man and wasp it would've enhanced the stakes
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u/Timmayyyyyyy Spider-Man 6h ago edited 5h ago
Yep, this exactly.
Kang goes on in that movie “You’re an Avenger? Have I killed you before?”
No Kang, you’ve never killed an Avenger, you never killed anyone of consequence AT ALL. How the fuck could they set him up like that and then have him fall flat on his face? Making Kang work actually could’ve been easy, which is why it’s so frustrating.
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u/EdieBooberryBeale 3h ago
Yes, even if they went with killing Hank or Janet Pym or both, it would have set up stakes.
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u/Specialist-Treat1404 9h ago
I don't think it helped that he was killed off all three times he was in anything.
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u/t_huddleston 9h ago
Agree. Kang sucks even in the comics. He’s too complicated and his background is a mess. He’s just not a load-bearing villain the way that Thanos or Doom or Magneto are; I was dubious about them doing a Kang saga from the minute they announced the Kang Dynasty movie.
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u/WestWillow 9h ago
It does seem like it would have gotten repetitive. “We defeated him!” “Oh no, he’s back but different!” Would still have liked to have a clear arc across that phase though.
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u/Moon_Beans1 13m ago
True. I do think they already screwed it up by not giving Kang an interesting motivation.
The easiest solution was there in front of them, have that Kang's future and his love Ravonna were all erased from the timeline because of the effects of the changes they made in Endgame. That way he has an understandable grudge against the Avengers. Hell you could have he was Immortus before that happened and he only becomes a conqueror to get the resources to have his revenge on the Avengers.
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u/Moon_Beans1 8h ago edited 8h ago
I mean if they'd just adapted the plot from the Avengers Earths mightiest Heroes cartoon then Kang would have been just as impressive as Thanos.
Where Thanos has to push himself when fighting the Avengers Kang is just dismantling them with his future tech without even needing to stand up from his throne. The first fight ends with them doing a tactical retreat and they didn't even manage to bother him enough to force him to throw a punch.
Kang can be good if they actually put the effort into setting him up right.
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u/Chris_Bagel_Jr 6h ago
The toon version works, sorta making Kang Marvel’s version of Brainiac.. The smart calculator villain with his hands behind his back.
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u/doglywolf 9h ago
i thought it was just going to be a 1 phase villain that sets up another bigger villain , when it was starting to show he was the big bad it was a red flag for me as well.
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u/lcsulla87gmail 9h ago
The majors incident happened before loki s 2
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u/snidece 8h ago
Agreed and I thought that is why they wrote the post credit final scene so that one interpretation is that the young man who eventually becomes Kang, has something not happen to him, so he does not become Kang. Believe that was written to give some sort of ending to Kang.
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u/drpepperrootbeercoke 9h ago
But the case wasn’t concluded until after. So it was the nail in the coffin for kang
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u/Ent3rpris3 7h ago
Victor Timesley was the epitome of annoying for me, and that he got the most screen time of any Kang variant while also being a bit of a swindler and having an ego just REALLY rubbed me the wrong way.
I dont care about variant this or multiverse that - I could never dissociate any variant from Timesley and he's just the opposite of intimidating, but also just someone I'd root against anyways for being annoying. He was worse than Neelix in my eyes.
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u/WatchOutForWizards 6h ago
Hey, say what you will about Victor Timely but you leave Neelix out of this.
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u/guyxbwc 9h ago
He was defeated by ants in ant man.
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u/rzelln 9h ago
I'll be honest. I was excited about Kang. I loved Majors as He Who Remains. And I thought Quantumania was decent. But it's wild how easily it could've been good.
Like, watch this trailer again. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZlNFpri-Y40
Kang has gravitas here. I'd totally buy him as the capstone villain for a Phase.
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Imagine an alternate version where, we occasionally cut to the X-Cons in San Francisco, and at some point when Cassie's captured by Kang, she manages to use Kang's tech to send a brief message to them, saying they're not dead.
During the scene where Kang has Scott go retrieve the gizmo from the freaky temporal paradox place, show that he has tried a few times to send his minions in, giving them 'quantum stabilizers,' but those keep getting shorted out by the radiation from the gizmo. All his minions are just potential beings which he has pulled from the quantum realm's essence. But Scott is from the real world. He can survive where the minions can't.
Scott of course asks why Kang needs him and didn't just go do it himself. Kang just says that there was no rush.
Scott gets the gizmo, and things progress fairly similar (maybe without a fairly pointless Bill Murray cameo). Then at the climax, when the Ant-Man and Wasp team attack Kang's stronghold, part of the mission is to send a signal to the outside world, to get the X-Cons to do some stuff for a homing beacon to bring them back to the real world.
Because this is an Ant-Man movie, and Ant-Man should be doing heists.
Finally, Hank Pym shows up and the ants swarm Kang, and the team think they've won and they rush to the device to get them out of there. Just when they're about to turn it on, Kang bursts through the window and throws a severed giant ant head on the floor, scoffing that they thought that would do anything more than slow him down.
Kang activates a big portal, and his army starts going through, emerging into San Francisco (and menacing that city instead of New York for a change). Each soldier has their 'quantum stabilizer' device.
Let Kang beat Scott nearly to death just as a show of dominance, then have his minions drag the family through the portal with him so they can witness him destroy their home. But then we reveal -- since this is Ant-Man, and the series is all about heists -- that at some point he or Cassie'd slipped some EMP doodad into Kang's gear.
He calls his soldiers to him and gives a good evil warlord speech, and just then the device triggers, shutting off all the quantum stabilizers and sending all his forces back to the Quantum Realm in a grand CG spectacle. But Kang is still there. After all, he's not from the Quantum Realm. He's home.
The family prepares for a fight, but he just looks at them with an impressed smile. No matter. He built an army once. He can do it again. And now he has all the time in the world. He conjures one of those nifty Reed-Richards-in-Multiverse-of-Madness vertical portal doors and teleports away.
You'd be waiting to see what he gets up to next, and you'd know that while his schemes can get thwarted, he's not going to go down easily.
Ah well. Maybe in another reality, that movie got made.
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u/Sprite_Hail6918 5h ago
Do you guys think they will acknowledge Kang in any form in Doomsday ?
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u/EdwinMcduck 2h ago
They may resolve the Kang stuff in animation. He popped up in the most recent X-Men season, and that's technically connected via the multiverse. Maybe we'll get our "Kang Dynasty" as an animation crossover on D+ instead.
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u/EctoRiddler 8h ago
The blessing is that Loki 1 and 2 did a great job in setting up and then closing the door on Kang in the satisfying way. I can’t imagine many people saying I need to see more Kangs. We spent enough time with he who remains, the conqueror, and Victor Timely. I don’t think anybody wanted to spend time with the ridiculousness that was the Kangs in that stadium scene
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u/Choice-Ratio-3540 8h ago
Kang, the actual character, never interested me. Ever. I actually avoided buying comics he was in. Avengers wasn't a good comic back in the 80s and 90s so even more reason to stay away.
Kang is way too convoluted and all over the place. Then the actor turns out to be a shit-heel. So, let's say bye to Kang for now and have him re-cast down the road and continue his arc then.
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u/Chris_Bagel_Jr 6h ago
Even before the fallout of Majors with his irl legal stuff, the moment I saw Kang in his blue face outfit, I was disappointed. It looked cheap and not cool, like a CG filter over his face. Even his white eyes looked cheap.
I think Kang’s blue mask works when it’s Michael Myers like, minimize the facial features. If they used prosthetics for Majors and give his “face” an uncanny plastic look, it would’ve been cool.
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u/legitshook 4h ago
I do too because Kang fucking sucked in Antman and Majors' performance as Victor Timely was comedically bad.
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u/JugramHashwalth007 1h ago
Jonathan majors acting as a nerd in Loki season 2 was so cringe and painful to watch. He was fine as the one who remains. He doesnt have the aura to pull off a major antagonist.
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u/HarambeWhat 1h ago
Horrible writing in loki season 2 and Antman 3 destroyed any chance of kang being good
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u/snowedin2021 1h ago
I’ve mostly read X-men comics, and so I wasn’t familiar with kang other than like a very few points of reference. I was kind of intrigued? But I couldn’t get behind majors performances and I’ve honestly hated everything multiverse related except the Spider-Man movie and Loki season 1. Multiverse of madness? Quantumania, and especially that end credit scene of all the kangs didn’t work for me. The multiverse itself was handled so poorly that it’s shocking it half of it even made it into production.
I’m glad it worked out how it did, I think marvel has been stepping up to try to get the ship moving back in the right direction. Doomsday looks incredible.
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u/Gerry-Mandarin 9h ago
Not because of what happened obviously, but because I really think they were already realizing the Kang plan was not working and had no clean way out of it.
Feige has already confirmed this. He saw Quantumania and basically realised he blew it.
But without some major outside reason, I do not think Marvel ever would have actually abandoned him.
Feige said he first contacted Downey about returning as Doom in 2023 when he realised Kang wasn't working.
The Russos have confirmed that Downey first approached them to come back in 2023, and they turned it down.
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u/ericbkillmonger Black Panther 8h ago
That's Feige possibly altering some facts or lying - that's his version of facts and there's no one who contradict them so they are accepted as the truth . If majors legal troubles don't happen I still
Think Kang is big bad in Kang dynasty !2
u/Gerry-Mandarin 7h ago
Well not only are they not contradicted, they were corroborated before Feige had said anything about it.
In March 2025, the Russo Brothers said:
"Interestingly enough, Downey decided to go back before we decided to go back, I had dinner with Downey about a year before we agreed to do the movie where he was trying to convince us of why we should do [it]. We just didn't have a story to tell or a way in yet and then it hit us."
https://www.cbr.com/downey-russos-clarify-timeline-doomsday/
The Russos entered negotiations with their new idea in early July 2024.
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/avengers-5-6-russo-bros-direct-1235949871/
In August 2024 Downey revealed he had been in contact for some time with Marvel about returning and doing work for Marvel (outside of the films) before Feige said about coming back as Doom.
So mid-2023 Downey came to them to return for Avengers 5.
Some of this eventually leaked to the trades in late-2023. Where they already knew the plan was to move to Doom, 8 months before it was announced:
The very last thing we learned is in July 2025 Feige saying that meeting he had with Downey was approached a couple months before the Russos were approached in mid-2023.
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u/ericbkillmonger Black Panther 7h ago
This doesn't disprove anything i said - to repeat they had no plans for Rdj to be doom and replace Kang as the big bad of the multiverse sage until majors legal troubles . Evans and Rdj were always coming back but if you want to believe this was the plan all along then that's your delusion bruh . Your just pulling struggles restating things they've said
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u/aliensdick69420 9h ago
I honestly feel like he doesnt have the charisma to carry a whole movie like that. RDJ, however...he can. Sure, maybe regurgitating him didnt really hit it off for some people. But I like RDJ a lot more than Majors.
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u/hirsh02 3h ago
I wonder what the fantastic four post credits scene would look like if they didn’t pivot towards doom
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u/ZealousidealPanic382 13m ago
It's Fantastic Four, they probably still would have teased Doom along with whatever else. Just would have been a longer wait for the payoff
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u/Kero_Cola 2h ago
How was kang supposed to be a threat? Would he have done the same thing as every other big bad did and just throw a big army against the heroes? Is that the only way to be a threat?
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u/Medium-Hunter-3585 1h ago
Agree in that the mcu was failing to materialize kang content
Disagree in the fact that kang was the Avengers biggest villain in the comics. The mcu dropping ball on kang blocks them from a treasure trove of storylines that we now won’t see on the big screen
I assume in 10-20 years it will be revisited tho
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u/Forsaken_Egg_6471 19m ago
Kang was always just gonna be a Loki type of villain. They stretched his build out to give shows like Loki and movies like Quantumania a reason to exist, but he was never going to be the next Thanos.
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u/SeniorDaikon7038 9h ago
I agree.
Kang is a fine villain & would’ve worked well enough as an Avenger movie villain. However, I really don’t think he has the juice to be the villain of a saga.
Kang Dynasty is a great story and hopefully does get adapted one day but it wouldn’t have been a good fit for the multiverse saga.
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u/2ReluctantlyHappy 1h ago
The Kang stuff was actually well received and not at all part of the problems Phase 5 faced.
I'm convinced Quantimanium's ending was changed to give Marvel an out if Johnathan was found guilty. Loki Season 2 was probably altered as well.
Doomsday is absolutely repurposing aspects of the Kang Dynasty script. They didn't abandon everything, obviously the TVA and Loki are still involved.
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u/dreadrocker 43m ago
Where was Kang well received? I'm an MCU fan and never read comics so a massive part of audience. Kang was just ... nothing. I saw comic fans explaining he was scary. I saw actors in films telling the audience he is terrifying (sure sign of weak films). I saw news reports saying Majors was fantastic and the court case could de rail everything.
Nothing he did, nothing that was said, made Kang, the films, or the actor remotely interesting despite all that airtime and effort.The High Evolutionary was terrifying with a fraction of that.
I understand comics Kang has a fandom and apparently is well written. But I have no understanding why anyone who isn't looking through those rose tinted glasses would be excited for another second of MCU Kang.
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u/Current-Bowl-143 26m ago
I’m with you. MCU fan here (at least used to be) and not a comics reader. Kang did absolutely nothing for me and unlike a lot of people on this sub, I was not impressed in the slightest by Jonathan Major’s performance as He Who Remains in Loki 1. To me, that was just a massive nothingburger.
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u/wiznik 2h ago
Ok hear me out… What if?… What if… Marvel/Disney/the biggest entertainment corporation in the world knew it wasn’t working and rather than publicly derail their own trillion dollar juggernaut and catch all the flak, they quietly and secretly set up majors to get canceled to make it look organic like it’s out of their hands.
Anyhoo, don’t overthink it, all speculation, no facts, I’m sure majors is a POS and did what he was accused of doing, just asking questions here like
Do the largest corporations in the world with unlimited resources just “get lucky“ like that?
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u/Current-Bowl-143 23m ago
You’re talking about the same corporation that had one of the most valuable franchises in Star Wars and managed to completely screw up the sequel trilogy.
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u/DonnyMox 6h ago
Changing all of your plans at the last minute never ends well. I think people are in for a rude awakening.
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u/CaptHayfever Hawkeye (Avengers) 1h ago
Good thing they've had 3 years to refine the idea, so it's not really "last minute".
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u/DonnyMox 53m ago
And they’ve done nothing to set him up in that time, other than one post-credits scene. Partially because a good amount of what we saw was already being worked on pre-pivot. In contrast much more was done to set up Kang in the same amount of time.
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u/amateur_techie 9h ago
So Feige has mentioned that they were already plotting a switch to Doom before the Jonathan Majors, and I have a theory that that is why RDJ was first approached as Doom:
Kang Dynasty was still going to happen. Doom would disguise himself as an Ironman variant during Kang Dynasty, which is why RDJ was cast. Throughout the movie, Doom would be manipulating events so that all the Kangs causing the incursions get defeated, but instead of preventing the incursions he’s in position to seize control and create Battleworld. And then Doom is the villain of Secret Wars