The conviction of Jonathan Majors on assault charges has thrown the MCU into a bit of chaos as Marvel expectedly fired him afterward. That vacates the role of this phase’s big bad, the multiverse-spanning Kang, which led to a central question: Do you recast Kang with a new actor? Or do you replace Kang as a villain entirely? A new report says, it’s the first one.
According to insider Daniel Richtman, the current plan is to keep Kang around as the villain of Avengers 5 and the follow-up, Avengers: Secret Wars. You may recall that Avengers 5 was previously called The Kang Dynasty, though perhaps if this is true, that may happen again. The report also says that Marvel may have a second villain alongside Kang, though whether that’s a sidekick or a bigger Big Bad, that’s unclear. I would guess it’s the latter.
Of course, if Kang sticks around, that would mean that Jonathan Majors would need to be replaced by a new actor, as I don’t think they’re going to AI deepfake in his performance. There are no fixed choices for a new Kang so far as we know, though a name floated recently, Coleman Domingo, seems to be a popular choice, and when asked, he has seemed open to the idea. Kang should in theory be more able to be recast with a new actor within the lore, given the rules of the multiverse. While it was likely the case Majors was going to play all Kang variants in the storyline, we have seen that the multiverse often means new faces in old roles, ie. three Spider-Men that all do not look like Tom Holland, for one.
I can imagine that it might have been too much work to totally scrap whatever plans there were for a Kang-based Avengers double-feature storyline just because of Majors. Simply recasting the role with a new actor is likely easier that reworking two entire films and the end of the entire arc of a phase.
As for the second villain, I have to believe that is likely to be Doctor Doom or Galactus, probably introduced in the upcoming Fantastic Four movie, as both villains have longtime connections to that family. And whatever villain appears there, when Kang is no doubt defeated, we are probably headed into a new era where they are the main threat. It’s hard to believe someone as important as Doom or Galactus would show up in one or two of these movies, be vanquished, and that’s the end of them.
Doom seems the more likely option given that he is intimately involved in the Secret Wars storyline in the comics. Not that they couldn’t do it without him, but it would be a clearly perfect time to start building up that famous character after he may or may not prove to be the villain in the Fantastic Four movie. He’s a key piece of the Secret Wars puzzle and I would be shocked if he was not in it.
We’ll wait and hear more rumors later, and likely nothing official for a good long while.
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