Last December, Jonathan Majors was found guilty of reckless assault and harassment, and was fired from Marvel Studios. The most important thing is that Majors was held accountable for what he did, but it’s not unreasonable to wonder what his firing means for his character, Kang the Conqueror.
Now, according to The Hollywood Reporter, plans at Marvel are firming up. When the allegations against Majors first came to light, Marvel fans wondered if Kang would be recast, or if future Marvel projects would pivot away from the character completely. In a recent feature on the course corrections going on at Marvel, THR reports that Marvel is choosing the latter option.
“Marvel dropped Majors hours after the conviction and is rewriting those movies, which will now either minimize the character or excise him entirely,” the THR article states. “The first of the new Avengers movies, due out in 2026, was initially titled Avengers: The Kang Dynasty but will be getting a new title to remove the character’s name, though sources say that even before Majors’ conviction, the studio was making moves to minimize the character after Quantumania underperformed, grossing $476 million.”
Rumors and leaks have been circulating for months that The Kang Dynasty had been renamed to Avengers 5, but for the information to appear in THR gives it a new level of credibility. It looks like Kang has been booted from the Marvel Cinematic Universe along with Majors.
Is Marvel recasting Kang?
It’s still possible, but the studio has an exit. The post-credits scene of Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania was striking: thousands of Kangs, all played by Jonathan Majors, cheered in a colosseum as they prepared to take over the multiverse. The scene implied that countless Kangs were about to be unleashed in the MCU.
However, the end of Loki season 2, which came out several months later, presented a much more muted picture. The Kangs are still out there, but the Time Variance Authority’s new mission is to spend eternity eliminating them one by one. It’s an open-ended development, giving Marvel a way to quietly pivot away from the Kang-fueled multiversal war it first teased in the Loki season 1 finale.
As of this writing, Marvel’s website still lists The Kang Dynasty as the title for its next Avengers film. Plus, the THR article notes that Marvel could “minimize” the character instead of writing him out completely, indicating that a recasting is still possible. However, with THR’s sources at Marvel credible enough to go on the record, it’s looking less and less likely that Kang will be a part of the MCU going forward.
How would have Marvel’s Multiverse Saga have gone, if Marvel had cast a different actor from the start? We’ll never know. In the meantime, fans can only wait and see what comes next.
(featured image: Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures)
