Jonathan Majors is set to hit the big screen with his debut portrayal of Kang the Conqueror in Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania. One of the most longstanding villains in Marvel, Kang is set to wreak havoc on the MCU’s heroes for years to come, culminating in the next Avengers saga with movies in 2025 and 2026. While Majors will be bringing to life the complex big bad in his arrival to the MCU, this won't be the first time Majors has appeared in the universe. In fact, his depiction of He Who Remains in the Loki season finale will be a direct variant of Nathaniel Richards, otherwise known as Kang.
So is the exquisite performance he delivered in the season finale the same character we can expect to see in the new Ant-Man movie? Not exactly. That's because Kang is as complicated a character as there is in Marvel with a handful of well-known variants out there, one of which being He Who Remains. With each variant having its own personality and goals, what viewers saw in Majors’ first MCU appearance isn't exactly what we’ll see in Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania. As he famously said in that Loki finale to the titular character and Sylvie (Sophie Di Martino), “If you think I'm evil, just wait till you meet my variants.” Well, now we get to meet them finally.
He Who Remains Is the Least Intimidating Kang Variant
What played out over the final episode of Loki was one of the more memorable monologues in any Marvel project to date as Majors delivered a harrowing expose on who he is, what these multiversal wars are, and why things are hopeless for Loki (Tom Hiddleston) and Sylvie at this moment when they reach the Citadel at the End of Time. It was chilling how sinister He Who Remains came off all while delivering the message in a nonchalant way as he gnawed on an apple. He explains to them that he has been called many names, a direct call to his variants which include Rama Tut, Immortus, and of course, Kang.
A pharaoh in Ancient Egypt, Rama Tut debuted in Fantastic Four #19 (1961). He quickly shows the group how powerful he is by wielding an Ultra Diode Ray from the Year 3000, showcasing his abilities of time travel. Similar to what we see from Majors’ acting chops in Loki, Rama Tut goes through his backstory with the Fantastic Four, explaining how bored he was as Nathaniel Richards in the 31st century and how it propelled him to build a time machine, and become a time looter where with the knowledge of the future he could “become an absolute ruler of mankind.”
A few years later, Kang makes his comic arrival in Avengers #8 (1963) and like Rama Tut before him, walks into the Avengers world with no fear, expressing upon his landing that the weapons pointed at him “are no more than toys” to him. He comes with demands as the heroes quickly gather, a joke from Kang follows that their fast response was unnecessary as “time means nothing” to him. Thor is amazed at how unfazed he is as Iron Man seeks his purpose to which Kang says he's there for conquest as he claims the entire land is his domain. Throughout these variants runs in the comics, including the first appearance of Immortus in The Avengers #10 (1963), their goal is to conquer and they do so with little fear of repercussions as they wield the power of knowledge.
When it comes to He Who Remains, who in the comics isn't a direct Kang variant but does serve as the Time Variance Authority’s director as first seen in Thor #245 (1966), he interacts with Loki and Sylvie out of boredom as he expresses, but he’s also not as dangerous of a threat as the other Kang variants which will be explored in Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantummania. The variant we see in this episode is, as his name suggests, the Kang version who outlasted them all in the first multiversal war which saw all of his aliases “fighting to preserve their world and annihilate the others.” He explained when he harnessed the power of Alioth, the creature seen at the end of time in the series, that it was all he needed to end the fighting. This was also recapped by Miss Minutes in the first episode of Loki.
He Who Remains Introduces Key Terms For the MCU's Future
So what was He Who Remains’ purpose in Loki if he wasn’t what viewers would see in the Kang character? The character’s inclusion carried some serious weight as illustrated by the decision of Sylvie to plunge a knife through him. As he warned them, if they were to kill him it would destroy the sacred timeline, which is the main one that everything the MCU had known at that point had operated on, and as a result, a multiversal war would ensue.
What Loki had established was the importance of the TVA, the group who snipped any deviation, also called a Nexus event, of the timeline as it happened so this foreshadowed-war would never occur again. The stabbing of Majors’ character broke the timeline, created new branches, and opened up the past, present, and future through the shattering of the multiverse. This is what eventually plays out in the films that followed like Spider-Man: No Way Home and Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, with the former highlighting how the past has opened up with Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield reprising their roles as Spidey.
What Makes Kang So Powerful
What makes Kang so powerful is that there's no easy way of dismissing him nor his variants because as Majors explained to Loki, by killing him “an infinite amount of me start another multiversal war and I just end up right back here anywhere. Reincarnation, baby.” As long as there are multiple Kang variants existing in the multiverse, there will always be a war for complete dominance, which is the entire ethos of his makeup.
This is what will make Majors’ MCU debut as Kang in the upcoming Ant-Man movie so important. He will assume the mantle left vacant by Thanos as the overarching big bad, but what will make it even more dangerous is that he can be anywhere at any time in the multiverse. There's a reason the upcoming Avengers saga has the tagline of ‘Kang Dynasty’ and that's because things are about to get quite challenging for the heroes as Ant-Man (Paul Rudd) and The Wasp (Evangeline Lilly) will find out first when Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania kicks off Phase 5.