Ant-Man 3 Writer Teases Plans For Variants That Will Top Jonathan Majors' Kang
This post contains spoilers for "Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania."
If you agree that Jonathan Majors' Kang performance was the best part of "Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania," we've got good news and bad news. The bad news (which you should know if you've read past the above spoiler warning) is that the version of Kang you know and love from this movie looks to be dead by the end (or possibly hiding in the past as Victor Timely). The good news is there are a lot more Majors coming your way in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
This shouldn't be news to anyone who stayed for the zany "Quantumania" mid-credits scene, which showed three more Kangs, then a whole stadium full of additional variants hooting and hollering. However, if that informal Kang pep rally wasn't enough to snap you out of MCU fatigue, "Quantumania" writer Jeff Loveness — who will also be handling the script for "Avengers: The Kang Dynasty" — is out in the press, playing hype man for more Kang.
In a new interview with Screen Rant, Loveness confirmed the identities of the three Kangs we see in the mid-credits scene: Immortus, Rama-Tut, and The Centurion. He also discussed the challenge of topping what we've already seen with Kang:
"How do you top what Jonathan did in this movie? That's a big challenge. But also, Kang is a multifaceted character, and that's the beauty of [it]. Immortus and Kang, they're very different guys. They have very different outlooks. Rama-Tut is very different, and The Centurion, and all that. Which version do you do? There's Iron Lad; there's all that stuff. At the end of the day, you don't want to overload the audience, and you don't want it to seem like you're doing 'Nutty Professor II: The Klumps' or something."
Too much of a good Kang?
Loveness added, "You don't want to have a Thanksgiving dinner scene with the Kangs," but I would like to see that. Let them fight over who gets to carve the turkey. He also mentioned He Who Remains, the first version of Kang that Disney+ viewers met in "Loki," and how "Quantumania" has already set a precedent for showing a Kang with a different outlook and characterization. Referring to He Who Remains and the "Quantumania" Kang, Loveness said:
"Okay, you've had the goofy one who's been alone too long. You have the Julius Caesar version of it. [Who] beat that guy? That actually is a great challenge. Who was smart and ruthless enough to take out Kang the Conqueror? That makes me lean forward because we saw how bad this guy was. We saw how rough it was to beat one of these guys, and now there's a thousand of them. Best of luck to Hawkeye! I'm sure War Machine has got it handled."
As the first film in Phase Five of the MCU, "Quantumania" is meant to set the stage for years to come, but its quick drop-off at the box office suggests moviegoers may be losing interest in this franchise a little (or just heeding some poor word of mouth). Anytime you have a TV series that's been going for 15 years — which is essentially what the MCU is — diminishing returns are bound to set in at some point. It's as if the MCU has now become "The Walking Dead," the show once designed to never end.
If there's anything that might help enliven the MCU going forward, it would be Jonathan Majors. Just don't give us too much of a good thang Kang.
"Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania" is in theaters now.