It’s official: Jonathan Majors will no longer play Kang in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
The news that Marvel Studios was cutting ties with the actor came swiftly after he was found guilty of one count of assault and one count of harassment on December 18. While his defense attorney continues to maintain his innocence, he still faces up to a year in prison when he’s sentenced on February 6.
It might not be surprising that Disney would want to distance itself from Majors, but his removal from the MCU will have a significant impact on its plans moving forward. If we rewind back to the months leading up to Majors’ March 25 arrest, he was at the center of the MCU’s Phase 5; Kang the Conqueror was introduced as a massive threat in the Loki Season 1 finale before serving a crucial role in the first movie of Phase 5, Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania. All of this was seemingly meant to build up to Avengers: The Kang Dynasty, which would no doubt focus on Kang as the new Thanos-level enemy.
So, it would seem that Disney is in quite the difficult spot in regards to the Kang of it all… right?
Well… maybe not completely, especially in a franchise where having different variants of a character is an already-established device.
“I think with Marvel – and we know how this works – the character is much more important than the actor who portrays them,” Jeff Bock, Senior Box Office Analyst at Exhibitor Relations, tells IGN. “...Also, it's not like Jonathan Majors' Kang was a huge hit with fans. His role in the proceedings were very minimal in the grand scheme of things. Yes, it was building to a big finale, but it's still early enough to alter course.”
With Disney no doubt preparing to alter course, let’s take a look at what we know so far, what its options are, and why it may not even be the worst of the MCU’s problems at the moment.
To Keep Kang or Pivot?
Disney hasn’t yet revealed what it will do about the Kang character moving forward, but as Bock notes, there are a couple of ways to push forward from this.
“Disney basically has two options: move forward with a new actor playing Kang, or fast forward and push on without Kang in the alternate storyline, then recast the character somewhere down the road,” he says.
And that’s just if Marvel Studios even wants to keep Kang in the picture, which is up for speculation as well. Variety previously reported that, following Majors’ arrest, Marvel execs were considering pivoting from Kang to Doctor Doom. My own colleagues at IGN have made a strong case for why the MCU should indeed cut Kang the Conqueror rather than trying to recast him.
While we don’t know for sure that that’s the route Disney will take, we do know that the approach for The Kang Dynasty remains very much in flux. In November, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings’ Destin Daniel Cretton stepped away from The Kang Dynasty as director. Shortly after, we learned Loki creator Michael Waldron was taking over writing duties from Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania scribe Jeff Loveness. Interestingly, Waldron is also writing Avengers: Secret Wars, the release meant to close out The Multiverse Saga.
With all those creative changes, calling it The Kang Dynasty might not even be correct anymore; in fact, THR reports that it’s now being referred to as Avengers 5 internally. In short, it’s not as if Marvel hasn’t already been preparing for the possibility of losing Majors.
Plus, Marvel left itself plenty of options with the Loki Season 2 finale – including possibly resetting the MCU at large, as Rosie Knight broke down for IGN. We should also note that there’s precedent in the comics for Ravonna Renslayer usurping Kang, and the Loki Season 2 finale certainly leaves the stage open for her to take over as a new Big Bad.
But let’s go back to that recasting option. There’s precedent for that too, both in the comics and in the industry at large, should Marvel decide to go that route. (Just don’t ask John Boyega to take on the role.)
“The first [examples] that come to mind are Don Cheadle taking over Terrence Howard’s character and Mark Ruffalo taking over for Ed Norton as The Hulk way back in MCU Phase One,” Travis Knox, associate professor, producing, at Chapman University, points out to IGN. “And don’t forget Maggie Gyllenhaal replacing Katie Holmes in Nolan’s Dark Knight Trilogy. There are endless more outside the worlds of Marvel and DC.”
And looking at the source material, the 2021 Kang the Conqueror comic has the multiverse-hopping villain facing off against a younger version of himself, offering another idea of how to branch off from the absence of Majors. Even The Kang Dynasty comic sees Kang teaming up with his son Marcus, who becomes the new Scarlet Centurion, leaving Marvel with yet another pivot option.
With all of that on the table, is the logical conclusion “relax everyone, the MCU is fine”? Not exactly – but don’t blame Kang.
The Least of Disney’s Problems
Even though the loss of a central actor may be a significant obstacle, Knox points out that “Marvel has other, much more significant, issues to deal with.”
“2023 will be looked back upon as the year when it became overwhelmingly accepted that they’ve lost their way,” he says. “[Disney CEO Bob] Iger is right; you can’t expect every film to pass the $1B mark. But this is a much bigger issue.”
“The cohort of students I see every day are part of the generation that grew up salivating for the next [MCU] movie,” he goes on. “And they widely acknowledge they are over it.”
It’s hard to argue with that as we look back at the year both Marvel and Disney at large have had. As Knox alludes to, Disney will end 2023 without a movie crossing $1 billion, something that hasn’t happened since 2014 when you exclude the pandemic years of 2020 and 2021.
Marvel’s only bonafide hit at the box office this year was James Gunn’s MCU swan song Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, which grossed a strong $845 million. But other Marvel movies fared worse: Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania suffered the steepest second-week drop of any MCU movie ever, ending its run with only $476 million worldwide. The Marvels, meanwhile, had the lowest MCU opening of all time, and has managed to pull in just $204 million worldwide since its November 10 opening.
As the industry and fans alike try to figure out why this once incredibly reliable brand has fallen, over-saturation has largely been pointed to as a big reason, with Marvel increasing its output dramatically since the end of the Infinity Saga. Iger himself, who returned as CEO in November 2022 after a brief retirement, has repeatedly pointed to an emphasis on quality over quantity as Disney overall tries to get back on track. The influx of movies and TV shows has placed a significant strain on its VFX workers too, with several of them previously telling IGN it was one of the catalysts that pushed them to get serious about unionizing.
Luckily, the MCU has some time to figure things out. The writers’ and actors’ strikes put a sizable pause on the slate, with the only MCU movie coming out next year being Deadpool 3. Maybe there’s a world where Disney being forced to pivot with Kang is a good thing – after all, some big changes need to be made to get fans excited again.
“Disney needs to right the mothership,” Knox concludes – whether Kang is part of it or not.
Alex Stedman is a Senior News Editor with IGN, overseeing entertainment reporting. When she's not writing or editing, you can find her reading fantasy novels or playing Dungeons & Dragons.
