We’ve known for quite some time that Jonathan Majors would be playing the villainous Kang the Conqueror in Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, the third film in Peyton Reed’s trilogy about Scott Lang (Paul Rudd), Hope van Dyne (Evangeline Lilly), and their crew of MCU misfits. This film is particularly notable because it’s the first to feature one of Marvel’s most legendary villains, the ever-confusing time traveler, Kang the Conqueror.
As with so many first looks at new characters and designs from the Marvel Cinematic Universe, this one has hit social media as a photo of a shirt worn by the crew, which features a battle-damaged Ant-Man helmet and the reflection of a menacing figure clad in purple and green (the traditional colors of so many Marvel villains created in the 1960s).
It’s especially cool because even from this blurry first look at Kang, it’s clear that we’re getting a very comics accurate look for him on the big screen. It also drives the point even further home that Majors’ He Who Remains, the eccentric, powerful weirdo at the end of all things in the season finale of Loki, was indeed a very different variant of Kang himself.
Kang the Conqueror is one of Marvel Comics’ oldest villains, both in continuity and just in terms of publication history. His actual history gives Den of Geek writers an utter migraine every time we try to unpack it, but he may or may not be a 31st Century descendant of Reed Richards of the Fantastic Four fame who became a time travel enthusiast, a pharaoh in Ancient Egypt (as Fantastic Four villain Rama-Tut), a weird old time wizard named Immortus, and in between as an Avengers-bothering baddie known as Kang.
How long has he been kicking around the Marvel Universe of the comics? He first showed up way back in 1963 in Fantastic Four #18 as Rama-Tut before taking on his more familiar Kang form a year later in Avengers #8, both by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby. Considering that the MCU leaned directly into the weirdness of all the potential variants of Kang across the timelines (there’s also a Council of Cross-Time Kangs in the comics, so put that in your purple and green pipe and smoke it) with Majors’ Loki appearance, we don’t expect them to go particularly easy on us with him in Quantumania.
Check out a peek at his screen look here…
Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania opens on July 28, 2023, so unless he shows up in a post-credits scene somewhere along the way, it’s probably going to be a little while before we get a better look at Kang. But at least for now fans can rest assured that he’ll be faithful to his original Jack Kirby design.
The full schedule of upcoming MCU Phase 4 movies can be found here.