This Fan Theory Is the Perfect Tool to Save MCU Amid Jonathan Majors Scandal

Summary:

• Kang the Conqueror is set up to become the new main antagonist in the MCU this Phase.
• Jonathan Majors, the Kang actor, became too toxic to work with, and there’s no way to proceed with him.
• Recasting Kang is the only optimal choice, and the MCU canon provides a lore explanation for it.

After Endgame, the MCU faced a great challenge: it needed a new villain who would both raise the stakes higher than the Mad Titan and wouldn’t appear too bizarrely overpowered. The studio found a great solution: building upon the topic of multiverse and variants, the MCU introduced the Kangs, including the new Big Bad Guy, Kang the Conqueror.

Marvel spent years setting up the Kang plotline…and then, a new problem arose.

What Went Wrong with the Kangs?

Kang the Conqueror was supposed to become the new Thanos — the ultimate villain of this Phase. Several movies and TV shows set up the events of The Kang Dynasty, and in the latest episode, Loki finalized the build-up to Kang’s conquest in the upcoming Avengers installment…and now, it seems like it was all for nothing.

Jonathan Majors, the actor who portrays Kang, found himself in quite a predicament: amid several accusations of domestic violence and assault, he’s buried in lawsuits and became a toxic actor to work with. As one of Marvel's executives eloquently put it, the studio is now “truly f*cked,” especially, as Loki finalized the Kang set-up.

There is no way for the MCU to keep working with Jonathan Majors, and there’s no other Kang. Some reports even claim that Marvel eyes replacing Kang with Dr. Doom as the new main antagonist, but that would just be anticlimactic at this point. It seems like there’s no easy way out on this one; except apparently, there is.

Why Not Just Recast Kang?

Recasting Kang appears to be the least painful and most obvious solution: it would allow the MCU to proceed as planned while not dealing with Majors’s toxic reputation. Many people deem recasting a terrible idea since the actor has already appeared in several MCU entries — but in fact, it’s not even half as bad of a plan.

As one Reddit user pointed out, while in Dr. Strange And The Multiverse Of Madness, we saw that variants of Dr. Strange and Peggy Carter looked exactly like our “canon” versions of them, the MCU canon also allows for entirely different variants. Remember what Spider-Man: No Way Home and Loki did?

In No Way Home, we had three completely different variants of Peter Parker all co-existing in the same universe. They had nothing in common apart from each of them being Spider-Man. Later, Loki provided an in-depth explanation of the variant phenomenon which established that variants don’t have to look or act alike at all.

The MCU already has the solution it’s frantically searching for — the easiest and least costly one. Recasting Kang is the only right way to move on without messing up the entire Phase and ruining the long and tedious build-up.

Source: Reddit