Marvel Shot Itself in the Foot With That Kang Scene in Quantumania
Getting rid of it could have saved the creators from the big trouble they are in now.
Marvel Studios is currently in a really tough situation regarding the whole Jonathan Majors situation.
He is supposed to be a big part of Phase 6 of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, reprising his role as Kang the Conqueror, the next big villain after Thanos, in Avengers: The Kang Dynasty.
However, in the wake of recent allegations of harassment and assault, his involvement in future Marvel films remains unclear, though no official statements have been made regarding the matter.
And all this uncertainty about one of their biggest new stars could have been avoided if not for one scene.
In the mid-credits scene of Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, viewers are introduced to several variants of Kang from across the multiverse who are attending a meeting about the death of one of their own at the end of the movie.
While the scene mostly focuses on three variants of the character, it later shows literally thousands more.
And given the recent events, the biggest problem is that they all share the same face, which makes any possible recasting of the character extremely difficult.
This is especially strange since the Loki TV series showed fans several variations of the titular character, all played by different actors.
Apart from the main Loki, portrayed by Tom Hiddleston, there was his female variant Sylvie (Sophia Di Martino), Kid Loki (Jack Veal), Boastful Loki (DeObia Oparei), Classic Loki (Richard E. Grant) and even an Alligator Loki.
If the same treatment had been given to Kang, recasting the problematic actor could have been done in the blink of an eye.
The writers could have even kept the main variants portrayed by Majors, as there are three Loki variants portrayed by Hiddleston (the protagonist of the TV show, President Loki, and the one killed by Thanos).
All they had to do was avoid having thousands of nearly identical variants cheering at the end of the scene, as it added nothing to the table but limited the possibilities of showing the different iterations of the character in the future.
Fans feel that Majors' time in the MCU is over, as it is highly unlikely that the studio will keep such a problematic actor in such a big role.
The most obvious turn of events is that they will do to Kang what Warner Bros. did to Grindelwald in the Fantastic Beasts franchise, when they replaced Johnny Depp with Mads Mikkelsen without any explanation.