By this point, it’s less of an opinion and more of a fact that Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania was not the strongest possible start to Marvel’s Phase Five — just check the awful reviews, the disappointing box office, and its bizarrely delayed Disney Plus release for evidence. While Jonathan Majors‘ Kang the Conqueror is perhaps the most popular part of the threequel, maybe he should never have been in the movie in the first place, however. What if Kang instead made his big cinematic debut in… The Marvels?
That’s the intriguing “What If…?” being posed by Redditor u/Dependent_Ad_7056 on the r/MarvelStudios sub. The revolutionary thinker suggests that many of the complaints about Quantumania‘s plot, including the ridiculousness of such a fearsome villain being defeated by a bunch of giant ants, would’ve been neatly sidestepped if Kang had instead been held off until The Marvels and he’d literally picked on someone his own size — like Brie Larson‘s Carol Danvers.
As the OP argued, “he would have been treated like a bigger threat if he got beat by Captain Marvel, Monica and Kamala instead of Ant-Man, the Wasp and a lot of ants.”
While the replies in this thread include some spirited defenses of Hank Pym’s smart arts and their heroic feat of KO-ing Kang — these folks thought it was a natural part of the superhero genre that the hero has to defeat the bad guy in his own movie — others agreed that a different play for Kang’s debut should’ve been made. u/ProjectDarkInfinity went so far as to suggest that repeating the Thanos play would’ve made more sense, with Kang remaining in the shadows until Avengers: The Kang Dynasty.
Elsewhere, u/ZoeCornelia pitched that Kang shouldn’t have been defeated at all in his opening film appearance, whether that be in Ant-Man 3 or Captain Marvel 2 or wherever, as seeing him bested so soon causes his reputation to take a hit. So maybe it wasn’t specifically the fault of those pesky ants after all? That’s right, I’m calling for the fandom to un-cancel those ants.
The debate of how the MCU is handling Kang is only going to heat up as the Multiverse Saga develops. It’s still vaguely possible there will be a cameo from the Conqueror in The Marvels, though, once it arrives this Nov. 10.
