Leaked production details on Jonathan Majors’ return as Kang may just confirm what Marvel experts have been expecting

Although Kang‘s reign of terror has really only just begun, and we have a lot left of the Multiverse Saga (for better or for worse) still to come, Marvel lovers can’t help but keep one eye on the not-so-distant future as the MCU barrels towards its next big crossover event movies, 2026’s Avengers: The Kang Dynasty and 2027’s Avengers: Secret Wars. At this point, it’s far too early for any plot details to come out, but perhaps the latest leak at least allows us to make one big inference that’ll please comic book readers.

Following Jonathan Majors’ role as Victor Timely in Loki season two, the next confirmed re-appearance for the MCU’s current big bad is these Avengers movies, but while Kang Dynasty isn’t quite ready to go before cameras just yet, we do now know the film and its sequel’s working titles. It’s been confirmed that Marvel’s codename for these highly spoilerphobic productions is “Apple Pie 1” and “Apple Pie 2.”

These working titles may seem totally innocuous, but they likely have ties to a Carl Sagan quote from his seminal Cosmos TV series: “If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.” In the context of Marvel, this likely refers to Kang the Conqueror’s aims to tear down the universe and rebuild it as he sees fit. In this way, then, the codenames may just offer our first clue as to how these films will draw from the source material.

In the original 1984 Secret Wars storyline, the Beyonder kidnapped various heroes from Earth and relocated them to Battleworld, a realm of his own creation, in order to force them to fight for his amusement. Meanwhile, in 2015’s event of the same name, a new Battleworld was introduced, this time being the merged vestiges of Earth-616 and Earth-1610 (aka the Ultimate universe) after the two realities are caught in an Incursion.

Going by these loaded “Apple Pie” titles, it seems likely that Kang will reshape reality to create a Battleworld of his own, one that’s perhaps made up of Earth-616 (or 99999) and other cinematic Marvel universes, allowing for crossovers galore. But, just like the best deserts, we’re going to have to wait to enjoy the calorific goodness of Avengers: The Kang Dynasty and Secret Wars.