In case you thought Marvel was turning a blind eye to its Jonathan Majors problem, think again.
At this year’s annual retreat in Palm Springs, the superhero studio addressed several elephants crowding the proverbial room, from its ongoing VFX problem to its bloated budgets that make it difficult for its expensive films to make a decent profit. But the biggest issue at hand was how Majors, who is currently embroiled in a domestic abuse scandal, would factor into the MCU going forward, if at all.
“Marvel is truly f***ed with the whole Kang angle,” said one dealmaker at Marvel who happens to be privy to the final episode of Loki season 2, per Variety. “And they haven’t had an opportunity to rewrite until very recently [because of the WGA strike]. But I don’t see a path to how they move forward with him.”
Majors’ big character in the MCU — Kang the Conqueror and all his variants, two of which include Loki’s Victor Timely and He Who Remains— is currently slated to be at the center of the cinematic universe’s oncoming slew of interlocking films, series, and the Multiverse Saga as a whole. Avengers: The Kang Dynasty is still on the table, scheduled for a May 1, 2026, theatrical release, but according to inside reports, Marvel isn’t above scrapping it (and Majors).
The studio isn’t afraid of recasts, either. It famously recast Terrence Howard’s Colonel Rhodey with Don Cheadle in Iron Man 2. It also isn’t afraid of changing course with a new leading villain. The issue is that Kang has already made a sizeable presence in the MCU, what with Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania introducing him on the grand scale and planting the seed for his ominous domination going forward.
Then there’s the whole Loki thing. Although Kang the Conqueror isn’t in the series, per se, his variants Victor Timely and He Who Remains are, meaning Kang is still the dominating figurehead ushering the show’s storyline from start to finish.
At the Marvel Studios annual retreat, executives even discussed replacing Majors’ Kang with another prominent Marvel villain, Doctor Doom, which wouldn’t be too far-fetched considering the studio’s reboot of Fantastic Four is on the horizon and Doom is famously the First Family’s arch nemesis.
No decisions have been made, or at least not made public, but it’s becoming increasingly obvious that Majors’ time at Marvel could be coming to an end, and that end may not be as far in the future as we previously thought.