What is Marvel going to do about its Jonathan Majors crisis? We’ve been asking that question ⏤ and lobbing smart solutions at the studio ⏤ for months now, but Loki’s TVA loyalist Ravonna Renslayer may have finally presented an intriguing solution to the problem.
For now, it seems like the studio is sticking by Majors, but that can quickly change depending on how his court case concludes. This is curious given that Marvel’s life post-Endgame is not going as smoothly as predicted, with the franchise currently caught between a rock and hard place and therefore not in a position to take risks with potentially problematic talent. Given Disney’s handling of the issue thus far, Marvel’s support for Majors might be temporary at most, but other than delaying projects that are set to star the Lovecraft Country actor as the primary villain, what can Marvel do?
For one thing, it can grab the lifeline Loki season 2, episode 3 has thrown it and not let go.
In the closing moments of the third episode, after Sylvie exacts revenge upon Renslayer by sending her to the End of Time, we learn that Miss Minutes knows a big secret about her that will make her very angry. If we take Renslayer’s comic book history into consideration, the obvious answer would be that she was He Who Remains’ partner-in-crime, and was equally involved in setting up the TVA. Given her lust for power, however, she probably demanded the same status as HWR when it came to ruling time itself. And now that we’ve seen how Victor Timely, HWR’s variant, responded when Renslayer suggested a partnership, it isn’t hard to imagine how the creator of the TVA might have reacted when she demanded equal status and powers from him.
But what if — and it’s a big if — Marvel fashions the big secret to be the revelation that Renslayer is actually a variant of He Who Remains? By now, we know that variants don’t necessarily have to look alike, and Marvel isn’t married to being comic book-accurate. We’re also aware of HWR’s loneliness problem; he worked only with his variants in the past, and even that didn’t work out. What if Renslayer was his variant that he fell in love with — if Loki-cest is a thing, then this totally is as well — and after she aimed for the power to rule time, and maybe rejected his romantic advances just like she does with Victor’s, maybe he retaliated by making her forget her biggest ambition? Now, this is a secret that would make Renslayer really angry.
And if Renslayer is a HWR variant, what’s to stop other Kang variants from looking different? If Ralph Fiennes arrives as a truly menacing Kang variant, followed by Jamie Foxx, Gary Oldman, Tom Felton, Christopher Waltz, Viola Davis doubling down on her Amanda Waller vibes, and other variants — let me dream, would you? — wouldn’t that neatly solve Marvel’s Kang problem?
The Kang Council of lookalikes that the post-credits scene of Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania presented can quietly take the back seat as the less dominant variants in comparison – after all, Thanos let his children and subordinates do the dirty work for him before he took the reins in his hand. Heck, armed with this tactic, Marvel can make any unsuspecting character a Kang variant, and we would not see it coming. Avengers: The Kang Dynasty would still keep its name, reap the benefits of the hype around the character Marvel spent months building, and finally attain the Infinity War-level anticipation that completely revolved around the unawareness of what fresh hell awaited our heroes, all while relieving its Jonathan Majors headache.
