While Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania is receiving mixed reviews, Jonathan Majors’ portrayal of Kang the Conqueror has been popular among Marvel fans. This is a good thing since Kang is being setup as the final boss of The Multiverse Saga. As we’re going to see a lot of the guy, it’s better if we actually enjoy the character. Phase Five has given us some of the least-liked MCU projects of all time, and the latest saga has yet to win over some of the most diehard fans with the most common criticism aimed at Quantumania underutilizing the time-traveling villain.
Kang is one of Marvel Comics’ most prominent villains, and different variations of the baddie have popped up all over the Multiverse, including He Who Remains, our first onscreen introduction to the character in Loki. If the MCU’s Kang is anything like it is in the comics, we’re going to see a lot of him going forward, literally. The Conqueror is a destroyer of worlds — you didn’t expect him to have just one variant, did you?
With an expansive comic history dating back to the early 1960s, Kang has a number of forms he’s taken over the years. It leads to one question:
How many Kangs are there?
Honestly, there are a lot of Kang variants across the vast Multiverse, and we’ve done our best in the past to chronicle every form the villain has taken throughout his history. We have the original Kang from the 31st century, his ancient Egyptian counterpart, a businessman Kang named Mr. Gryphon, small-town mayor Victor Timely, and the MCU Kang. There are Kangs spliced with other powerful Marvel figures, a Kang with an Iron Man suit who calls himself Iron Lad, the Council of Kangs, the Council of Cross-Time Kangs, a Kang called Immortus who exists outside of time, and even a crossover Star Trek Kang.
If this seems like an overwhelming amount of Kangs, you’d be right. However, given our previous list and some thought, we’ve determined there’s roughly 22 total Kang variants across Marvel media. The number may seem random, but we arrived at this number by counting our We Got This Covered timeline of Kangs (including each amalgam Kang and the Council of Cross-Time Kangs), and including a few obscure variants like the above Star Trek Kang, several Immortus variants, and the Kang of animated Marvel cartoons.
There’s no official list of all of Kang’s variants, and everyone’s methodology might differ, but we can all agree on one thing: There are plenty of Kangs in the Multiverse. We glimpsed a few major ones in Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, and we’re bound to see even more make their ways into future MCU projects.
Published: Feb 19, 2023 07:20 am