Fox’s X-Men franchise may have spawned thirteen movies in the space of 20 years that earned over $6 billion at the box office and covered sequels, reboots, spinoffs and sequels to those reboots and spinoffs, but for the most part the villains introduced in each installment were fairly underwhelming.
It’s no coincidence that so many stories told on the big screen eventually circled back around to Magneto, or even that the Phoenix Saga was loosely adapted twice and botched on each occasion, while the less said about Oscar Isaac’s Ivan Ooze version of Apocalypse the better. Even Wolverine’s solo trilogy boasted weak adversaries, and it’s hard to argue against saying the X-Men franchise had a serious villain problem outside of the Master of Magnetism.
Of course, the Marvel Cinematic Universe has experienced some antagonistic issues of its own, although they’ve largely been rectified. We’re now hearing from our sources- the same ones that told us Anthony Mackie would be headlining Captain America 4 long before it was confirmed – that one idea being discussed to bridge the gap between the MCU and the X-Men is to have Kang the Conqueror responsible for the creation of En Sabah Nur, the very first mutant.
In the comic books, Kang variant Pharaoh Rama-Tut ruled over Ancient Egypt when the future Apocalypse was born, and came back to handpick the formidable foe as his heir. All it would take is a couple of sweeping changes to the established canon, something Kevin Feige has hardly been averse to doing across the last thirteen years, and we could be seeing Kang continue to establish himself as the biggest of big bads, while also kicking off a chain reaction that reverberates thousands of years into the MCU’s future.
