Warning: The following article contains spoilers for Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania.
Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania has hit theaters at last and, right on schedule, the Marvel Fan detective squad has arrived at the scene of the crime to detect just what offhand word, phrase, or cameo appearance might foretell the future of the Marvel Cinematic Universe and specifically what we should look forward to in Phase Five. And this time it seems as if a very noticeable lack of something might contain volumes of info.
Spoilers ahead.
One of the first major reveals of the film is that Kang the Conqueror, who eventually becomes the overlord of the Quantum Realm, first met Janet Van Dyne during her long imprisonment there and that they had been friends, for a short period at least. What is conspicuously absent in Janet’s recollection of the time they spent together attempting to refuel the multiversal engine that powered Kang’s crippled vehicle is the name of the man she was working with.
While Janet does come to know him as Kang, his identity isn’t revealed until well into the pair’s friendship. So, what was she calling him during their partnership? Hey, you?
Though Quantumania shied away from solving this mystery, Marvel Comics canon may have the answer.
Surprisingly, even though he spent years of comic book history being known as “Kang,” the Conqueror actually does have another identity: Nathaniel Richards. Nathaniel is the 31st-century descendant of Reed Richards aka Mr. Fantastic, the leader of the Fantastic Four (he also shares a family tree with the FF’s arch-nemesis and Reed’s greatest rival, Doctor Doom). Nathaniel, a scientist, discovered Doom’s time-travel technology and traveled to the past, becoming the Pharaoh Rama Tut (presumably the Kang variant in Egyptian headgear we see in the mid-credits scene).
After being defeated by the Fantastic Four Richards attempts to return to his 31st-century timeline only to go further into the future where he takes advantage of the dystopian future’s technology and his own scientific genius to become Kang.
It’s quite possible that we may end up encountering Rama-Tut, or another Kang variant, in the official MCU debut of the FF (set to release in 2025). Although it seems unlikely that the Four’s first nemesis won’t be Doctor Doom, their conflict with him could involve the time travel tech that Nathaniel Richards will later abscond with, if things don’t get weird.
If they do get weird we may end up meeting the OG Nathaniel Richards — Reed Richards’s own father who designed time-traveling tech of his own. Kang could end up stealing his time-traveling tech from his very own ancestral namesake. Have fun skipping over the potential paradoxes.
Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania is in theaters.