Perhaps the biggest tragedy concerning Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania is that evidence suggests Marvel might have once had a much better movie on its hands than the one we ended up seeing. First, fan detectives realized that the film’s underwhelming happy ending was likely the result of some last-minute reshoots that took place just weeks before its release. Now, a fresh behind-the-scenes video appears to unveil a removed Kang action scene that looks like it would’ve been epic.
This eye-popping stunt video, as shared by @MCU_Covered in the tweet below, showcases Xavier Lake — Jonathan Majors’ double as Kang the Conqueror — wielding a sword and a mace while practising for what looks to be a brutal fight scene between the villain and Ant-Man and the Wasp. Evangeline Lilly’s stunt double Lauriane Rouault originally shared the clip on Instagram, before later removing it (probably at the studio’s request).
As Rouault explained, this stunt session was specifically intended as a pre-vis, as a guide for how the scene would appear once VFX was put in place, so it’s vaguely possible Kang’s weaponry here was always intended as a stand-in for the energy blasts he employs in the finished movie. On the other hand, the choreography certainly seems built around the inclusion of the sword, so it does look like Kang was supposed to arm himself with a blade in initial plans for his action scenes.
If this is the case, it’s currently unknown why the change was made, although it’s possible it was decided to move Kang’s preferred form of combat away from Thanos’ own love of blades, in order to differentiate the temporal tyrant from Marvel’s previous big bad. Everyone loves a bad guy with a sword, though, so here’s hoping Kang the Swashbuckler returns for future installments of the MCU’s Multiverse Saga.
