Jonathan Majors’ Kang comes under fire as ‘Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3’ highlights his biggest problem

Warning: This article contains spoilers for Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3.

As if things couldn’t get much worse for Jonathan Majors and the heads at Marvel Studios; now the villainous role of Kang has been outshone by a much better character mere months after his MCU debut.

Fans have been very outspoken in recent days regarding the latest villain featured in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3. The High Evolutionary is perfectly hateable and shows just what the MCU is capable of when you have good writers and good actors working together. Chukwudi Iwuji did a fantastic job playing the pure evil and sometimes petulant eugenicist with a penchant for cruel experimentation on helpless animals and fans loved it. 

Many compared Iwuji’s villain with the last villain to be crowned the MCU’s next Big Bad and it’s safe to say that although Kang would beat the High Evolutionary hands down in a fight, fans were much more receptive of James Gunn’s chosen bad guy.

This spells even more trouble for Majors, who is already seemingly dangling by a thread as the actor is facing a series of allegations regarding abuse. The role of Kang could very well be out of his reach after this new development. Some fans have even gone as far as saying that they would like to see Iwuji return and have the High Evolutionary be revealed as a Kang variant. Hey, crazier things have happened in the MCU right?

I kinda figured that the High Evo IS a Kang… Perhaps this timeline’s since the rest are mostly crossovers. Very similar powers, color appreciation, macro-control personalities – the facial reconstruction may have concealed the secret.

— Thunderbrd (@thunderbrd1) May 9, 2023

Of course, changing the actor behind the character won’t solve all the problems Marvel is facing right now. The truth is, Kang was simply an underwhelming villain in Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania. The studio can only really introduce a character once and his movie debut went over about as well as the rest of the movie: very poorly. Marvel will have to keep a closer eye on its writers if the problem with Kang is to be fixed before Avengers: Secrets Wars and The Kang Dynasty.

Some are still holding out hope for Kang as the character has multiple movies to develop into a character who is both threatening and evil. Iwuji’s character will likely only appear in the one movie and the High Evolutionary is a relative unknown character in the comics, so he and the writers could go all out.

High Evo was great because between pettiness, cruelty, and self importance he reminds you why someone would hate him all day. However, there is a ton of freedom there because HE has had like ONE major run and he never really caught on as a bog bad so there is plenu of freedom.

— Michael Jefferson (@shadowmrj) May 8, 2023

Luckily, the studio now has a pretty solid blueprint for how to write and direct a great villain as the High Evolutionary has shown fans exactly the kind of hateable villain we’d all like Kang to be. James Gunn has shown us all that a great villain doesn’t come from ridiculous power-scaling — it comes from great writing and directing.