Jonathan Majors may have been cast in Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania as Kang the Conqueror almost a year ago, with a multitude of fan theories naming him as the brains behind the Time Variance Authority during the six-week run of Loki, but it was still a surprise to see the actor show up for his Marvel Cinematic Universe debut.
The time traveling warlord has basically already been confirmed as the MCU’s next Thanos-level threat, and while it took six years for the Mad Titan to make an impact on the shared mythology, Majors’ Kang played a substantial supporting role in Loki‘s finale, getting several lengthy monologues detailing how he’s ruled over the entire multiverse.
In an even neater thread of connective tissue, director Kate Herron has now revealed that Majors also voiced the animatronic Time Keepers that the TVA employees believed to be their corporate overlords, which is a minor but still pivotal detail when you consider Kang was the one pulling the strings behind the entire operation all along.
“Something that was really fun for me was we hadn’t, for example, cast the voice of the Time Keepers yet, because you know Wizard of Oz was an obvious reference of ours. I was like, ‘Oh, let’s get Jonathan to do it, because he’s an amazing character actor’. We sent him the art of all the characters and it was really fun because he was sending us all of these different voices he could do for each character, which was great.”
Kang hinted that countless variants of his are now on their way to the multiverse, and not all of them are as easygoing and laid back as He Who Remains, which spells bad news for the MCU’s rapidly splintering timelines. It’s an ambitious gambit to have multiple versions of the same big bad wreaking havoc across any number of realities, but it isn’t like Kevin Feige’s outfit hasn’t earned the benefit of the doubt when it comes to pulling it off. Loki was just the beginning, then, and now that Majors has made his debut, the hype Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania has kicked up several notches.