When Evan Peters was announced to have joined the cast of WandaVision, it looked to be a foregone conclusion that he was reprising his role as Quicksilver from Fox’s X-Men franchise, making him the first character to cross over into the mainline Marvel Cinematic Universe. While that technically wasn’t the case after the divisive Ralph Bohner reveal, the final episode of Loki has now bestowed Jonathan Majors’ Kang the Conqueror with the honor.
Before Disney purchased Fox and acquired a huge number of comic book properties and major brands in general, it was a well-known fact that the MCU didn’t have access to the X-Men, Deadpool or the Fantastic Four. However, the studio owned a huge number of ancillary figures that they didn’t know what to do with and never really had any plans for, and one of them was the time traveling warlord who was introduced yesterday as He Who Remains.
It was James Gunn that revealed that Kang was under Fox’s purview back in 2015 when he explained to a fan that he couldn’t use him or the Shi’ar Empire as part of his Guardians of the Galaxy universe, but looking at how Tom Hiddleston’s solo series ended, Majors is set to become firmly established as the MCU’s next Thanos-level threat.
The rising star was confirmed for Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania last September, but nobody could have guessed that in his very first appearance it would be revealed that not only is Kang the Conqueror responsible for overseeing the entire multiverse, but the death of the variant keeping tabs on things at the hands of Loki‘s Sylvie could lead to countless versions of the villain infiltrating all aspects of every timeline.