Loki Writer Says Kang The Conqueror Was Always Part Of The Story

Ever since the Marvel Cinematic Universe first cemented itself as the biggest game in town, the various writers and filmmakers involved in the franchise’s myriad of projects appear to have enjoyed a significant uptick in creative freedom, a far cry from the days of Phase One where everything was forced to fit the in-house formula to the letter.

Of course, Kevin Feige is always there to oversee the entire operation and ensure that major plot and story beats are hit to propel the overarching narrative forward, but he has great faith in his team to put their own stamp on the material. The surprise debut of Jonathan Majors’ Kang the Conqueror in the Loki Season 1 finale was something nobody saw coming, even though the rising star had been cast last September as Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania‘s big bad.

In a new interview, Loki creator and lead writer Michael Waldron admitted that the time traveling warlord was always part of the story that he wanted to tell, which would have no doubt resulted in plenty of conversations between the Disney Plus show’s brain trust and the minds behind Quantumania.

“I was fighting for that from the beginning. That was what I wanted. I think the onus on us was to prove why that made sense. As our story came together, and as we realized this isn’t just a time travel story, this is a multiverse story, and as we really built out what was going to be the mythology of the man behind the curtain, so to speak, it just made sense. Who is more dangerous, who would you want to contain the variants of, more than Kang the Conqueror?”

Majors was cast for Peyton Reed’s threequel, but made his first appearance in Loki, but when he next see him in Quantumania it’ll be as entirely different variant of Kang. That means Feige, Reed, Waldron, Loki director Kate Herron, Ant-Man 3 writer Jeff Loveness and more would have had to hammer out a method of utilizing the character in both projects that worked out in the best interests of all involved, which is something the MCU machine has gotten very good at working out over the last thirteen years.