Recently, Kang actor Jonathan Majors was found guilty of both reckless assault of the third degree, as well as harassment. Because of this, Marvel immediately responded by letting the actor go. This has led a lot of people to ask, "But what of Kang?"
Now, firstly, I'd like to remind people that someone was both harassed and assaulted and that should be the primary focus. But yeah, I kinda get it. If I found out my kid's teacher was arrested for a crime my first thought would probably be, "Okay but is my kid getting a sub or what does this mean for the rest of the school year?"
Luckily for Marvel though, Kang is the easiest character to recast in the Marvel Universe. And I mean easiest. See, Kang is a lot of things and exists in a lot of timelines because he's a time traveler. This gives us SO many options.
And, honestly, I think the MCU will be better off. I genuinely did not like his portrayal of Kang. I think the "He Who Remains" version was way to casual and I think Majors was doing a bit too much stage acting and not film acting. It felt hammy. And Victor Timely just felt like a character from an episode of Wishbone. The stutter was almost cartoonish. So using this as an opportunity to let someone else take over as Kang might be beneficial here.
But performance aside, we're going to go over five ways Marvel can change up the story a bit to recast Jonathan Majors easily. And, let's be real, especially for people in a world that Doctor Doom exists in, if MCU writers can't figure out a way to recast a time traveler then maybe the actor isn't the only one needed to be swapped out.
So here's five ways that Kang can be recast.
5. Swap the gender
This is honestly one of the easiest ones you could do. One of the first massively exciting things about Season 1 of Loki was when people found out that there were a slew of variant Lokis including old school comic Loki, kid Loki, alligator Loki (remember when we all cared about that for three seconds), and a female Loki.
Sure, technically she was supposed to be "The Enchantress" but we all ignored that because she was explained as a character who was basically Loki.
But comic fans are super used to the idea of an alternate version of a character that was born with a different gender. Heck, DC fans can tell you that one part of the multiverse is just an Earth where every single person is gender-swapped.
It genuinely wouldn't be that difficult to just pull it off where there was one Kang getting away with more stuff because most people didn't even realize some woman that was working with them, was actually Kang.
4. Renslayer takes charge
Loki took so much time to introduce and flesh out the character of Ravonna Renslayer just to throw her in the trash in the final few episodes. Luckily, the fact that her story had no clear conclusion can be beneficial for all of us.
In the comics, Ravonna has had a weird relationship with Kang. They've been both lovers, partners, and bitter BITTER rivals. So having a reveal in which Ravonna kills Kang and takes over his tech and plan wouldn't be a stretch.
I'd say bring back Miss Minutes too but I think Hollywood is still working on whether or not they want to work with Tara Strong right now thanks to her recent controversial social media usage.
But I think Ravonna is a marvelous character who deserved more and Gugu Mbatha-Raw is a terrific actress in dire need of a bigger role. Not only would she get the chance to truly shine but she could also hold the distinction of being the first female Marvel villain who is actually the big overarching villain like Thanos.
3. Does anyone remember Iron Lad?
Back in 2005, Marvel released a comic titled Young Avengers which featured a team of characters that were, essentially, young people who looked like famous Avengers (all with fun twists) including a kid named Iron Lad who had what looked like a thinner version of Iron Man's old silver and red armor on.
While many of the Young Avengers had really interesting twists like two of them being the magically created children of Scarlet Witch or one of them secretly being a bisexual space prince, the biggest reveal came from Iron Lad who was.
Turns out that when Kang was younger some bullies attacked him, sending him to the hospital. Kang took his younger self back in time hoping to convince him to kill the bully instead. The younger self was shown all the atrocities Kang would commit and instead of being inspired by them like Kang hoped for, he stole time travel tech and a bio-metal suit that obeys thoughts and went back in time to stop Kang.
There is a moment however where he succeeds and it's bad for everyone. In killing his older self it creates this butterfly effect where some of the younger heroes never exist. Different people take different roles, some people are dead now, and Jessica Jones loses her baby. It's not good.
In order to fix the timeline, Iron Lad realizes that Kang needs to exist, but he kills Kang. So the only way to fix the timeline is to fulfill the prophecy and go back in time and become Kang himself so the correct events happen.
This would be a really interesting way to introduce a younger actor and have him be a big bad by having Iron Lad give in to his fate.
2. Doom is upset no one considers Doom
This one kills me. They've been trying to figure out a way to introduce the Fantastic Four for a while now and this is perfect. Sure, Kang's whole thing is time travel but NO ONE has caused Time Travel and Multiversal chaos quite like Victor Von Doom.
For real, ol' Vickie Doo-dooms has created entire worlds, casually strolled the multiverse, and even planted himself a God. Not A god, THE God. And he did such a good job that the heroes weren't like "How do we stop him" they were like, "Should we let him"?
I think having everyone going into this thinking it's still Kang only to find a series of dead Kangs everywhere in a room where Doom stands triumphant would be a, dare I say, Fantastic lead-in for the four.
Not only is Doctor Doom a far more interesting character than Kang but this would also create a situation where you could FULLY introduce Doom by having him merge his life in with the main MCU universe. This would be wildly beneficial to the MCU because it would explain why there is suddenly a country called Latveria. Having the Fantastic Four just suddenly show up having chased Vic through the dimensional bleed would be a great way of throwing the four in our universe without having to showcase that incredibly white-privileged heavy origin story where Reed just puts his friends on a ship and takes it into space without permission.
It not only solves the Kang problem but also the Fantastic Four problem in one fell swoop.
1. When there's something Strange...in your multiverse
Marvel's What If introduced a lot of things fans love like a version of Ant-Man that could kill every Avenger, Peggy Carter's Captain Carter, and my personal favorite, a version of Doctor Strange that straight up broke down, absorbed every old god into his person to use as weapons, and take over and wipe out the multiverse.
In fact, his whole thing is about going from one dimension to the next trying to find a way of getting his dead wife back all the while absorbing beings with abilities that help his case.
What better person to absorb when you're trying to prevent a death than the master of time? Not only does this give this version of Doctor Strange a better control over time itself but by absorbing Kang you don't have to worry about the cleanup of what to do with the dead Kangs lying around. Heck, have Doctor Strange absorb a TON of them.
Not only would it give Benedict Cumberbatch a chance to flex his more villainous side, but it would be solid payback for how dirty they did Wanda with Multiverse of Madness.
So those are just five ways to get this done but there are so many other ways. Variant Lokis, madness from the Endgame time travel bit, Maestro from the Hulk. This is an honestly easy problem for Marvel to fix and I can't wait to see what they pick.