Wait, did Marvel quietly solve the MCU's Kang problem so that Avengers: Doomsday doesn't have to?

While Judgment Day is just around the corner, the next Avengers film faces a challenge the MCU has likely never faced before, and an unlikely source may have quietly solved it. Even before Jonathan Majors' firing amid legal issues, the Multiverse Saga's narrative direction was struggling to match the power of his performance. Faced with the burden of replacing Thanos as the MCU's next Avengers-level threat, Kang the Conqueror simply wasn't the answer.

Initially cast as He Who Remains in Loki and Kang for Ant-Man and the Wasp: QuantumaniaKang had huge potential as a multiversal villain, but MCU audiences just didn't connect with him in the same way they did with Thanos. QuantumaniaThe well-publicized reception clearly didn't help, and the very nature of the character, basically redefined with each appearance, proved a tough sell. None of that particularly matters now, however, because Avengers 5 it is no longer The Kang Dynasty and the Majors are no longer the next threat. What matters now is how Marvel Studios resolves the mess.

Step forward Robert Downey Jr's Doctor Doom and the inspired rug-pull to refocus the now-renamed Avengers: Judgment Day around the iconic antagonist. It's the kind of stunt casting dreams are made of, and bringing back the Russos is equally inspired, but that doesn't mean all audiences will embrace Doomsday's opening without any mention of Kang. General audiences will be distracted enough, but for longtime MCU fans, a brand-new villain isn't enough. But maybe there's already a solution written into the latest version of the MCU? Maybe… if you believe the talk currently being circulated on MCU social media, anyway.

Marvel Still Needs a Kang Solution Before Doomsday

You can't just ignore such a big villain after so much setup... Or can you?

Looking ahead to 2023, Loki The season 2 finale may have already set up an intriguing solution for the Council of Kangs. The New TVA, which is revealed to be monitoring Kang's numerous variants, provides an in-universe mechanism to at least acknowledge that someone is aware of the threat. If Marvel wanted to leave it there, perhaps with a prologue that gives the Kangs a “Poochie” solution, then some might be satisfiedbut this seems too big a problem to be flippant about.

By integrating Loki's TVA with the larger Avengers storyline, Marvel could bridge the gap between the end of Kang's arc and the rise of Doom, saving the Multiverse Saga's seeded storyline while also recognizing that audiences more Broad just doesn't care about Kang. Or they could ignore it completely, ignore the calls to rephrase Kang, and not waste time worrying about writing a complex response that's likely to be scrutinized anyway. If they do this, they can use the TVA “solution” or they can resort to what the vocal Marvel fan community sees as a major reveal in And if…?'It's a two-part finale.

Warning: The following section contains SPOILERS for What If...? season 3

What If Season 3 Could Have Subtly Solved Kang's Problem, According to One Theory

The MCU's New Superteam Could Have Taken Major Scalps

In the penultimate episode of And if…?In Hayley Atwell's final season, Hayley Atwell's Captain Carter returns with a new lineup of Guardians of the Multiverse that also includes an Asgardian Storm, Kahorri, and new MCU character Byrdie the Duck. It doesn't necessarily seem like it, but it could very well be the MCU's most powerful team yet.

Their first scenes qualify that the Guardians have basically traveled the multiverse - thanks in part to our site's spaceship that can somehow traverse timelines - saving universes from threats that would otherwise wipe them out. They are then sidelined from this mission by the need to rescue Uatu (Jeffrey Wright) from his fellow Watchers, while he is tried as a heretic for breaking his sacred oath and getting involved in the affairs of those he watches.

But it's the arrival of Captain Carter that establishes the solution to the MCU's Kang problem. She appears in Kang's Time Sphere, last seen in Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania as the MacGuffin that basically drives the entire narrative. Broadly speaking, it is Kang's super-powered, multiverse-traveling chair that allows him to travel anywhere and anytime, but which loses its power when he is banished by his variants to the Quantum Realm.

So how did Captain Carter achieve this? Well, a lot of MCU fans seem to think this is And if…?The secret solution to killing the Kangs that appear in QuantumaniaThe post-credits scene off-screens one of the multiversal threats that the Guardians exist to eliminate. And an equally significant number of those fans are not satisfied with the idea that this could be true.

Marvel Fans React to What If…?'s Kang Easter Egg (but are they right?)

What if... Kang's Easter egg is causing some... feelings

Checking out X's reactions to Kang's chair appearing in And if…? proves that some are choosing to read a lot about the reappearance of the Sphere. It's being presented as a concrete fact that Carter and the Guardians killed the Kangs and took the Time Sphere as a useful trophy.

This all, of course, ignores the fact that the only Time Sphere in the MCU belonged to Kang and was deactivated by the Council before Janet Van Dyne destroyed it. The Council clearly doesn't use Spheres to travel in Quantumania's credits scene, and there's no reason to suggest that Carter's "trophy" is anything other than the use of useful technology that allows him to easily travel through the multiverse.

But at the same time, the annoyance is understandable: This is the first time Kang has been mentioned in over a year and there is a very real inference that Carter killed at least one of the variants. I personally wouldn't make a big deal out of it, even if the Guardians of the Multiverse actually represented an elegant and powerful solution for the Council of Kangs. And if...? has limited ties to the broader MCU narrative, and even Captain Carter's subsequent appearance in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness it was not the same variant. It's probably not that deep.

More frustrating is the fact that the multiverse show actually had the opportunity to resolve Kang's storyline in a tangible way, even with a smaller audience, because Masters could have easily been recast. Instead, all we got was an Easter egg that fueled criticism about the show that probably didn't actually need to happen.

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