The Convenient Problem With Kang The Conqueror

This also ties into one of the big issues with multiverses, that they can water down stakes if not used sparingly.

With Kang, there’s no sense of finality. Because you can always say, “oh there’s just another variant that can come back” or whatever. This lessens the stakes and makes the actions of the heroes seem almost pointless.

Current MCU also lacks a hero/villain dynamic. Tony’s PTSD and fear of an alien invasion kept Thanos relevant even before Infinity War. When Tony says, “Thanos has been in my head for 6 years” (real time), it ties all his actions in every phase together. Panic attacks, making Ultron, the Sokovia Accords, etc. The audience in real life is waiting for Thanos, and Tony Stark our main character is dreading it.

I personally still think it was odd that Kang wasn't in Multiverse of Madness - not necessarily because the story called for him to be there but based on the title I had expected him to have at least some kind of presence in the movie, even if it was just in a post-credits scene, similar to Thanos in the first Avengers movie.

For a movie that featuring the big bad of the multiverse saga, his appearance in Quantumania is almost not threatening. All of the heroic characters survived the journey. At the end of the movie, it implies that Scott felt like something is wrong but then he brushed it off very quickly.

And I love how they kept Thanos consistent, Thanos’ goal wasn’t just to mercilessly kill people. In infinity war he spared the avengers lives several times unless it was necessary (gamora & vision) and he wasn’t just evil for the sake of being evil. Kang just seems evil because and I still don’t understand his plan or why he did anything lol

They are making Kang very pedestrian. He doesn't feel as threatening, even though Majors is playing the role very well with the material he has.

I feel that the MCU should’ve focused on 5 versions of Kang from the comics each being the same guy but at different ages ( Iron Lad, Rama Tut, Scarlet Centurion, Kang and Immortus) and have them be established as the main impactful ones during phases 4 and 5 through projects like Loki, multiverse of madness, Quantumania, Young Avengers etc then doing the big council of kangs during Phase 6.

That's actually part of the whole problem with these late phases: every movie was a little adventure in itself, but there was always something looming in the back, something that made you feel there was an impending doom. And when it finally happened it was fantastic. Nowadays everything feels disjointed and disconnected, with no sense of what used to be special and everything feels forced to go into a direction and that destination seems to be unknown even to them.

I wouldn’t say the criticism of “he doesn’t seem as powerful because he’s shown being killed” applies to Kang in Loki, since in that case he’s clearly shown to be allowing this to happen, in fact his death in that scene is very intimidating, because his death allows worse variants of him to be unleashed. However it is a massive problem in Quantumania, because a supposed big bad level threat is beaten by a C tier hero and that’s embarrassing

Honestly I really hope the next overarching saga takes things back to a single universe. Having infinite variations of our favorite characters out there makes it feel like there aren’t genuine consequences.

Kang was a letdown in Quantumania, but he was awesome and intimidating in Loki. He never "lost" in Loki. He gave Loki and Sylvie freedom of choice and showed no resistance to whatever they chose. Sylvie killed him, but in doing so, released a whole lot of other variants of him that are worse than he was.

If they are going to stick to this idea that Kangs are easy to kill. They need to have a version of Kang and almost every single film leading up to Kang Dynasty. And have each hero fight against him with varying success. That way in Kang dynasty when they’re confronted with the council of Kangs it feels like an overwhelming force.

I felt like the “he who remains” thing worked because he wasn’t fighting, he said “you can kill me but you’ll regret it” and that bluff gets called but turns out it may be true. It didn’t even seem like it was actually a loss the way the show set it up. Whether he was a weary guardian worn down by time and isolation or setting about events beyond Loki and Sylvie’s understanding, I really don’t feel like anyone seemed to have defeated HWR Kang, rather they gave him what he wanted. The Ant-Man Kang who by all accounts was fighting in earnest but still lost to one of the weakest avengers and some ants really undermined any threat the character posed. The only good Kang scenes in the whole movie were the ones with Janet. If they had left it there and kept him as a looming presence who escaped back into the multiverse, I feel like they would’ve added to the character instead of making him look like a joke

The main problems to me are -His powers are not clear at all, in quantunmania he seems to be in total control of his surroundings with telecinesis untill he is not. He apparently has some sort of control over time that's never explained -The fact that there are infinite variants in infinite universes makes fighting him simoly pointless, there are basically no stakes since defeating him will only lead to other kangs showing up. It also reduces the investment in the character since it's a different person every time

I liked He Who Remains. He didn’t feel like a being trying to live on. He felt like a pretty interesting character.

We don't actually need more Kang but we undoubtedly need impactful Kang.

Disney's Kang loves to talk how powerful and clever he is, but not only they don't show him being bad, but he also gets beaten every show he's in.

The ants are actually the ants from the farm we see that Cassie has been working on with her grandfather in the first act of the film. There's actually a shot of that pane of glass with the ants in them as they are sucked into the quantum realm that you use in your clip. That's the ant farm. It's a very quick setup and a very quick frame where you can see it, but it is supposedly those specific ants.

"He who remains" was pretty amazing imo. It introduced this huge threat while still keeping a mystery, because we had 1 Loki that belived him and one that did not, so it could go either way as this new phase continued, I even thought that the idea of having multiple Kangs was a fine way to have him around because, imo, Thano barely doing anything for most of his MCU existence was actually not a good move, I stopped caring about him up until I watched infinity war, and if he wasnt as well written as he was I would've continued to not care. But like you said, the way he was handled in Quantum mania was....embarassing