Spoilers Marvel Cinematic Universe spoiler-heavy speculation thread

[Jayson Poorknees]

Most people think of the MCU as some big monolithic thing where "it's all connected", but the reality is that you can just jump in wherever you want/watch whatever you want without being lost.

A good way to illustrate what I'm talking about is the Avengers Quartet: a lot of the discourse leading up to the release of Infinity War centered around the notion of that movie being the culmination of 20 other movies' worth of storytelling, but the reality of the situation is that you don't actually have to have seen any movies other than The Avengers and Age of Ultron in order to both understand and enjoy Infinity War, and you also don't even have to have seen Infinity War to enjoy and understand Endgame.

Letting go of the notion of the MCU being monolithically intertwined actually helped me realize that I actually like more parts of it than I hate and even helped to mitigate the sense of formulaity and sameness that originally kept me away from most of Phases 2 and 3.

Some movies are more connected than others IMO. The Avengers movies of course but also Captain America 3 and 4. Ironically the MCU started off more stand alone and it wasn't until team up movies became more of a thing that it started to feel more connected IMO. I mean just look at the first phase or two of the MCU. The only connective stuff is basically limited to the post credit scenes.

 

[Leo Walsh]

Steve is alive, healthy and available as a character, somewhere back in the 40s or 50s. Whether he participates in some way in the next Avengers movies depends entirely on the plots they choose.

 

[JD]

The Kang storyline was already closed off in Loki Season 2, so no follow-up is needed.

Oh OK, I really don't remember it that well. I was thinking it had a more open ending than that.

Really, I think that Marvel's decision to steer away from the planned Kang storyline was based more on the underperformance of Quantumania, even before the allegations about Majors. So I don't think it's really (or at least exclusively) about that. What matters is whether they reorient the storyline in an intelligent, plausible way that respects what was established before while still resolving it earlier than planned, as opposed to taking the lazy, badly written route of just casually wiping away what was established in Loki season 1 as a threat so immense that it required creating an entire time agency and annihilating countless timelines merely to hold it in a stalemate. Doing that wouldn't "show how powerful Doom is," it would just show how careless the writers/producers were. If you tell a story saying that something is that massive and intractable a threat, you have to respect that and pay it off rather than just saying "Ah, we changed our minds, let's just say we lied and it's no big deal." That's just not even trying to find a creative solution. It's a lazy cheat that doesn't play fair with the audience and doesn't respect the integrity of the continuity.

Sure, but this is kind of an unusual situation, and I'd like the see at least some resolution to Kang, but I'd rather not see them devote to much time to it since we're going to be introducing Doom now.

On the other hand, most people only know Kang from Ant-Man 3.

And Loki.

 

[Christopher]

Sure, but this is kind of an unusual situation, and I'd like the see at least some resolution to Kang, but I'd rather not see them devote to much time to it since we're going to be introducing Doom now.

It's a 2-part movie, isn't it? Should be plenty of room to give the Kang storyline more than a cursory resolution. And there's no reason they couldn't introduce Doom and resolve Kang as facets of the same storyline.

 

[DigificWriter]

Oh OK, I really don't remember it that well. I was thinking it had a more open ending than that.

Sure, but this is kind of an unusual situation, and I'd like the see at least some resolution to Kang, but I'd rather not see them devote to much time to it since we're going to be introducing Doom now.

And Loki.

Loki S2 ends with Mobius mentioning that the TVA will be keeping an eye on the Council of Kangs and will deal with them if they become a problem, and also references Kang the Conquerer's defeat in Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania, which, given what's happened since, has ended up being the resolution of that storyline.

It might not be the definitive resolution that some people want, but it is a resolution and means that there's no need for Marvel Studios to revisit things on the Kang front, even in passing.

 

[camdudetenger2018]

That's more or less what I'm hoping, that we'll get a quick scene of him wiping out the Council of Kangs, but it'll just be from a distance so we never actually see their faces. After all the set it would be nice to get some kind of a conclusion to the Kang arc, even if it's just a quick 5 second scene of Doom blowing up them up or something like that.

I'm pretty sure they've said that Simon Williams will have his powers from the comics. It suddenly popped into my head that I read somewhere that they actually give him the powers as part of the role, but I can't remember where I saw that.

That's why he seems so familiar.
It's looks like it's going to be a lot of fun.

i can imagine in avengers 5 we see like doctor doom destorying all the kangs on planet kang and we see like a far scene with a bunch of kangs getting vapped and at the same time running from getting vapped by doctor doom

 

[Zombie Cheerleader]

vapped

Is that like being zapped and vaporized at the same time?

 

[camdudetenger2018]

I hate the idea of them just cavalierly tossing aside everything they've set up about Kang. The needs of the story should come first, regardless of anything to do with actors' real-life problems. And the MCU has recast characters before. I hope they come up with a reasonable way of resolving the Kang story that does justice to the magnitude of the threat as they defined it. Just sweeping it away in seconds would be an insult to the audience's intelligence and to the integrity of the universe's storytelling.

exactally its like when ant man 3 came out thats when kang from earth no idea made his mcu movies debut

 

[camdudetenger2018]

Yeah, while I'm curious to see what they do with Doom, giving the choice I would have seen them just recast Kang. After all the set up, it is a little disappointing that they've decided to just dump it all without the big resolution we were originally supposed to get. The only reason I'm proposing Doom killing Kang, is at least it would give some resolution to his story, my fear is they're going to just never address Kang or any of that again.

exactully its not like all of the kangs suddenly mysterically got axed on planet kang by a unknown virus

 

[camdudetenger2018]

The Kang storyline was already closed off in Loki Season 2, so no follow-up is needed.

well kinda i think because there was still that one kang from the 19 century who helped loki and the gang to stop the mutliverse timestreams from being destoryed

 

[Set Harth]

Is that like being zapped and vaporized at the same time?

He's literally vaping them, with a giant sucking sound.

 

[theenglish]

And Loki.

Yes, for us here. I was thinking of the average viewer, but I don't really know the viewing numbers for Loki. Maybe most people know Kang from the show rather than the movie.

 

[Jayson Poorknees]

You know I kind of liked the first Kang we saw on Loki season 1. All other versions though were bad and not all that interesting to me.

 

[theenglish]

You know I kind of liked the first Kang we saw on Loki season 1. All other versions though were bad and not all that interesting to me.

I agree with that as far as Quantumania goes. I did like Season 2 of Loki.

 

[DigificWriter]

Really, I think that Marvel's decision to steer away from the planned Kang storyline was based more on the underperformance of Quantumania, even before the allegations about Majors. So I don't think it's really (or at least exclusively) about that. What matters is whether they reorient the storyline in an intelligent, plausible way that respects what was established before while still resolving it earlier than planned, as opposed to taking the lazy, badly written route of just casually wiping away what was established in Loki season 1 as a threat so immense that it required creating an entire time agency and annihilating countless timelines merely to hold it in a stalemate. Doing that wouldn't "show how powerful Doom is," it would just show how careless the writers/producers were. If you tell a story saying that something is that massive and intractable a threat, you have to respect that and pay it off rather than just saying "Ah, we changed our minds, let's just say we lied and it's no big deal." That's just not even trying to find a creative solution. It's a lazy cheat that doesn't play fair with the audience and doesn't respect the integrity of the continuity.

 Kevin Feige has said that “We had started even before what had happened to the actor happened, we had started to realize that Kang wasn’t big enough, wasn’t Thanos, and that there was only one character that could be that, because he was that in the comics for decades and decades. Because of the Fox acquisition, we finally had it, and it was Dr. Doom. So we had started talking about Dr. Doom even before we officially pivoted from Kang. And in fact, I had started talking with Robert [Downey Jr.] about this audacious idea before Ant-Man 3 even came out. It was a long plan that we had, to take one of our greatest characters and utilize one of our greatest actors.”, which is supported by Loki Season 2- which was made months before either Majors' legal trouble and Quantumania's release - 'plateauing'/resolving the Kang plot in the way that it does.