The Loki Finale Erases Marvel’s Jonathan Majors Problem

Majors’ Kang was meant to be the new Big Bad for the Avengers to face in future installments, but the scandals surrounding the actor made many fans wonder whether Disney would recast the role or maybe replace Kang altogether.

Now, the finale for Loki season 2 has let Disney have it both ways with a satisfying Kang conclusion that allows future writers to take or leave this infamous villain.

Just how did the Loki finale square Marvel’s Kang problem? The original conundrum everyone’s favorite trickster god had to deal with was that after Sylvie killed Kang variant He Who Remains, there was going to be an oncoming Multiversal War. In that various Kangs fight each other for control of the multiverse.

He Who Remains had created the TVA to monitor and protect the Sacred Timeline and keep that from happening. With his death and the return of the Multiverse said Multiversal War seemed downright inevitable.

The second season of Loki saw Kang present our titular hero with a terrible choice. The time-slipping Loki could kill Sylvie before she killed Kang, effectively preventing the Multiversal War by destroying the multiverse. Or he could destroy the Temporal Loom, protecting his multiversal friends but ensuring the war would happen.

The crafty Loki discovers a third, somewhat tragic option of taking He Who Remains’ throne and stabilizing the multiverse.

Loki now had the throne he once dreamt of and kept his new friends alive, but he would now effectively hold a lonely vigil at the end of time and space.

How, then, does all this tangled Loki drama help to solve Marvel’s Kang problem–specifically, whether to recast or replace Kang?

In the aftermath of Loki’s big, sacrificial gesture, Mobius and B-15 definitively confirm that they handled the Kang the Conquerer we saw in Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania.

This, by itself, added a note of finality to the ambiguous ending of that film where Scott Lang wondered whether he had truly defeated Kang or not.

Meanwhile, Loki’s destruction of the Temporal Loom means that the multiverse restarted, so the various Kang variants out there haven’t started the Multiversal War yet.

On top of this, Mobius confirms that these Kangs don’t know about the existence of the TVA. This gives the TVA the ultimate advantage.

They can monitor what these variants are up to and intervene as needed, but until such interventions happen, the Kang variants don’t even know they are being monitored by such a powerful and resourceful foe.

Taken together, this means that Marvel can have it both ways: if they decide to get rid of the Kang character in favor of a different threat (perhaps someone like Galactus), then they can point to the Loki finale and say that not only was the Kang in Quantumania the Big Bad but that he is dead now.

Alternatively, if Marvel wants to keep Kang as its next major villain, the TVA can conveniently identify one or more variants who are major threats, and if that threat comes from a variant, it would make perfect sense to recast the role.

Since we don’t have access to the Eye of Agamatto, we have no way of seeing the future of the MCU, Kang, or Jonathan Majors.

At this point, we’re willing to bet not even Kevin Feige is completely sure what will happen, but thanks to this Loki finale, he doesn’t have to figure it out right away.

Until he does get things sorted, we’ll just be over here wondering if a future Avengers film might have Mobius on a jet ski fighting Galactus, much like Jason Statham did when fighting that Megalodon.