With Jonathon Majors’ (Kang) untimely departure from the MCU, Feige and fam are in somewhat of a conundrum. The cutscene after Quantumania introduced Rama-Tut, Scarlet Centurion, and Immortus. The Council of Kangs is simply too big to just write out or have the TVA ‘snip’ the timeline.
This issue is made all the more complicated because ever since the beginning of Phase 4, the MCU has introduced a plethora of new protagonists and criss-crossing story arcs. The introduction of the Celestials in the Eternals, the supernatural powers at work in WandaVision, Multiverse of Madness, and Werewolf by Night, cosmic entities like Eternity in Love and Thunder and the Living Tribunal that’s been easter egged multiple times throughout the MCUs history.
If they can figure out their Konundrum of KangsTM, they’ve got more than enough fodder for building up to Secret Wars. However, I only see this working out (at least marginally well) if they bring in Doctor Doom. Specifically the Doom from Jonathon Hickman’s 2015 iteration of Secret Wars.
This, in my most humble opinion, would give more credence to all the multiverse bullshit they’ve so haphazardly put together so far, and pave the way for even more spin-offs (i.e. Battle World, World War Hulk, Contest of Champions, etc). Though, it needs to be done right.
One *possible* way to alleviate the Konundrum of Kangs would be to adapt “Warlock and the Infinity Watch” into a movie and have the culmination of that be Adam Warlock using the infinity gauntlet to wipe out all the iterations of Kang from existence.
Were Feige to do the smart thing and hire me as a consultant, I would suggest introducing the Exiles in this project. This would bolster the aforementioned multiverse bullshit, and add another avenue to introduce more mutants into the MCU. More specifically, the inclusion of Iron Lad (Nate Richards) could serve as a lateral move from Kang into a character that could segue the MCU onto a different path without the transition feeling so abrupt. Include Blink, Kamala Khan (Ms. Marvel), Valkyrie, and (depending on how Deadpool 3 goes) “Wolvie” from Mojoverse, and you’ve got yourself a diverse cast of characters that interact in many, many different ways with the already established gamut of MCU characters. The only real change I would suggest is to cast someone as a younger, live-action Logan (Wolvie/Wolverine) instead of than the cartoony version from the comics. ((Sidenote: if the Mojoverse is accepted into MCU canon, I want Longshot written in somehow via the Mephisto/Dazzler/Shatterstar craziness.))
The Exiles could be woven further into Doctor Strange’s multiverse with the inclusion of their groups origin; the Timebreakers and the Panoptichron. Feige could retcon the mansion thing that He Who Remains (version of Kang from Loki season 1) lived in to be a version of the Panoptichron. Since we can all assume Wanda Maximoff/Scarlet Witch isn’t actually dead after the culmination of events from MoM, throw in the inclusion of Nocturne. Nocturne is Talia Josephine “TJ” Wagner, daughter of Kurt Wagner (Nightcrawler) and Wanda. Since her main motivation for everything seems to be Vision and her children, this could prove to be an interesting plot device.
So what do you think, fellow nerds? Let me know in the comments.