Why Avengers: The Kang Dynasty Could Be the Perfect Setup for Secret Wars

One of the biggest reveals from Marvel Studios' panel during Comic-Con 2022 was that Phase 6 of the Marvel Cinematic Universe will culminate with two Avengers movies – Avengers: The Kang Dynasty and Avengers: Secret Wars. It's been announced that Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings director Destin Daniel Cretton will be directing Avengers 5 – but beyond the obvious implications of the subtitle "The Kang Dynasty," we don't know much. But that title may be all we need to really know when it comes to how Avengers 5 will set up that much-anticipated "Secret Wars" event. 

This is why Avengers: The Kang Dynasty could be the perfect setup for Avengers: Secret Wars. 

During the Marvel Studios panel at Comic-Con 2022, Kevin Feige gave a clear framework for what the Marvel Cinematic Universe is building toward, in the officially-named "Multiverse Saga." Jonathan Majors' Kang was singled-out as a major focus of Phase 5, with Feige speaking his full confidence in Majors' ability to carry the franchise on his shoulders while speaking with ComicBook.com during SDCC 2022: 

"It comes down to the cast and with Jonathan Majors, who I think took over the Hall H stage, you know, in three minutes he was up there. It's amazing, and I said to him there's nobody's shoulders I'd rather be putting the Multiverse Saga on than his. It's really impressive what Jonathan Majors is able to do and all the different incarnations, variants, if you will, of Kang that we will see him do. It's really cool."

That statement right there may be a key insight into what Marvel is planning for The Kang Dynasty. Avengers: Infinity War remains one of the most highly-rated films in the entire MCU Saga – a movie that made the somewhat groundbreaking choice to function as a villain heist film starring Thanos. It doesn't take a stretch of the imagination to see Marvel repeating that same movie for Jonathan Majors' Kang in Avengers 5 – only instead of collecting Infinity Stones, Kang would either be allying with or assassinating his own variants, conquering timelines, and slaughtering different Avengers variants along the way. If the Infinity War comparison holds true, Avengers 5 could presumably end with Kang victorious, and the multiverse annihilated.

In Marvel Comics, the "Secret Wars" event of the mid-2010s centered on rampant incursions between Marvel realities that left the multiverse destroyed. Doom used sorcery and technology to pull together leftover pieces of various realities into an amalgamated place called "Battleworld." Meanwhile, the first Marvel "Secret Wars" of the 1980s featured a being (The Beyonder) who forcibly brought both heroes and villains to his "Battleworld" to fight for sport. Marvel fans have been hoping for the MCU to honor both versions of Secret Wars in its movie adaptation: what better way to do that than by making Kang the master of Battleworld, with his own collection of both Marvel heroes and villains (and mutants!) battling it out for his amusement?

While we thought Phase 4 would be bringing us more actual multiverse to the saga early on (via Loki, Spider-Man: No Way Home, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness), it really hasn't happened that way. However, Marvel can sidestep a lot of issues (and backlash) by making The Kang Dynasty a one-man (and variants) tour of all the various Marvel realities that will be collected into Secret Wars' Battleworld. Marvel Studios gets to do a movie chock-full of big cameo surprises (the original X-Men movies cast?) that can last into Secret Wars, while fully mapping out the complexity of Kang as the antagonist, and solidifying that at least one film truly delivers on the Multiverse Saga premise.

Avengers: The Kang Dynasty will be in theaters on May 2, 2025.  Avengers: Secret Wars is set to hit theaters on November 7, 2025.