Jonathan Majors on Marvel Future as Kang After Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania
Jonathan Majors isn't getting too far ahead of his future as Kang the Conqueror in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. After entering the Marvel Multiverse in the Disney+ series Loki, where Sylvie (Sophia Di Martino) and Loki (Tom Hiddleston) encounter Time Variance Authority founder He Who Remains (Majors) in the Citadel at the End of Time, Majors makes his return as a villain Variant in Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania. As Marvel Studios moves into the Multiverse with Spider-Man: No Way Home and Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness before the Ant-Man sequel, Majors' role as the time-traveling Kang is a key part of Phase Four of the MCU — and top secret.
"I knew everything that everyone else did, and still do, actually, where it's like, 'This is the role, and this is where we're starting,'" Majors told Collider when asked if Marvel's Kevin Feige debriefed him with a full outline of his future as Kang. "That's as far as we got, and that was enough for me to understand — to try to understand — who this character was."
Majors appears in the Season 1 finale of Loki, where He Who Remains reveals himself as the wizard behind the curtain of the TVA tasked with protecting the "Sacred Timeline." But when Sylvie kills him, fracturing the unstable Multiverse, his death creates far-reaching consequences that will unfold across Phase Four and beyond.
"When I looked at the significance of Kang in the MCU, I agreed to the role the same way I agree to any other film that I do," said Majors, now appearing as Nat Love in Netflix western The Harder They Fall. "'What is the responsibility of the character? Can the world move forward without them? Can the scene move forward without them?' And if it can, then I'm okay, and it if can't, then it's something I want to take on and take that responsibility."
His single episode role on Loki is just the beginning of a future in the MCU, where it's all connected. As one of a potentially infinite number of Nathaniel Richards in the unending Multiverse, Majors could conceivably return almost anywhere after Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania.
"I was fighting for that from the beginning," Michael Waldron, head writer of Loki and screenwriter of Doctor Strange 2, said in a previous interview about introducing a Kang variant on the series that travels through time and space. "That was what I wanted. I think the onus on us was to prove why that made sense. As our story came together, and as we realized this isn't just a time travel story, this is a multiverse story, and as we really built out what was going to be the mythology of the man behind the curtain, so to speak, it just made sense."
Starring Paul Rudd as Ant-Man, Evangeline Lilly as the Wasp, Michael Douglas as Hank Pym, Michelle Pfeiffer as Janet van Dyne, Kathryn Newton as Cassie Lang, and Jonathan Majors as Kang the Conqueror, Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania opens only in theaters on July 28, 2023.