Avengers 5’s Original Plan Revealed, Including 1 Unexpected Avengers Team Defeating Kang

Avengers: Doomsday is now looming large over 2026; however, Marvel Studios’ next big event film will be under more scrutiny than any other project the franchise has ever released. That’s largely because Doomsday and its titular villain, Doctor Doom (Robert Downey Jr.), represent a major pivot: originally, Marvel Studios had very different plans for what Avengers 5 would be. Actor Jonathan Majors was set to anchor the entire Marvel Cinematic Universe with his performance as Kang the Conqueror, a dimension-hopping warlord who has an army of variants from other realities as his co-conspirators. However, Majors was at the center of off-screen controversies that ultimately had Disney and Marvel drop him from their talent pool. Kang’s future in the MCU was rewritten to have Doom rise as the threat to the entire multiverse.

Up until this point, fans haven’t been privy to what the Marvel Cinematic Universe would’ve been, had Kang remained in position as the central villain of the Multiverse Saga storyline. Now, however, we’re getting the first crumb of details about at least one part of Avengers: The Kang Dynasty‘s storyline – one that would’ve featured a highly unlikely squad of Avengers taking down Kang. Or, at least a Kang.

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Writer and producer Michael Waldron (Rick and Morty) is currently out doing press for his Hulu series, Chad Powers; Waldron has also worked on a big MCU movie (Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness) and TV series (Loki). He was promoted to writing the script for Avengers: The Kang Dynasty, and was retained when the project was rebooted as Avengers: Doomsday. So, when Waldron hopped on Reddit for an AMA (“ask me anything”) session with fans, some Marvel questions were definitely included in the mix.

Avengers: Doomsday Writer Reveals Young Avengers Storyline From Kang Dynasty Script

One question from a fan inquired whether there were any plot ideas from The Kang Dynasty script that got ported over to Doomsday, or at least helped the writers crack the new script open. Waldron didn’t exactly answer the question directly, but did share an idea that he and fellow writer Jeff Loveness batted around during one point of scripting The Kang Dynasty. It involved the Young Avengers squad getting what they think is a significant win over Kang, only to find out that the victory isn’t what they imagined…

“Jeff Loveness and I spent an afternoon pitching on the Young Avengers defeating a version of Kang and being so stoked about it… only to discover that that particular Kang carried a little card that said to Be Patient with him, it was his first day as a Kang,” Waldron posted in the Reddit thread. “And then they were so bummed. I think he was gonna be the lizard Kang from the end of Kang Dynasty? I don’t know. Anyway we had fun.”

[Note: We think Waldron meant the “Lizard Kang” variant spotted at the end of Ant & The Wasp: Quantumania, but there’s no way to be 100% certain on that.]

The Young Avengers are a team that the MCU has been building since The Multiverse Saga began. The ending of The Marvels officially got the ball rolling when Kamala Khan (Iman Vellani) approached Kate Bishop (Hailee Steinfeld) about joining the squad. The group has had some healthy odds behind them for making an appearance in Avengers: Doomsday, including some alleged concept art that features the Young Avengers and an X-Men character all meeting up. That kind of makes it somewhat of a “reveal” to hear that Waldron and the other writers of Kang Dynasty were toying around with the Young Avengers as a major part of the film’s storyline.

It’s not crazy to surmise that Marvel Studios’ overarching bullet point list of developments that will occur in Avengers: Doomsday won’t be all that different from what was supposed to happen in The Kang Dynasty. It’ll just be the central villain and his backstory that are different. Hopefully, the Young Avengers hyping themselves up with heroic muster, only to be deflated by disappointment, will still be part of the film.

Avengers: Doomsday will be in theaters on December 18, 2026.