What happened to Kang in the MCU (and what it means for Avengers: Doomsday)
For two years, Kang the Conqueror was the future of the Marvel Cinematic Universe — introduced in Loki in 2021, unleashed in Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania in February 2023, with an entire Avengers movie named after him. Then the future got recast. Not the actor — the whole villain.
Here's the full picture, on screen and off.
The short answer
Jonathan Majors, who played Kang and his variants, was arrested in March 2023 and convicted in December 2023 of reckless assault and harassment; Marvel Studios dropped him the same day the verdict came in. In July 2024, at San Diego Comic-Con, Avengers: The Kang Dynasty officially became Avengers: Doomsday — with Robert Downey Jr. returning to the MCU as its new big bad, Doctor Doom.
What Marvel says now
Kevin Feige has since insisted the pivot wasn't purely about the court case. Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter in July 2025, he said that even before the actor 's legal troubles,
"we had started to realize that Kang wasn't big enough, wasn't Thanos. "
Only one character could carry that weight, Feige argued — and thanks to the Fox acquisition, Marvel finally had the rights to Doctor Doom. Quantumania's underwhelming box office run didn't help Kang's case either.
Where the story actually left Kang
- He Who Remains — the first variant, killed by Sylvie at the end of Loki season 1 in 2021, which cracked open the multiverse.
- Kang the Conqueror — seemingly destroyed in Quantumania's climax, sucked into his own multiversal engine core.
- Victor Timely — the Loki season 2 variant, erased during the show's time-loom crisis.
- The Council of Kangs — teased in Quantumania's post-credits scene as a legion of variants, then never mentioned again.
The tidiest in-universe out came from Loki's 2023 finale: Loki himself now holds the branching timelines together, effectively neutralizing the threat the Kangs were built on.
What it means for Avengers: Doomsday
Doomsday hits theaters on December 18, 2026, pitting the Avengers, the Fantastic Four, and the X-Men against Downey's Doom, with Avengers: Secret Wars to follow in December 2027. Kang has not been recast, no return has been announced, and the smart money treats his Quantumania death as final — all that multiversal setup now belongs to Doom.