UPDATE: THR is reporting that “Avengers: The Kang Dynasty” is now being referred to as ‘Avengers 5’ by Marvel and Disney. Another clear hint that they’ll be completely nixing the Kang character.
EARLIER: Well, that didn’t take long. As expected, Disney has just fired Jonathan Majors from the handful of Marvel-related projects he was supposed to star in.
Majors was supposed to play Kang the Conqueror, the main villain of the next ‘Avengers’ movies and a character who was supposed to be central in connecting all the stories together. Kang already appeared in the first season of “Loki” and, most recently, in “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania.”
Last month, “MCU: The Reign of Marvel Studios” author Joanna Robinson was on The Ringer's House of R podcast and reported that Marvel was letting go of ‘Avengers: Kang Dynasty’ screenwriter Jeff Loveness because they planned to move away from the Kang character. So, Majors’ role might not even be recast.
A few weeks later, Michael Waldron was hired as Loveness’ replacement. Destin Daniel Cretton (“Shang-Chi and the Ten Rings”) also stepped down as director. These ‘Avengers’ movies have turned into one hot mess.
Marvel boss Kevin Feige bet all his cards on Majors and seems to have lost. Phase five of the MCU was supposed to end with two big Avengers instalments, set for release in 2025 and 2026 — with Majors playing the central antagonist in both of those movies.
Now, it looks as though they will be retiring the entire timeline to fit in another villain. At least, that’s what I suspect to be the case.