Jonathan Majors is a seriously exciting addition to the MCU. While we've only seen a little of what he'll bring to the table as Kang the Conqueror after the actor played his He Who Remains Variant in Loki, the villain will fully step into the spotlight in next February's Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania.
That Kang is thought to be the one who will serve as the Multiverse Saga's big bad, though we anticipate Majors playing many more Variants between now and 2026.
During a recent interview with CinePop (via Screen Rant), the actor opened up on how he prepared to play Kang, naming a number of previous MCU villains as his main source of inspiration.
"It’s funny, because I did go through and I did look at Ultron, I looked at Loki, I looked at Thanos. And I had an idea of, just for me, what I wanted to bring to the MCU through Kang," he teases. "And there’s a certain requirement that has to happen."
"I think Ultron, Loki, and Thanos, I think those would be the quintessential baddies or anti-heroes. They all had very interesting qualities to them and some of them shared qualities, which is just a necessity for taking up the mantle," Majors adds. "And so once I took those out and put those in the Kang soup, I then looked at, ‘What is it we need for this time period?’"
The Kang actor would go on to reveal what sort of deep dive he's taken into more than just the MCU in order to figure out who the villain is, looking at what will resonate with people today.
"Our generation, what we represent, what is a big bad to us? What are our children going to see? What are our partners going to see? What are our leaders going to see? What is it that our zeitgeist, quote-unquote, needs? What are we conjuring up? What’s in the unconscious of our time now? And Marvel has the, in my opinion, the largest platform in entertainment."
"The big bad has to represent so many things and has to be connected to so many things. So I read the newspaper, I looked at history books, I talked to people, I look at my child, talk to my partner. What is it we’re afraid of in this time? What is it that’s scaring us? Because Kang has to be...any big bad is a manifestation of our deepest insecurities as a society."
Majors clearly has a fantastic grasp of what makes this character tick, and we can't wait to see what else he does with him over the next few years. We anticipate seeing most of his Variants in Avengers: The Kang Dynasty, but wouldn't be surprised if he pops up elsewhere before then (no Rama-Tut in Moon Knight remains a real wasted opportunity).
Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania arrives in theaters on February 17, 2023.