Marvel Studios currently finds itself in a major (no pun intended) predicament. With Jonathan Majors found guilty on one count of intentional assault in the third degree and aggravated harassment in the second degree by a New York jury, his time as Kang the Conqueror has ended.
On the one hand, all that really needs to be done is finding another actor to fill the role. The problem is, as great as Majors was in Loki, the Conqueror's defeat in Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania has seen many fans write Kang off as a serious threat, an issue when he's meant to be the Multiverse Saga's big bad.
Some believe Loki season 2 offered Marvel Studios an out, but the series was shot before Majors' legal issues and the ending explicitly mentioned that a Kang Variant had been dealt with in the Quantum Realm, confirming the villain's Variants are still out there.
Conveniently, they're all assembled at the Council of Kangs, making it simple for another big bad to just, oh, wipe them all out of existence in one go.
According to The Cosmic Circus' Alex Perez, the idea now is to pull a Kaguya with Kang; that's a reference to Naruto, a manga series which saw a character named Madara introduced as a serious threat and big bad. However, Kaguya was then introduced, with Madara unceremoniously killed - proving he wasn't the threat everyone thought - and Kaguya was established as the true villain.
So, in this scenario, Kang is Madara and Kaguya is likely The Beyonder.
We believe the original plan was for the Ant-Man threequel's Kang the Conqueror to return as The Beyonder, but with Avengers: The Kang Dynasty and Avengers: Secret Wars both being rewritten by Michael Waldron, it seems the plan has changed.
However, Marvel Studios isn't giving up on Kang entirely. @Cryptic4KQual claims, "They won't [explicitly]m present him as Beyonder Kang until the aftermath of the 616 collapse, when he will then go on to establish Battleworld."
This presumably means all those other Kangs were lesser Variants, with The Beyonder using them to recreate the Multiverse so he could return.
There's probably a way to make this work, but all these rumours are pretty confusing and it's hard not to wonder whether Marvel Studios would benefit from just going back to the drawing board and starting over. That may well be what they're doing, of course, but we're sure most of you will agree The Beyonder being a Kang Variant could be ill-advised, especially when regular moviegoers have likely never even watched Loki.
Avengers: The Kang Dynasty is currently scheduled to arrive in theaters on May 1, 2026, with Avengers: Secret Wars to follow on May 7, 2027.