So you’ve seen “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania” and you’ve stuck around and watched the scenes after “Quantumania” and you’re going, “Wha—?”
Well, have no fear, we’re here to dispel your Kangfusion. Unless you haven’t seen the movie yet, in which case, we’re strictly ant-ispoilers — so if you haven’t seen it and don’t want your viewing experience ruined, stop reading! But if you have seen it, here goes … (Again, spoilers follow)
It’s no spoiler to say, despite time-traveling menace Kang the Conqueror being conquered himself in “Quantumania,” which he must have found mortifying, we’d be seeing more of him. Hims? Them? After all, Marvel has announced the next Avengers movie, scheduled for a May 2025 release, is called “The Kang Dynasty.” (By the way, why not shorten his name to “Kanqueror”? Seems like it would save time, which is his thing, right?) The only questions have to do with how he’s going to manifest between here and there.
The first credits scene doesn’t exactly answer that, but poses many intriguing possibilities by introducing viewers to the Council of Kangs (all played by Jonathan Majors). What is the Council of Kangs? Funny story.
Kang-Prime, the man who would be King of Kangs, joined with a couple of his variants (variants are a whole thing in Marvel; see “Loki” Season 1 for a primer about these alternate versions of characters) to go around timelines killing their selves, or, rather, the variants they deemed useless or embarrassing by their Kangaroo court. Come on, that’s kind of hilarious: Their raison d’être is finding Problematic Kang or Kang With a Debilitating Bunion or just the Kang Who Got Worked by Thor and wiping them from their timelines? It’s funny in a mass-murdery way. Self-esteem issues much, Mr. Conqueror?
Anyhoo, the eventual dissolution of the Council of Kangs due to their trying to kill each other led to the creation of the Council of Cross-Time Kangs (which sounds a little like the Originals renaming themselves the New Originals), with a much larger membership — essentially, any Kang who had killed another Kang. That’s not all there is to it; there are robots involved, but for now, all that’s important is this Cunning Council of Kang-killing Kangs seems more like the critical mass of Kangs we see gathered at the end of the first credits scene. It’s clearly assembled by a trio of O.G. Kangs that seems to include Pharoah Rama-Tut, one of the best known versions of Nathaniel Richards, the man who eventually becomes Kang (yes, Richards, as in Reed Richards of the Fantastic Four, but that’s a long story for another, you know, time).
Interestingly, the first Council of Kangs’ arch-enemy wasn’t the Avengers or the Fantastic Four, but a Kang: the sometimes good, sometimes bad future self of Nathaniel Richards known as Immortus, whom we haven’t officially seen in the MCU yet, though the version of He Who Remains in “Loki” Season 1 bears some resemblance to him (I know, I know, of course he bears a resemblance, he’s the same guy; you get it).
The doors are wide open at this point for Kang‘s engagement with heroes all over the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Rama-Tut, for instance, has extensive connections to not only the Fantastic Four — after all, his first appearance was in FF No. 19 (1963) — but to heroes including Moon Knight. In the comics, a Moon Knight in Ancient Egypt saves the life of Richards from Rama-Tut. That Moon Knight, by the way, later turned out to be Ravonna Renslayer, who became very close to Kang; in the Disney+ “Loki” series, she’s a Time Variance Authority big shot played by Gugu Mbatha-Raw. In the Disney+ “Moon Knight” TV series, a design on the back of the jacket of a briefly appearing henchman has been speculated to be a Rama-Tut reference — it seems to be a drawing of his distinctive headpiece with splashes of color suggesting Kang’s teal-and-purple scheme.
And, of course, fans know all about the appearance of a Kang variant known only as He Who Remains in Season 1 of “Loki.” That leads us to the second credits scene, which feels like a teaser for “Loki” Season 2, in which Thor’s adoptive brother and Time Variance Agent Mobius M. Mobius (likely a reference to a Möbius strip, not Michael Morbius, played here by Owen Wilson) show up in 1901 to see a presentation by the inventor Victor Timely. Surprise (not)! It’s another variant of Nathaniel Richards. Boy, that Jonathan Majors is being kept busy these days. What mischief he’ll get up to in early 20th century Wisconsin remains to be seen, but his name itself is a charming Easter egg: Before Marvel was Marvel, it was Timely Comics.