Jonathan Majors, who had been positioned to play the following foremost villain of the most important film franchise of all time, was convicted of assault and harassment on Monday, and about an hour after that verdict got here down, Marvel Studios fired him. Thus ends a yr of uncertainty throughout which the Marvel Cinematic Universe has cratered each creatively and when it comes to viewers curiosity (hyperlink to one thing), and which resulted in the entire MCU slate being delayed a yr whereas the powers-that-be attempt to get it collectively.
With out Majors, the large rapid query is straightforward: What’s Marvel going to do with Kang the Conqueror, who was alleged to be the Thanos of this period of the MCU? The simplest possibility is to only recast the position, which they’ve performed earlier than with Terrence Howard and Ed Norton within the franchise’s early days. Majors has to this point solely appeared in Ant-Man & the Wasp: Quantumania–a film that is confirmed to be fairly unpopular–and the 2 seasons of Loki. That is extra display screen time than Howard or Norton had within the one film they every appeared in, however not an excessive amount of extra. I doubt audiences have gotten overly hooked up to Majors at this level.
If Marvel desires to go the recasting route, it will most likely be fine–or it would not be any worse than the present established order, a minimum of. However I’ve a unique concept that Marvel could nicely have already set in movement: It is time for Ravonna Renslayer to step into the highlight.
From the place we sit now, it is actually robust to inform what precisely occurred with Loki Season 2, which felt fairly stripped down in its ultimate two episodes. No matter arc was deliberate for Ravonna, performed by the nice Gugu Mbatha-Uncooked, appears to have been reduce off. However whereas Ravonna wasn’t in Season 2 as a lot as we might anticipated, it did set her on a brand new path, free from He Who Stays and Kang, who had been her boss for eternity.
Ravonna’s story in Season 2 of Loki started with a paradox. She and Miss Minutes return in time to the 1800s and ship a Time Variance Authority area handbook to a toddler named Victor Well timed, a variant of He Who Stays from the primary Marvel continuity. Later, they attempt to recruit Victor for his or her trigger, but it surely does not work out due to Loki’s interference. However Miss Minutes is lower than enthralled with Victor. She says he is not the actual factor, and can by no means be capable to change into what He Who Stays was–and so, as Miss Minutes declares fairly forcefully, “We do not want him.”
Nonetheless, Ravonna continued to oppose Loki till Sylvie compelled Hunter X-05 to prune Ravonna and ship her to the tip of time. There, Ravonna discovered the corpse of He Who Stays, and discovered about her personal previous. She had been He Who Stays’ prime basic within the earlier multiversal conflict, and he paid again her loyalty by erasing her reminiscence and making her work on the TVA. Studying this was the final straw for Ravonna.
But it surely was additionally her final actual scene on Loki, as a result of she was solely absent from the Season 2 finale apart from a single context-free shot of her apparently nonetheless hanging out on the finish of time. Her plot was left dangling.
These motivations and that backstory mix to ascertain Ravonna as a wild card within the MCU who’s completely positioned to switch Kang, and possibly she ought to. Mbatha-Uncooked is a superb actor who would make for a a lot totally different baddie than Thanos or Kang. Her backstory is sympathetic–she had a crappy boss who handled her poorly regardless of her talent and loyalty, and now she believes each that she will be able to do the job higher than he did and that she has an obligation to take action. These are fairly clearly laid out motivations that we perceive and relate to. And that is precisely what we would like from the MCU’s key dangerous man.
In contrast, Marvel was holding again virtually all of Kang’s story for an Avengers film that was scheduled for 2025, and so we do not actually know him. Ravonna is already grounded in a means that Kang, the multiversal mad scientist who has misplaced his thoughts many occasions over, most likely by no means actually could possibly be.
In different phrases, Marvel has a substitute villain ready within the wings, able to step into the highlight, and she or he could be rattling good for it. However with all the pieces up within the air and the schedule in flux, she’s additionally most likely one of the best obtainable possibility, creatively.
However it is a pretty wild behind-the-scenes scenario at Marvel Studios, after The Marvels bombed and the remainder of the 2023 slate did not make a lot of an impression. The franchise has been so fractured for the previous couple years that there hasn’t been any foremost MCU thread spidering by it all–Kang/He Who Stays was by no means even hinted at outdoors of Loki and Quantumania, and meaning it will be comparatively simple to pivot in any route Marvel would possibly need to head in. However a pivot to Ravonna as the brand new foremost huge dangerous could be the simplest and most pure possibility from a narrative standpoint. They actually already did the legwork.
