The Season 1 finale of Loki was very careful not to explicitly refer to He Who Remains as Kang the Conqueror, but it became pretty obvious, even to audiences who may not have been aware that Jonathan Majors had been cast in the role last September to act as the big bad of Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania.
No offense to Scott Lang’s solo series, but when the news first broke a lot of fans wondered why a villain as powerful as Kang was set to debut in one of the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s B-tier standalone franchises, but Loki has answered those questions definitively. Multiple variants are on their way to countless aspects of the expanding number of realities, and for He Who Remains it’s a bit of an ‘I told you so’ moment.
The sole occupant of the Citadel at the End of Time warned Loki and Sylvie in no uncertain terms what would happen if he were to die, but she went ahead and killed him anyway. In a new behind the scenes interview from Disney Plus’ Marvel Studios Assembled: The Making of Loki, Majors explained the differences between He Who Remains and Kang the Conqueror.
“I think with He Who Remains, the objective for me was to give me the largest canvas possible. From that, as Kang begins to rear his head and do his deeds, in many ways, he has no choice but to be in opposition or be different from He Who Remains. That was the thing that grabbed me and pulled me into the role. Kang lives in so many iterations as He Who Remains says: ‘Reincarnation, baby’.”
Majors is one of the industry’s fastest-rising young stars, and the 31 year-old has been handed the opportunity of a lifetime as the next end-of-level boss in the most successful franchise in the history of cinema. Having outlined that it isn’t one version of himself but many coming to wreak havoc and cause chaos across the multiverse, Kang the Conqueror‘s many forms will allow the actor to pitch his performance entirely differently every time he shows up in either film or television, making him as dangerous as he is unpredictable.