Marvel made the right choice in severing ties with Jonathan Majors. Nothing about it is artistic; it’s purely a financial and ethical decision, and it happened within about ninety minutes after the verdict in December 2023.
What troubles me is the second decision, which no one had a chance to vote on. Marvel moved on from an actor. Yet why they also decided to move on from the character baffles me.
What makes me upset: Marvel invested years into the creation of the easiest-to-recast villain ever and then treated recasting him as something impossible, something akin to drying water.
Think of the work done! Loki gave Marvel the Time Variance Authority, the Sacred Timeline, and an entire approach to thinking about an infinite number of variations of the same entity. He Who Remains was just another face among many. Next came Quantum Mania, which introduced the menace larger even than Thanos in the person of Kang the Conqueror and left us with the image of the Council of Kangs, many faces of one man in the arena, arguing with different armor, different accents, different mannerisms. Entire concept! Entire plan!
They created a perfect, completely in-story solution for actor swaps whenever they wished, and didn’t use it. That’s like building a fire escape route and then deciding to jump out of the window nonetheless.
It could all be resolved with just one scene: new Kang appearing before the council; different energy, colder tone, menacing presence, different voice, camera lingers, and one of the people working in TVA comments casually about the variation. Done. Fans would have been over it within minutes. Since Edward Norton replaced Banner and then Mark Ruffalo, no fan complained about an actor change of mind.
And as soon as the news broke, the internet did its job by recasting Kang for Marvel for free. Yahya Abdul-Mateen II was busy being Wonder Man. John Boyega reacted to the popularity of the idea of him becoming Kang with the gif of Donkey from Shrek and refused politely, very career move indeed. Colman Domingo, Damson Idris, and John David Washington were suggested. However, as Aldis Hodge kept coming up in conversations about a new Kang, he seems like a perfect fit.
Here’s why: Leverage proved he could carry a TV series. Straight Outta Compton gave him a place in the cultural events of his time. Invisible Man showed his ability to carry the scenes despite being alone with the real menace. Clemency is a portrayal of collapse from inside through the means of restraint and lack of any reaction to what is happening; precisely what Kang needs, and precisely what was mishandled in Quantum Mania, turning him into a Shakespeare performer inside a snow globe. Hodge will scare viewers with a soft voice.
Also, Hodge isn’t a megastar like Robert Downey Jr., which helps a lot. They need an actor who can portray the catastrophe on a multiversal scale without distracting from the marketing. Hodge is such an actor.
If they decide to recast Kang, they could do it quietly in animated shows where no one will complain. As X-Men ’97 season 2 brought back the Rama-Tut version of Kang this summer, voiced by John de Lancie, it was a bold casting choice. Same face, same voice, no explanations, no controversy. Showrunner Beau DeMayo mentioned in a previous interview that the plans initially involved Majors portraying this character.
Thus, the character can be recast. We know that because they already did. They just decided not to use it where it counted.
That brings the story told by Marvel a bit questionable: Kevin Feige told The Hollywood Reporter that it all started long before the scandal involving Majors, because Kang was not big enough and thus not Thanos-level, and thus talk of Doom started earlier, before even the opening of Quantum Mania. It could be true Feige managed to gain an enormous amount of good faith within twenty years. No, I am not accusing him of lying. That is a rather convenient story for a plan gone awry in the public eye, and it asks us to believe that the villain too small for the Big Screen was somehow appropriate for Disney+ eighteen months earlier.
Here is why I disagree with everybody: this switch to Doom is still a good move for reasons unrelated to damage control.
The difference between Doom and Kang is that the former has real reason to hate particular people.
Kang’s problem was grand concepts: timelines, incursions, infinite outcomes, and all that. Sounds exciting at the whiteboard but not really on screen, where you cannot punch the whiteboard. Doom’s is concrete. It has a face: Reed Richards.
The preview footage at the recent D23 proves this point: Sue Storm talks about the Victor she knew, about him having been kind before he had to lose everything he held dear. Also, Pedro Pascal in the role of Reed calls Victor by his name, a small but meaningful gesture. To finish it off with the ending of the Fantastic Four: First Steps and the Doom standing over Franklin Richard, looking like a grim godfather. This isn’t conquering the universe for its own sake; it’s taking what belongs to someone else’s family, taking it away, and trying to take the other family.
A victim seeking revenge is a perfect setup for a villain. Kang was not a villain; he was a complex plot device with a comfortable armchair.
So, no, I don’t hate the switch. Doom is almost certainly the better villain in the long term, and Doomsday arrives on December 18th, which will be Marvel’s best villain in recent memory since that purple guy snapped his fingers.
But the scale of this problem Marvel has created is significant. All of the pillars of the entire Multiverse saga have been created just for Kang: TVA, Sacred Timeline, variants, incursions, and all that. The council remains somewhere unaddressed but surely complaining. Thus, Loki finished with the sacrifice dedicated to keeping at bay a threat Studio itself decided was not really the threat.
That will not be fixed with just a good trailer. A true fix would mean giving Doom an inevitable feel, not a substitution for Kang, because while Kang desired to rule the multiverse, Doom wants to save it in his way. And that is a different film and a much better one.
After that, Secret Wars in 2027? Recast Kang properly again on the live-action scale on the biggest platform possible. The idea is good enough not to keep in a drawer forever. And Aldis Hodge is still out there, waiting.
