Tag: Young Avengers

Hey Everyone,

Paul here…

    During their long stint as Earth’s Mightiest Heroes, The Avengers have faced countless villains over the years. There are very few “Big Bads” in The Marvel Universe that The Avengers haven’t tangled with at some point or another. Heroes like Spider-Man and the X-Men have their own fantastic rogues galleries of villains. By contrast, The Avengers only have a few MAJOR villains to call their own. Villains who are seen as Avengers villains first and foremost. Sure, The Avengers may come up against Doctor Doom fairly frequently, but Doctor Doom has always been, and always will be, the nemesis of The Fantastic Four. However, when it comes to mortal enemies, what The Avengers lack in numbers, they make up for in their sheer level of badass. These motherfuckers are some next level threats. The Avengers have 3 iconic villains as primary enemies and we’ve already see 2 of them in The MCU: Thanos, Ultron, and Kang The Conqueror. I’ll get back to Kang in a minute. 

    First, let’s do a quick rundown of the mega-bad guys Earth’s Mightiest Heroes have faced so far. I’m not counting Loki for the same reason I don’t count Doctor Doom, Loki may have fought The Avengers, but he’s Thor’s problem first and foremost. Anyway like I said, we’ve already seen 2 out of 3 major Avengers baddies, so let’s start with Ultron. In the comics, Ultron is a fucking nightmare. He can never truly be killed, some piece of code always survives. Because he’s an artificial intelligence, every time he comes back, he’s a little more dangerous, a little smarter, and little more deadly. Tony Stark himself has said it on multiple times, it’s an inevitability: one day Ultron will simply win. Ultron may have lacked a lot of this menace on the big screen, but I still feel like there’s a lot to like in The MCU‘s portrayal of the character. James Spader put in an underrated performance as the deranged artificial intelligence, in Avengers: Age of Ultron. Some fans felt that the film and it’s titular villain were disappointing. However, I think Ultron is much more interesting than people give him credit for and I would love to see the character pop up in a future MCU film. 

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   Then, of course, there’s Thanos, who made his first appearance in the post credits scene of the original Avengers film. After years of build up, Josh Brolin delivered an already iconic performance as The Mad Titan, Thanos. Cementing his spot not only as the best villain in The Marvel Cinematic Universe, but one of the best villains on the silver screen period. But even as Thanos was wowing audiences in the epic finale of Marvel’s Infinity Saga, some were wondering who would take his who would take his place as the next “Big Bad” of The MCU.

  Which brings us to “Big Bad” 3, Kang The Conqueror. Fans have been speculating for at least a couple of years now about which villain will become the next big threat in The MCU. With Ultron and Thanos out of the way, the smart money seemed to be on Kang The Conqueror. Now, it looks like those predictions are likely to come true. Recent reports from outlets like Deadline, indicate that Jonathan Majors currently starring as Atticus Freeman in the excellent new HBO series Lovecraft Country, has been cast in the role of Kang The Conqueror. These new reports also indicating that the character will be making his debut in Ant-Man 3. I haven’t seen Majors in many other roles besides Lovecraft Country, but he’s excellent in that series, so I really like this casting. I think there’s a lot of excellent potential here.

   So who is Kang The Conqueror, anyway? Born Nathaniel Richards, Kang is a human from several thousand years in the future, he’s even a descendent of Reed Richards. Kang’s defining characteristics are his mastery of time travel and his brilliant strategic mind. In the far future, Kang utilized his genius-level intellect and advanced weapons taken from across the timeline, to conquer Earth and expand his empire throughout the stars. Kang considers himself the ruler of time itself, with all of history under his domain. He’s gone by many names over the years, but he is the warlord or king of whatever age he finds himself in. He traveled back in time to ancient Egypt and was worshipped as a god because of his incredible technology. He spent years there, ruling as a pharaoh under the name Rama-Tut. During this part of his life, Kang crossed paths and swords with En Saba Nur aka Apocalypse, one of the greatest adversaries of the X-Men. With the X-Men making their debut in the MCU sooner or later, this opens up a lot of interesting storytelling possibilities that could come out of that connection. 

One younger version of Kang, is disgusted when he finds out about his future as a time-traveling despot, so he travels back in time to “The Age of Heroes”,  to join The Avengers in an attempt to avert this future. This Kang actually joins the Young Avengers under the name Iron Lad. Much later in his life, Kang takes up the alias, Immortus, serving as a quasi-guardian of the timeline. It’s easy to see the many possibilities for great storytelling at play with a character like Kang. Kang is so dangerous because he’s a brilliant strategist on par with Captain America or Nick Fury with technology at his fingertips that is thousands of years beyond what even brilliant minds like Reed Richards or Tony Stark have at their disposal.

Ant-Man 3 may seem like an odd choice to debut this character, but it was Pym technology that gave The Avengers access to time travel in the first place. Perhaps Kang doesn’t like other people messing around in, what he views to be, his domain? There are also rumors that Ant-Man 3 could also see the debut of The Fantastic Four in some way. Could this be a jumping off point for the future of the MCU in the same way a movie like Captain America: Civil War was? What do you guys think of Kang The Conqueror joining the MCU,? Do you like the casting? Let me know in the comments below!

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-Paul