Ssh, don’t tell Jonathan Majors, but Marvel might’ve finally revealed what happened to Kang the Conqueror in the MCU

MCU is in a curious place as we’re now almost two years from the release of Avengers: Secret Wars, which will conclude the Multiverse Saga. And almost two years ago we met the character who was supposed to be the big bad of said event movie, Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania‘s Kang.

Of course, we all know that Kang’s been erased from the Sacred Timeline at this point, in light of Jonathan Majors’ fall from grace, with Robert Downey Jr. stepping back up to the plate to inhabit the role of Doctor Doom. Within the MCU itself, however, there’s been no explanation for why Kang — once pitched as an unstoppable multiversal miscreant — has vanished without a trace. That said, it’s just possible Marvel provided its first (and possibly only) explanation. Everyone, say thank you What If…? season 3.

What If…? season 3 just subtly explained Kang’s disappearance from the MCU

In the opening scenes of What If…?‘s two-part series finale, “What If… The Watcher Disappeared?”, Captain Carter and her Guardians of the Multiverse make their grand reappearance. There are so many callbacks to episodes past in this sequence — look, it’s the Nebula from season 2 and now she’s Nova Prime! — that it’s easy to miss a major MCU revelation masquerading as set dressing.

When arriving on Xandar to help Nebula and the Nova Corps take out a multiversal squid monster (likely the same one from season 1, episode 1, thereby bringing the show full circle), Captain Carter makes landing in a very familiar form of transport. The pod she appears in as actually Kang’s Time Sphere, also known as his Time Chair, his Quantum Realm throne seen in Quantumania.

The fact that the Guardians have a Time Sphere in their possession heavily hints that they have defeated at least one Kang variant during their adventures. And, well, it’s entirely possible they have defeated all of them off-screen. As their name suggests, the Guardians of the Multiverse exist to protect reality for the biggest threats imaginable, and their success rate is impressive — see their battle against Infinity Ultron in season 1 and their enormous power upgrade in the season 3 finale.

There have been rumors that Avengers: Doomsday might kick off with Downey’s Victor Von Doom destroying the Council of Kangs, clarifying why he’s now the Multiverse Saga’s main villain, but maybe he won’t need to bother as the heroes of What If…? have beaten him too it. Honestly, any direct reference to Kang and his unceremonious removal from the board in either Avengers 5 or 6 will be awkward at best, so maybe it would be to the franchise’s benefit to simply imply the Council’s downfall in this way. For an antagonist who was first defeated by Ant-Man of all heroes, it would be kind of fitting if his ultimate end came at the hands of Howard the Duck’s offspring.