I did not expect to suddenly have Ant-Man 3 on my radar as one of my most anticipated upcoming Marvel films, but that’s what casting Jonathan Majors in a lead role will do: especially when that lead role is – probably – none other than Kang the Conqueror, one of Marvel Comics’ most notable villains. The Da 5 Bloods and Lovecraft Country star is on his way to becoming a prominent and perhaps even permanent fixture of the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s next couple of phases.
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Ant-Man and its sequel Ant-Man And The Wasp are both perfectly decent, fun films, the former slightly more so than the latter, but Ant-Man 3 is apparently going to cap off the trilogy with an epic finale that raises the stakes dramatically: something I would not have suspected was possible, until now. But now, couple the rumors of a Young Avengers subplot with director Peyton Reed’s comments about making the third film “bigger” and “more sprawling” with “a very different visual template”, and then throw in this extra bombshell of a news story, and you have officially piqued my interest. Kang is a villain that many of us have been hoping would make his MCU debut sooner rather than later, and Jonathan Majors is about to get the breakout role of his career: he’s already made a mark on audiences in the first few audiences of HBO’s horror-fantasy anthology Lovecraft Story, and he made an impression on me in Spike Lee’s Da 5 Bloods, where he plays the troubled son of a Vietnam War veteran who is funny, endearing, and surprisingly resilient when put to the test.
The character of Kang, luckily, comes equipped with a complex and fascinating story (all of which is, of course, subject to change depending on how Marvel decides to utilize him) that will give Majors a lot more to do than some other MCU villain actors. In the comics, Kang starts out as a 31st-Century history buff named Nathaniel Richards who discovers time travel technology and uses it to begin manipulating time and conquering entire planets and alternate universes. Wearing his iconic green and purple armor (which, in my humble opinion, is actually one of the most ridiculous comics outfits of all time, but that can easily be fixed for the movies), Kang battles the Avengers and a number of other heroes, and has interactions with several more: including Thor, the Grandmaster, Black Knight, Mantis, etc. He later messes up the timeline so drastically that a younger version of himself (who goes by the name of Iron Lad) ends up turning on him and forming the Young Avengers team to try and put an end to his evil. It’s a lot to try and explain in a single movie that is already going to be balancing a number of other subplots, so expect to see some of the backstory simplified: one thing I believe will remain, however, is Kang’s origins in another timeline. He doesn’t even necessarily need to be from the future – in Avengers: Endgame, the team’s time-heist created a number of alternate universes, from almost any one of which Nathaniel Richards could emerge. With the upcoming Loki Disney+ series set to explore these new universes in depth, I imagine Marvel could start laying the groundwork for Kang’s dramatic entrance early. It’s possible he’ll even cameo in Loki before showing up on the big screen, though I feel like this news would have broken earlier, if that were the case, considering Loki has been in production for a while now (albeit halted due to coronavirus). But it’s definitely not too late to sneak him in for a cameo or small supporting role now.
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Kang showing up in Ant-Man 3 means the rumors of the Young Avengers showing up now feel a lot more plausible, not that they weren’t already: the team is quickly being assembled across the Marvel universe, with characters like Stature (Ant-Man’s daughter) having already been introduced, and Wiccan, Hulkling, Speed, Kate Bishop and America Chavez on their way. There’s a good chance now that Iron Lad will show up too.
Kang also has a bunch of other aliases that he picks up during his adventures through time, including that of an Egyptian pharaoh named Rama-Tut. While this is a wild guess on my part, I wouldn’t rule out the possibility of seeing a hint of this character in Eternals, which will also deal with the Marvel universe’s ancient history. As for where Kang will end up in the future of the MCU, there’s plenty of options: he could become the next big bad; he might set the stage for the Fantastic Four to appear, as they too travel through time and space quite often; it’s theoretically possible he’s a one-and-done villain, but that’s just laughable. You don’t just use Kang once, and you certainly don’t just use Jonathan Majors once, especially not right now as he’s enjoying a swift rise to stardom and mainstream appeal.
One last thing: remember that it’s still not technically confirmed that Majors is playing Kang. Deadline, however, is reporting it as being extremely likely, which is a good sign for all of us who have been waiting to see this villain on the big screen. The only downside to all of this is that it means M.O.D.O.K. and A.I.M. might not be the main villains of Ant-Man 3, as was rumored, although I’m ready to move past that small loss if it means we’re getting Jonathan Majors as a supervillain instead. Who knows? Perhaps M.O.D.O.K. will also appear, and this film is about to become a lot more sprawling than we would have ever guessed.
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What do you think of the news that Jonathan Majors is joining the MCU, and how do you feel about Kang? Share your own thoughts, theories and opinions in the comments below!
Last night, I had the chance to watch Avengers: Endgame again for the first time in a while. As on previous rewatches of the film, I found myself appreciating most of the first act of the movie (where, SPOILER ALERT I GUESS?, the Avengers kill Thanos), and most of the third act (where the Avengers kill Thanos a second time). I even liked a lot of stuff in my least-favorite part of the movie, that troublesome second act that has the team split up across different timelines and try to steal Infinity Stones from history.
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But I still cringed at the absolute worst part of Avengers: Endgame – the scene in which Natasha Romanoff, the legendary Black Widow, sacrifices both her life and years of character development in exchange for the mysterious Soul Stone, willingly leaping from that accursed cliff on the godforsaken planet of Vormir to her very certain death. Cue the outrage. Natasha Romanoff, Marvel’s first (and for a long time, only) woman Avenger, was sacrificed in much the same way as another woman a year earlier: Gamora, who was tossed from the cliff by her own father. As womens’ bodies continue to pile up at the foot of that stupid cliff, fans (and especially, female fans) asked Marvel one simple favor: could you please stop fridging women?
Natasha Romanoff’s death is doubly infuriating because it came just before her long-awaited solo movie, Black Widow, which is supposed to explore an adventure in her past, before the events of Avengers: Endgame. But many are still clinging to a desperate hope that the Widow is still somewhere out there, either alive on earth or fighting to get back home. So let’s take a look at a couple ways Natasha could come back to life in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
5: It Wasn’t Really Her.
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This theory is a bit preposterous, but still worth noting: the idea is that Natasha Romanoff’s “sister”, Yelena Belova, who will make her debut in the Black Widow film, actually traded identities with Natasha before Avengers: Infinity War, or at some other point before Avengers: Endgame. There’s a little bit of evidence that supports this: Natasha wearing Yelena Belova’s jacket in Infinity War; a shot from a recent Black Widow trailer that shows Yelena Belova on a surgical table with a strange scar around her forehead, as if her face had been removed or changed. This option is undoubtedly the least appealing, not only because it would mean that the rest of Natasha’s awesome character beats in Endgame weren’t her own, but because this only changes the identity of the woman victim. As Infinity War Captain America would say: “We don’t trade lives.” Nonetheless, expect the super-spy sisters to swap identities frequently in the Black Widow film.
4: Multiverse Shenanigans.
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As I mentioned previously, Gamora was the first person to lose her life on Vormir – but she has since returned, thanks to the time heist in Avengers: Endgame. Coincidentally, it was when Black Widow, Nebula, Hawkeye and War Machine traveled back to 2014 to retrieve the Power and Soul Stones that a 2014 version of Gamora was able to slip through into the present Marvel timeline, along with the 2014 Nebula and Thanos. If the Avengers wanted to bring Natasha back, they could simply find a version of her from another timeline – but that poses a whole bunch of other problems.
3: Bruce Resurrected Her.
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One of the plot-lines left over from Avengers: Age Of Ultron that went nowhere was the love story between Natasha Romanoff and Bruce Banner a.k.a. The Hulk. The two characters both regarded themselves as “monsters” (let’s not even get into the reasons why), and bonded over that. But after Bruce went missing for two years and the Avengers films switched directors, that story was mostly left unfinished. Except for the fact that, when Bruce Banner finally got his hands on a fully-operational Infinity Gauntlet at the end of Endgame and snapped his fingers to bring back the people that Thanos had dusted, he also tried to bring back Natasha. This is only mentioned in a throwaway line in the film’s final few minutes, but it’s still intriguing – could Bruce have been successful? How would he know? Natasha would presumably be resurrected on Vormir where she died, meaning she’d have to find her own way home.
2: Captain America Came To Bargain.
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At the end of Avengers: Endgame, Captain America takes it upon himself to go back in time and return all the Infinity Stones the Avengers had taken from time. The Space Stone went back to New Jersey, the Time Stone back to the Sanctum Sanctorum, the Reality Stone…I don’t even want to know how he somehow injected it back into Jane Foster without her knowing. But the Soul Stone is the most interesting one: to bring it back, Captain America would have to return to Vormir, to the exact moment of Natasha’s death, and hand it over to…Red Skull, I guess. But does returning the Stone mean that Natasha’s life is also returned? If Natasha is to be brought back to life, this is by far the most likely explanation as to why.
1: Natasha, Daughter Of Ivan.
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And then we come to my theory. I’ve always believed that there’s a reason the Black Widow solo film is supposed to kick off the epic, cosmic events of Marvel’s Phase 4. But what business does the decidedly human heroine have in this universe of gods, aliens and mythical lore? Well, my theory is rooted in comic lore and a very intriguing name that gets dropped minutes before Natasha’s death. Red Skull calls her “daughter of Ivan”, and Natasha comments that he must be telling the truth, because she didn’t even know her father’s name. But who is Ivan? While there are any number of Ivan so-and-so’s associated with Natasha in the comics, there’s also another character who goes by that name, who has a connection to the events about to unfold in the MCU: Ivan Druig is the alias that Druig, an Eternal (who will be played by Barry Keoghan in The Eternals), takes when he impersonates a sadistic Russian KGB officer and the leader of a small Soviet state named Vorozheika. If “Ivan” is Ivan Druig, and Natasha is Ivan’s daughter, that makes her a demigod – similar to how Peter Quill was revealed to be the son of a living planet. Druig might have an interest in resurrecting his daughter, maybe even giving her new powers in the process. If this were the case, Natasha could hold her own in the next phase of the MCU, while her film would have a major tie-in to The Eternals that would help to get audiences excited for that film.
What do you think of these theories? Do you even want to see Natasha brought back, or were you happy with her sacrifice? Share your own thoughts, theories and opinions in the comments below!
Ah, the drama. Earlier this morning, Marvel Cinematic Universe star Sebastian Stan made headlines by seemingly expressing his disappointment with the ending of his Marvel character’s story arc in Avengers: Endgame (and was welcomed by Star Wars star John Boyega into the small but steadily growing community of actors unhappy with how they were treated in the final installment of their respective franchises). I say “seemingly” because it’s kind of unclear whether or not Stan’s vague, single-emoji response to an angry fan’s social media post was an expression of sympathy or not. But since Stan hasn’t clarified his position, and the internet is having a field-day with this story, let’s assume for a moment that Stan really doesn’t like the conclusion to the long and tumultuous history of Bucky Barnes, a.k.a. The Winter Soldier, in the MCU.
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First of all, we have to take a look at the post which stirred up all this controversy and drama. The tweet, itself a response to an official Marvel post about Bucky’s relationship with Steve Rogers, a.k.a. Captain America, read: “Together until the end of the line. Or until bad, inconsistent, out-of-character writing turns Steve Rogers into his own anti-thesis. Shouldn’t it be “together until the end of the lie” now?” The author’s harsh condemnation of certain Avengers: Endgame plotlines would have been controversial regardless of whether it was spotted by a certain Marvel actor (who doesn’t even have Twitter, which makes the whole situation even weirder), but the fact that Stan posted a single wide-eyed emoji (which, according to the internet, could mean anything from shock to embarrassment), is what’s got everyone talking. Why is he angry about this whole “end of the line” business anyway, and what would he have preferred to the ending we got?
together until the end of the line. Or until bad, inconsistent, out-of character writing turns Steve Rogers into his own anti-thesis. Shouldn't it be "together until the end of the lie" now?
Before we go any further, let me make it clear that I don’t necessarily disagree with either Stan or the fan, but that doesn’t mean this post is going to devolve into an embittered, anti-Endgame tirade. I like Endgame: I like it less now than I did upon first viewing, because I’ve identified many of the film’s flaws, and I’m not entirely satisfied with the many of the film’s decision, especially with regards to the final choices of characters like Tony Stark, Natasha Romanoff, and, yes, Steve Rogers, but I still really like it. I don’t think the Russo Brothers are bad directors, or that Disney/Marvel are evil for not creating the perfect movie, or that anybody has to be “cancelled” by the MCU fandom. I’m not the type to start unnecessary drama (though, if you’d like me to, I could start by saying that Avengers: Infinity War is a complete and utter mess: but I won’t). No, I just want to discuss what I feel is one of the most uninspired and uncomfortable decisions made by the Avengers: Endgame writing team.
Which just so happens to be the conclusion to Steve Rogers’ and Bucky Barnes’ relationship.
In the MCU, these two characters, more than probably any other duo (with the exception of Thor and his brother Loki), have constantly been paired up in increasingly dramatic and thrilling situations that have tested their loyalty to each other time and time again: and yet, despite everything, they’ve always found a way back to each other’s side. Steve gets frozen in the Arctic Ocean for seventy years? No biggie. Bucky is horribly maimed in a wartime accident and becomes the brainwashed servant of a malicious organization operating deep within the most secure counter-intelligence group in the world? Not a problem. Their relationship was important to the plot of Captain America: The First Avenger, crucial (obviously) to Captain America: The Winter Soldier, and pivotal to Captain America: Civil War, in which it was a dispute over Bucky’s safety that led Steve to disobey the Sokovia Accords and start a conflict with Tony Stark that led to the titular civil war which broke up the Avengers, which in turn led to Steve and Bucky going on the run, which in part contributed to Thanos’ victory in Avengers: Infinity War, which set in motion all the events of Avengers: Endgame and thus everything that will happen in the MCU for decades to come. It’s not like Bucky is some side-character: he’s a really big deal.
And then, suddenly, he wasn’t.
At the end of Civil War, Bucky was sent to the African nation of Wakanda to recuperate from his injuries, and since then has shown up a handful of times onscreen, spoken a couple lines of dialogue, and has acted as little more than an extra in fight-scenes. In the post-credits scene of Black Panther, he’s not even that – he wakes up in Wakanda and gets the title of “White Wolf”, which seems to forebode big developments down the line. In Infinity War, he is gifted a seriously cool new vibranium arm that seems designed to wreak havoc on the battlefield but…doesn’t; and then, after being dusted by Thanos, he disappears for five years until the Endgame finale, where he has little more than a cameo as the guy standing silently but supportively behind Steve as he, Steve, makes some of the stupidest decisions of his unnaturally long life. And yes, he’s now getting his own Disney+ series (in which he will co-star alongside Anthony Mackie’s Falcon), but that can’t erase the fact that the conclusion of his relationship with the most important person in his life amounted to a brief exchange using dialogue recycled from their first movie. Meanwhile, Steve gets to enjoy a fairytale ending while everyone else in the MCU suffers irreversible pain and hardship; he goes back in time and unabashedly robs a strong, independent woman of her own agency and story arc, just so he can make good on a promise he made twenty-something movies ago. Was it so absolutely necessary that he have his dance with Peggy Carter, thereby creating his own alternate universe in which she never remarried after his disappearance, or had her own family, or moved on with her life?
No. It was, in my opinion, blatant fan-service that makes little to no sense given everything that has happened to Steve over the years. His entire arc has been one of trying to survive in the modern world, to find purpose and meaning in an era that no longer requires his antiquated morals and services, trying to adapt to society. At first, he fought with tooth and nail and Frisbee-shield: he pined after Peggy and he clung to Bucky, and he shook his head at newfangled customs. But he was beginning to change, to evolve, when Endgame happened – in Winter Soldier, he was forced to take a good long look at the government he had blindly followed into battle for decades, and in Civil War he actually fought back against all forms of government, becoming a rogue anarchist. He even had a new love-interest (albeit one who was related to his former love-interest, which made the whole situation highly disturbing and awkward). And then, after all that development, what does he do, first chance he gets? Hops in a time-machine and fills out an entire lifespan with Peggy Carter, thereby shattering any hope that he would move on with his own life, and stealing Peggy’s own opportunity to do so. And for Sebastian Stan and many other outraged viewers, the worst part of this was that it prevented Steve from having any time to interact with Bucky, a friend he had actually known for some time in both the past and present, and with whom he had a complex, meaningful relationship – for whom he had fought the entire world, for whom he had risked his own life countless times: a friend he had believed in when no one else would.
Steve’s ending is uninspired because it does nothing new with the character, but instead harps back on what made him interesting ten years ago: it reverses years of development in an attempt to make his story come full-circle. And unfortunately, this is similar to what happens to many other Avengers in the same movie: Tony Stark, who spent much of his life wondering how he would die and how many people he could save while doing it, died saving the entire world; Natasha Romanoff, whose every waking moment was spent giving thanks to her family and wondering when she would have to sacrifice everything for them, sacrificed everything, including her life, for them; Clint Barton, who just wanted a boring, middle-American family and a farmhouse in the middle of nowhere, got all that after briefly turning into a bloodthirsty ninja and exacting vengeance on all the Asian crime-lords who had absolutely nothing to do with his family getting dusted by Thanos. Each of those endings tries to employ the full-circle trick, but they almost all fail because the full-circle trick doesn’t always work, and isn’t always that interesting, for the same reason why most people like the concept of free will more than fate – the idea that your destiny is predetermined is, honestly, kind of boring. There’s no surprise, no tension.
I can’t claim to understand what went into the making of Avengers: Endgame, or why the screenwriters and directors chose to do what they did with the story: but one thing that most Marvel fans have noticed (and have already speculated could explain the sudden disappearance of Bucky Barnes) is that soon after The Winter Soldier‘s release, a vocal division of the fandom rose up to demand that Steve and Bucky’s relationship go an extra step further and develop into a romantic dynamic. While both actors, Chris Evans and Sebastian Stan, were very supportive of the idea, it seems that higher-ups at Marvel were nervous even to acknowledge the idea of a Steve/Bucky love story, and tried to backpedal: they gave Steve a new, temporary female love interest, and even wrote in a conversation between the two where they talk about the extremely-straight-and-not-at-all-gay relationships that they had back in the 1940’s. And it didn’t take long before Bucky suddenly started vanishing from the movies and getting less and less screen-time. Maybe this is because of cowardice, or maybe it’s simply because the Russo Brothers didn’t want another gay character distracting from that crucial five-second cameo from the Unnamed Gay Man in Avengers: Endgame, but either way it does seem to have had a negative impact on how Marvel treated Bucky Barnes.
Now, we don’t know if this is why Stan doesn’t like the ending to Steve and Bucky’s relationship (technically, we don’t even know if he doesn’t like their ending). A single emoji can say a lot, but in this case it’s vague enough that I’m basing most of my assumptions off the original tweet, which said the Endgame plotline was “bad” (which is entirely subjective), “inconsistent” (which I’ve argued is an accurate assertion), and “out-of-character” (there’s no good answer to this one: after all, Steve is the character who rebelled against the very political structure that created him, but he’s also the same character who couldn’t even find a prospective date outside of his 1945 girlfriend’s immediate family). Now I leave it up to you, my dear jury, to decide for yourselves who’s right and who’s wrong in this debate. In my personal opinion, I have to agree with many of the claims made in the original tweet, but I’m also not going to sit here and say that Avengers: Endgame is poorly-written, as if it didn’t masterfully handle the extraordinarily large cast of characters across several timelines and in multiple parallel realities, right up until that iffy ending.
So what do you think? Is Sebastian Stan well within his rights to raise his voice, despite still being employed by Marvel (even John Boyega waited until after he was done with Star Wars to give them a piece of his mind), or does he come off as merely disgruntled? What do you, personally, think of the ending to Steve and Bucky’s story, and if you could rewrite it, would you? Share your thoughts, theories and opinions in the comments below!
You would think, with Sony having successfully taken Spider-Man away from Disney and Marvel Studios, with all of the character’s huge universe of characters, villains and exciting storylines at their disposal, without having Kevin Feige running the show, without Bob Iger breathing down their backs, without any limitations whatsoever on their creative control over the entire Spider-Verse…you would think Sony would want to do something with all that.
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Well, technically, they are. But this latest Sony announcement, one of their first Spider-Man related news-stories since the Sony/Marvel breakup, is confusing at first because of just how bizarre it is. It’s being reported that Sony is developing a Spider-Man spinoff about a little-known character from the Spider-Verse, Cassandra Webb, who goes by the name “Madame Web”. To call her “little-known” is probably an understatement, in fact. An elderly blind clairvoyant, who needs to be surrounded by a giant mechanical web-shaped life-support system at all times, Webb is…well, she’s not the character that immediately comes to mind when you think of Marvel heroes who deserve their own spinoff films. Green Goblin, Black Cat, Venom, Silk, Silver Sable; those seem like the obvious choices, and already have some strong fans from the comics, and/or have appeared in previous Spider-Man films, so they’re not totally unknown to audiences.
Madame Web, on the other hand, is…not any of that. And unless Sony is taking a radically-different approach to the character, she doesn’t seem like a heroine whose story would make for a great action thriller or superhero epic. If anything, a Madame Web movie could be more introspective and thoughtful, focusing on how Webb uses other heroes to do her bidding, and the moral implications of her actions. It seems like a rather dark subject for a Spider-Man movie, too; watching an old woman forced to sit in the solitude of her webs, while wars rage outside her home, unable to do anything to help. Somehow, Webb’s story seems more like awards season fare, rather than a crowd-pleasing, family-friendly popcorn flick: additionally, the script is apparently being written by Matt Shazama and Burk Sharpless, who are currently developing another Spider-Man spinoff for Sony, about the bloodthirsty vampire Morbius. So, maybe don’t expect Spidey to run into Webb on a school field-trip.
Then again, who knows? Maybe Sony is doing what Marvel Studios did; building up the onscreen personas of little-known characters, preparing for some huge crossover event like an Avengers movie of their own. Webb, whose powers include foresight, would be an invaluable addition to the team, and could work from behind-the-scenes, like a puppet-master of sorts. That would be both slightly creepy and very cool, and seems like it would fit in with the edgier approach that Sony is taking with some of their Spider-Verse acquisitions. Then again, going too dark will lose some of the crucial teenage audiences that turn out regularly for Tom Holland’s Spider-Man movies, so Sony should be careful with their marketing decisions here. And they might also want to start trying to lure in the large part of their Spider-fandom that they lost when they took Spidey away from the MCU: there’s still a lot of resentment toward the studio, resentment which could probably be abated if Sony were to finally use characters like Green Goblin, Doc Oc, the Sinister Six, etc. I just don’t know if Madame Web’s fanbase is big enough to make this film a worthwhile investment, especially now, when Sony has to make good choices and show that they can still be responsible with the great power they now have over Spider-Man.
A final note, though: Sony will presumably soon be on the lookout for an actress to fill the role of Casandra Webb, and I’m urging them to get to Meryl Streep before Marvel scoops her up for some bit part. If there’s anybody who could pull off this difficult role (and possibly bring in some Oscar nominations for Sony), it would be Streep.
What are your feelings on a Madame Web movie, and do you think it’s the content that audiences crave from Sony, post-Marvel? Share your thoughts in the comments below!
