ScreenCrush: The Podcast! - How KANG Could Return for Avengers: Doomsday to Help Doctor Doom?

Episode Date: November 15, 2025

ScreenCrush The Podcast tackles all the movie and TV hot topics, offering reviews and analysis of Marvel, Star Wars, and everything you care about right now. Hosted by Ryan Arey, and featuring a panel of industry professionals.

Jonathan Majors just dropped a huge hint that he could be returning for Avengers Doomsday, and I'm going to explain how the return of Kank, and not necessarily Majors, could be the best thing to happen to Avengers Doomsday. Welcome back Screen Crush, I'm Ryan Erie, and let's talk about how the imminent return of Kang the Conqueror is the secret sauce that Avengers Doomsday needs to finally bring the MCU together in the saga. Last month, in a red carpet interview with the Sun, a reporter asked Majors about the rumors that he could return as Kank, and he gets this kind of smirk on his face and says,

You cannot say. And then remained coy throughout the interview. He was not that type, but he's not my man, man. You know, I like his life. So let me quickly rehash what happened to Kang and Jonathan Majors because, remember, Disney fired this guy. So back when Marvel was filming Avengers Endgame, they began to prepare this multiverse saga because they knew that they would soon have the X-Men characters to play with

and they wanted a storyline that could honor those old Fox X-Men films while also letting those characters cross over with the heroes of the MCU. Now, in the comics, Kang is one of my all-time. favorite villains. He's a time traveler and I love time travel stories. So they decided that Kang would be their new Thanos, the overarching bad guy that the Avengers have to defeat. Now, Majors is an incredible actor, and his surprise appearance in the Loki finale, sets him on the path to play multiple versions of himself. If you think I'm evil, just wait till you meet my variance. But then, I mean, you guys know what happened. Kang was the main villain of Ant Man

and the Wasp, Quantum Mania, where Majors did give a strong performance. His Kang the Conqueror was at times menacing, but also haunted and sad, until he was beaten by ants. Now, I'm like the only guy who defends that movie, but I definitely don't think that your new big bad should be taken out by Ant Man, and the movie underperformed at the box office for a wide variety of reasons. But the thing is, Marvel was already reportedly having second thoughts about Kang. Kind of like that meme where the guy sees another woman walking by, they realized that Dr. Doom was a better overarching villain for their Secret War saga. After all, Dube, Doom is the villain in the Secret Wars comics. And then, of course, Majors was arrested and convicted

on domestic violence charges and all that took months to play out. In the end, he was found not guilty on all the major charges and had to do 52 weeks probation and domestic violence intervention. And so Disney parted ways with him moments after that verdict was dropped, which probably would have happened no matter what because the studio was already planning to pivot to Dr. Doom. Afterwards, Major said there were no hard feelings. He said, I loved my time at Marvel and I still love Kang. I'm watching them. I see what they're doing and I'm pooling for them. If they need me, they know where I'm at. So, both he and Disney kind of left the door open and we think that Marvel is now letting him back in. Now, Kang always represented the new part of this saga. He was the new threat

and the new Big Bad. But over the past few years, the Multiverse saga has gradually been become more about being the Nostalgia saga. We've brought back all the old Spider-Men, Daredevil, Wolverine, the other Fox X-Men characters. And I actually don't mind that these stories are bringing back our favorites. Nostalgia is a potent, comforting thing, especially when you connect memories to fragrances. Like, for instance, one of my favorite childhood memories was going to my aunt and uncle's house that always smelled like sanded wood and leather. And the other day, I found a fragrance that smells exactly like this. It's called Yellowstone Ride, and it's made with ingredients like smoked whiskey, rough cut tobacco, and charred vanilla. And I got this from Centbird, a fragrance

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what I was saying. So let's start with how Kank could return and why I think it's a good idea for the character to appear in Doomsday. And I'm not necessarily saying it's a good idea for Jonathan Majors to return, but I just love the character of King the Conqueror. So guys, the Multiverse saga, we've been there together. It's been all over the place. The Infinity Saga was tighter with several individual superhero franchises with multiple sequels that culminated in these team up Avengers films. It was just a lot easier to follow. But the Multiverse saga has introduced so many one-and-done heroes, both in movies and Disney Plus shows. So it's a lot tougher to spot a through line throughout these films and shows, but here's the gist of it.

In Avengers Endgame, the Avengers travel through time and they create branching realities. In one of those realities, Loki escapes and time cops haul him off to the TVA, where he finds out that all of reality is being controlled by one variant of Kang, a guy called He Who Remains. This is Wild. He Who Remains wants Loki to take his place supervising the sacred timeline, but instead, Loki opts to form a new multiversal tree that allows for endless realities to branch. So everything that happens in the multiverse saga is a result of this. All the multiverse is in Doctor Strange, the Spider-Men in No Way Home,

the X-Men reality that Monica Rambo appears in, and of course, all the realities in the show What If? In this giant new multiverse, variants of Kang the Conqueror gather together in a huge arena. They think they rule the multiverse, but really the TVA keeps them in check and in the dark about their existence. I got those reports on the variance of Hugh remains. Do any of them know that we exist yet? No. Hell, even Kang went from being the big bat of the, saga to a footnote in a file.

I guess one of them caused a little bit of a ruckus on 616 adjacent realm, but they handled it, so we're all good for now. And the thing is, Marvel, they could just leave it there. I mean, they kind of wrapped up Kang's story in a way where they didn't need to address the character ever again. But then again, that would really suck. So Marvel then pulled a huge pivot announcing their greatest hero, Tony Stark, would become their greatest villain, Dr. Doom.

Now look, you guys know my thoughts on this. I would much rather just see a movie about Victor von Doom and not evil Tony Stark. But Doom was the main villain of the 2015 Secret Wars comic, and he's the greatest comic book villain of all time. And yet, it's still really weird that they build up to another villain just to abandon him like so much Jesse. But now, Majors is hinting that Kang could be coming back for Doomsday and or Secret Wars. And this finally sets up the ways that Kang can return. So I'm going to go through a few possibilities of how he could appear. And then I want to talk about how Kang's appearance is going to make it feel like the Multiverse saga was following a plan,

instead of just switching villains midstream. So here's possibility number one, and this is the easiest to pull off. The first scene of the movie picks up at that post-credit scene of Quantum Mania, and this is when the Council of Kangs are talking about how the heroes are starting to touch the multiverse. Literally, they finish that sentence, and then Dr. Doom shows up. Now, originally, this council was setting up the original plot of the Kang dynasty, that there were going to be different heroes forming up to fight different teams of Kangs. But now, literally, Doom just shows up and obliterates the entire council room.

And this would send an immediate message to fans. All that stuff he didn't like about the Multiverse saga, that's done, and now Robert Downey Jr. is back. Marvel would just have to hire majors to come in for a day, film a couple of pickups, and he's done. But that's kind of boring, and it feels like way too big of a recon, right? Yeah, that's gonna suck! So here's possibility number Dose.

Doom is the hero of the movie, just like Thanos was actually the main protagonist of Infinity War. Tony Stark shows up in different realities, warning people about the threat of Kang the Conquer. And you know, Ant Man can be like, oh my God, Kang, he's He's terrifying. Let's go get him, Mr. Stark. And maybe Kang even ended Doom's universe, and ever since, he's been hunting him throughout the multiverse. So Dr. Doom becomes the hero of the movie, and he leads a team to fight Kang. And then you never know, Kang might recruit other heroes to fight for him.

And this could be why we have two teams of Avengers and why the X-Men and Fantastic Four are in the movie. But then, of course, Doom wins the battle, but he races the multiverse, creates battleworld. But there's also the possibility that Kang and Doom can work together. This was a subplot in the 1990s Infinity War comic. Doom and Kang, both he takes a some powerful cosmic energies, and they team up to track them down. They're each planning on betraying the other, and in the movie, we can open up on the same story. So imagine that Kang, after he got sucked into the Quantum Drive and Ant Man 3, discovers Dr. Doom, and they're on some quest to stop the Council of Kang's. And once they get there, they kill the Council of Kang's together, but then

they turn on each other and Doom kills Kang. This would pay off the ending of Quantum Mania, but also show off how much of a badass Dr. Doom is. But most importantly, I think Kang coming back in the movie is going to reinforce that the biggest threat to the multiverse was always Tony Stark slash Dr. Doom. I think they're going to retcon it to say that he who remains restructured reality not to stop his variants, but to stop Tony Stark. Like I've always been fascinated by he who remains plan. He met his variants and he says they went to war and then they nearly destroyed the multiverse. Then of course he says he weaponized Eliath and rolled the timeline for like millions of years. And then in the Loki season one finale, he wants Loki to take his place, but he had to

manipulate Loki in a very specific way. He couldn't just pull any Loki from the multiverse. He needed this specific Loki from Earth 616 before he does his face turn and becomes a good guy. But think about it, he could have grabbed Loki from any point in his 1500-year lifespan, but he had to nab Loki after the Battle of New York. That battle gave Tony Stark his PTSD, which led to him creating Ultron, which led to the Sokovia Accords, the Breakup the Avengers, and Thanos' victory. And then what happened? Just start a comp person. No, well, yeah, he did actually start composting, but more importantly, he invented time travel. So because Tony Stark invented time travel, Kang could not disrupt the timeline and erase him from

existence. And this, by the way, is also true in the comics, where Kang found Dr. Doom's time machine in a distant future and then used it to travel through time. We've already seen the 838 Reed Richards variant used Dr. Doom's time platform from the comics, and we also saw the Kang's use it at the Council of Kang's. And the TVA's doors essentially work the same. They're just vertical gateways instead of horizontal. And you'll notice that when he orchestrated his plan with Loki, it had to be during the time heist because he needed Tony to create time travel so he who remains could later discover the multiverse. So the creation of time travel was foundational. It had to happen for he who remains to exist. But it could also be that maybe he's a descendant of Tony Stark,

so Tony had to live long enough to have a kid. They even say this in the show Loki, that the Avengers were following a plan. We're not here to talk about the Avengers. Oh no? No. What they did was supposed to happen. Therefore, it makes sense for he who remains to make sure that Tony Stark was killed, because, as we've talked about on the channel before, Doom's origin probably begins with the snap. Tony's face is scarred, but he survives the snap, and he still has the Infinity Stones. I mean, it sounds like a Dr. Doom origin story to me. So the sacred timeline wasn't just about preventing the creation of other Kangs, it was also about preventing the creation of evil Tony Stark.

And our good friend Colton Ogburn has theorized that this is what the Kings were talking about at the Council of Kings, the idea that they had to prepare to fight Dr. Doom. As soon as the sacred timeline was gone, because Loki let it grow into a tree, this caused the creation of the great Kang killer, Dr. Doom. So this is how I would like to see this movie begin and how I think Jonathan Majors could be incorporated. Instead of beginning with Doom blowing up the arena, begin it with the multiversal war that was teased in the show Loki,

show the Kangs fighting each other or teaming up to fight Dr. Doom. So this is Tony Stark versus the greatest villain of the multiverse saga, Kang, the Council of Kings. But instead of an entire movie where we see the heroes all team up to fight, by Kank, Doom does it by himself. He kills the ultimate villain. He is the hero of the saga. But because he's Tony Stark, he can't just retire. See, we kept seeing this in the Infinity saga. Tony quits being Iron Man three different times, but he always has to tinker and tinker and come back for more. So after he defeats all the Kangs, now he decides he wants to baby-proof

the multiverse. Like realities are falling apart from the devastation of the wars, and Doom wants to consolidate everything into a single reality that he can control. And this way, we could get that multiversal war we were promised in Loki, Jonathan Majors can finish his story arc, and we can regard Evil Tony as the actual villain of the saga. But you guys know, I do think it's a shame it went down this way. Regardless of the off-camera problems with Majors, Kang the Conqueror is a great villain in the comics. He's a time traveler, so imagine the Avengers fighting a guy who is the master of time, a guy who already knows what they're going to do and how he can kill them even before they attack. You're an Avenger. Have I killed you before?

And like all great villains, he genuinely believes that he is doing the right thing. He could have been a great antagonist for the saga. And then we can introduce Dr. Doom as, you know, Dr. Doom. Wouldn't that have been cool? And guys, don't forget to use our QR code on screen right now to get 55% off your first month with Centbird using code S-Crush 55. That means you'll get your first purchase for only 897, and your next month will just be 1795. That's promo code S-crush 55 for 55% off your first month. But that's just my thoughts and theories. If you guys have any, let me know in the comments below

and let me know what you think about Jonathan Majors coming back, even if it's for a short cameo. Or you can also find me on Twitter, Blue Sky Threads or are free to join Discord server. And if it's your first time here, please subscribe, smash that bell for alerts. For Screen Crush, I'm Ryan Erie.