It’s no secret Kang the Conqueror is here to stay, with Jonathan Majors’ Marvel villain poised to reign triumphant in Avengers: The Kang Dynasty in 2025. But what if Kang’s reign of terror is meant to last longer than that?
Making the rounds on social media is a fan theory that Kang will turn into the Marvel character known as the Beyonder for Avengers: Secret Wars in 2026. The theory has popped up in places like Twitter and Reddit, with scooper MyTimeToShineHello tweeting it last December.
Warning! Spoilers ahead for Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania.
The gist of the theory goes like this: Although Kang was defeated at the end of Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania and got sucked up into his own “multiversal engine,” he will return in a stronger form called the Beyonder. (Or, possibly, one of Kang’s other variants will become the Beyonder. Either works.)
In the original Secret Wars comics, the Beyonder is a cosmic entity who summons practically the whole Marvel Universe to fight on Battleworld, a reality designed for the superheroes to use their powers at full strength. In 2015, Marvel published a spiritual sequel to Secret Wars that ended with the merging of two universes.
Given that Marvel’s Phases Four to Six are collectively the Multiverse Saga, it’s plausible Avengers: Secret Wars will merge concepts from both the original 1984 comic and the 2015 crossover for the screen. And it’s just as plausible that Kang and the Beyonder will be at the center of it all.
The Beyonder and Kang are two different characters in the comics, but the Marvel Cinematic Universe has never been shy about rewriting characters. There’s precedent for Kang to become the Beyonder just as Marvel did to M.O.D.O.K., Ego, Vision, Ultron, Wenwu (a composite of the Mandarin and Fu Manchu), and even Adam Warlock. With Majors’ stardom burning white hot right now, it’s obvious why Marvel will want to keep the celebrated actor in the franchise for at least another movie.
Right now this is only a theory. And just as Marvel alters characters its characters to suit its storytelling needs, it has also avoided adhering to the comics too closely. Just because the Beyonder was a critical character in the comic Secret Wars doesn’t mean he will still be in the MCU. (Remember when fans theorized that Adam Warlock would appear in Infinity War and Endgame?)
Still, Marvel has done a solid job setting up the multiverse and variants to make Kang’s potential transformation into the Beyonder an earned twist. Becoming the Beyonder would also be an excellent use of Jonathan Majors, a chameleonic actor unafraid of going big and bold for a role like Kang. In the comics, the Beyonder goes through a lot of transformations, including at one point being human in an effort to learn about human nature. Only someone like Jonathan Majors can make a ludicrous character from Marvel’s back issues feel human.
