I was rewatching Ant-Man Quantumania and I realize something. Like, one of the biggest, if not the biggest problems for the Multiverse Saga. The new phase is supposed to set up Kang the Conqueror as the new Thanos, the great threat of the MCU who will be the ultimate challenge to the heroes, even worse than Thanos since he's operating on an even bigger scale. Yet, there's one big problem: he's not particulary threatening.
All of his variants with a significant on-screen relevance died in each of their appearence. He Who Remains is the most successful of them, yet not only does he die in his first appearence, he returns via time tarvel only to die again. Victor Timely is set up as a potentially threatening figure in the post-credit scene, with Loki being terrified of him and the scene having a sinister tone, only to be shown to a bumbling scientist with a speech problem who is ultimately a nice guy and later dies (multiple times). The Exile, Kang the Conqueror himself, the big bad of the Multiverse Saga, is shown to be ruthless, powerful, skilled and a true genius but gets overwhelmed by ants (yes evolved ants but that doesn't matter in the field of perception, they're still ants) and against what everyone was thinking, gets defeated at the end of the movie despite (again) being supposedly THE Kang, the one who will take Thanos's seat as the new great evil and even greater evil. Worse, he gets defeated by Ant-Man, far from one of the most intelligent, skilled or powerful heroes in the MCU. This in spite of having apparently defeated armies of different versions of the Avengers, so much that they get confused in his head, which is only told and never seen on-screen. There's also the fact the variants have wildly different personalities from one another which throws a wrench into the whole "there are countless versions of him" idea. In general, there's a lot of talks about how threatening and powerful Kang is supposed to be and how much of a hero killer he is but barely anything is shown on-screen, even Kang gets some brief shots of the power he can unleash and the worlds and timelines he has destroyed but they're very brief and we're never shown any of the Avengers he killed (the only hero we see him killing is a new character with barely any screentime).
All in all, Kang comes off more as a dangerous but otherwise manageable antagonist than a greater, multi-universal threat he was described. He dies in every appearence, accomplishes little on-screen, is ultimately nice and weak in one of his appearences and his supposed ultimate self gets offed by ants and one of the weakest heroes in the MCU. Even without taking some of the strongest villains like Ego, Hela or Ronan, a relatively minor villain like Agatha Harkness feels more threatening and dangerous. That's really not a good track record for the supposed even-worse-than-Thanos threat of an entire cinematic universe.
comicvine.gamespot.com
