Kang the Conqueror / He Who Remains

The first variant to appear is He Who Remains, in Loki season 1, episode 6, "For All Time. Always." Loki and Sylvie cross the Void and reach a citadel at the end of time. They expect a tyrant. They find a calm, chatty man who eats an apple and knows exactly what they're going to say.

He tells the story. In the 31st century, a scientist discovered that other universes existed. Versions of him in each one made the same discovery and, instead of cooperating, went to war. He won, used the creature Alioth as a weapon and created the TVA to keep a single timeline, pruning any branch that could bring another variant of him back. The Time-Keepers were puppets. He was the one in charge.

The offer: Loki and Sylvie can take his place, or kill him and unleash the multiverse, the most dangerous versions included. Sylvie stabs him. Before he dies he says "see you soon." When Loki returns to the TVA, there's a statue of him where the Time-Keepers used to be.

Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania introduces Kang the Conqueror. He was exiled to the Quantum Realm by his own variants, who were afraid of him. Janet van Dyne, trapped in the same place for decades, helped Kang repair his ship's power core without knowing who he was. When she saw, in a vision, Kang wiping out entire timelines, she sabotaged the core so he could never escape. Even trapped, Kang conquered the Quantum Realm.

When the Pym-Lang family gets pulled in, Kang threatens to kill Cassie to force Scott to recover the core. His henchman is M.O.D.O.K., who is a deformed Darren Cross. In the final battle, the people of the Quantum Realm rise up, Hank's ants arrive, M.O.D.O.K. switches sides, and Scott and Hope throw Kang into the core, which is destroyed with him inside.

In Quantumania's mid-credits scene, a huge hall gathers thousands of variants. Three stand out, Immortus, Rama-Tut and Centurion, who discuss the exile's death and say the heroes have started messing with the multiverse. In the post-credits scene, Loki and Mobius secretly watch a presentation by Victor Timely, yet another variant, on a stage in the past.

Loki season 2 develops Timely. In episode 3, "1893", Miss Minutes and Ravonna Renslayer hand the TVA manual to Timely as a boy in Chicago, planning to make him a new boss. As an adult, he's a stuttering, slightly shady inventor, chased from every side at the 1893 World's Fair: Loki and Mobius need him to fix the Temporal Loom, and Renslayer wants to use him as a replacement for the TVA's creator.

In episode 4, "Heart of the TVA", Timely is taken to the TVA. Trying to save the Loom, he walks into the temporal radiation zone and is disintegrated, and the machine explodes.

In season 2, episodes 5 and 6, Loki goes back in time again and again trying to save the Loom, with Timely always helping and always dying. Finally, Loki returns to the citadel at the moment of the season 1 meeting and talks alone with He Who Remains. He reveals that the Loom was built to fail without him: the only way out would be for Loki to kill Sylvie and hand control of the timeline back to the man at the end of time. Loki refuses and finds another way, taking the throne himself.

Kang was planned as the big villain of the Multiverse Saga, with his own movie announced in 2022: Avengers: The Kang Dynasty. Every version was played by Jonathan Majors.

In March 2023 the actor was arrested in New York, accused of assaulting his then-girlfriend. On December 18, 2023, a jury convicted him of assault and harassment, two lower-level charges under US law, and acquitted him of two others. Hours later Marvel announced it would no longer work with him.

Instead of recasting Kang, the studio switched villains. At San Diego Comic-Con in July 2024, Robert Downey Jr., Iron Man himself, was announced as Doctor Doom, and the movie was retitled Avengers: Doomsday, opening December 18, 2026. So far Marvel hasn't announced any new actor for Kang in live action. In animation, he's now voiced by John de Lancie, in season 2 of X-Men '97 (2026). In practice, his on-screen arc ended with Loki season 2.

Kang debuted in The Avengers #8, in 1964. In the comics he's Nathaniel Richards, a 31st-century man who travels through time and takes on several disguises, among them Rama-Tut in ancient Egypt and Immortus, an older version who manipulates history.