Plus they came at the right time.
Kang: YOU TALK TO ANTS!
"Cue Ants and the obligatory Big Damn Heroes moment".
"The Black Rage makes us strong, because we must resist its temptations every day of our lives or be forever damned!"I can't really understand the criticism of how Kang being defeated in this movie undermines his threat. The guy was basically a One-Man Army who managed to conquer an entire universe while being explicitly at a fraction of his full power and who was only defeated by an Outside-Context Problem, while it is stated that he's only one Variant among a multitude who had managed to cast him there (meaning they were stronger than him even at his full power). And if we take into account Loki (2021), we know that one Variant of this guy could enforce a vast bureaucracy capable of preventing the appearance of any divergent timeline (and to whom the Infinity Stones were just a trinket). This would be like saying that Thanos' threat got ridiculously diminished because Thor beheaded him at the start of Avengers: Endgame.
And I like the superants. Even though their appearance had been heavily foreshadowed and their Big Damn Heroes moment was a given the moment they were introduced, I did not expect them to be so cool. And they gave Pym one great Bond One-Liner.
Whatever your favourite work is, there is a Vocal Minority that considers it the Worst. Whatever. Ever!.Honestly, for Kang to be beaten in his introductory movie, but the council as a group being the Big Bad of the phase, seems like a great way to avoid Conservation of Ninjutsu
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That's not really how it went down. Kang was defeated by a group effort consisting of Scott, Hope, Cassie, Hank, Janet, the Quantum Realm denizens, the turncoat MODOK, and the ant civilization; and after all that when he desperately tried to salvage the situation, Scott was still getting his ass kicked until Hope showed up. I can fully believe that he's an Avengers-level threat by himself, let alone an entire multiverse of him.
Edited by lbssb on Feb 20th 2023 at 11:17:51 AM
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I must have missed the part where Scott kicked Kang's ass. The way I saw it, it was more a seriously nerfed Kang severely wounded by an army of super-ants curb-stomping Scott until Hope intervened and was able to hold him back until his reactor blew up in his face, and that was a very close call.
Then again, Kang was also one-shotted by a lone Asgardian Goddess, so I agree he's not all that
.
Edited by C105 on Feb 20th 2023 at 8:22:41 AM
Whatever your favourite work is, there is a Vocal Minority that considers it the Worst. Whatever. Ever!.I wonder if we're going to get any Kang variants in What If. The fact that there's a Quantum Realm where Janet became a zombie could indicate that there could be a Zombie Kang and his forces...
Or we just have him show up as a harmless Nice Guy scientist who acts as Plucky Comic Relief for one episode.
Eh, the superants are there to provide an excuse for how Kang was defeated and they mostly work for that purpose (though I think they are going to be a worldbuilding problem going forward and expect they'll either be obliterated by the Council of Kangs or just never mentioned again).
It's funny because the ants really ought to work for me. I often whine about how everything being connected to the hero makes things feel smaller than a universe should be. But here, the problem is that it's neither actually independent of our heroes (they only show up to help as soon as Hank is in trouble, rather than intervening at any other point, even though they basically have to be aware of what Kang is doing and have the power to intervene) nor is it 'earned' by our heroes? Hank doesn't do anything to get help, there's no Gondor Calls for Aid moment, or any indication why, after thousands of years, they're willing to go to war for this guy (or have apparently been looking for him for all that time?) and certainly nothing they do causes the time dilation that allows them to advance that far.
My beef with the ants is that they're neither an independent faction, which would complicate the world, nor are they a faction that the heroes do anything to earn the support of/leadership of. Instead, they're just an Ant Ex Machina, despite the foreshadowing.
The Scrappy of the Trope Pantheon, God of Thumps
Is it weird that we’ve been all focused on whats upcoming with Kang that we forgot the actual movie. I know this is hypocritical from a guy who really likes Kang (I gave an outline of a Kang Dynasty plot) but I dont its a good thing that what I can take away from a movie is to be hyped for another movie?
Insert Martin Scorcese quote here.
Pantheon server for all who click here. Lost too much money and time, this coaster ain’t stopping.So, this is just a shot in the dark, but I've had the theory since watching that the Kang we see in the film is - specifically - the version of Kang who would have turned into He Who Remains.
The whole backstory of being an Exiled Kang who was scheming up a way to wipe out every timeline but his own to stop the war from consuming reality: unless more than one Kang had the same idea, it does feel like we were looking at He Who Remains, just eons earlier in his life.
I also really liked the reversal. Kang is a singular foe far more powerful than any one hero to fight, or even any three heroes fighting in tandem. But he gets defeated by being zerged by thousands bunch of individually less powerful assailants.
And imo it worked for the fight. That entire fight is Kang progressively falling apart as he gets mobbed by tons of weaker but determined foes who slowly overwhelm him.
Edited by KnownUnknown on Feb 20th 2023 at 10:08:40 AM
Personally, I am hyped for Loki season two instead.
I think it's normal to be focusing on Kang given that he's the Big Bad of the next phases, and, unlike Thanos, he was not introduced in a stinger.
Whatever your favourite work is, there is a Vocal Minority that considers it the Worst. Whatever. Ever!.I tell you, I never expected to see Rama Tut on the big screen - especially not as a character with, like, lines or anything. I figured it'd be cameo at best.
I expected him to be kind of waved off as one of those uncomfortable ideas from the 60's that they referenced but didn't fully incorporate in the MCU, so it got a laugh out of me to see Jonathan Major in that full goofy outfit and to realize he's apparently going to be a principal antagonist.
Edited by KnownUnknown on Feb 20th 2023 at 10:27:07 AM
Not gonna lie, I've been hoping since I learned who the character was that he'd be a Rogues' Gallery Transplant and become an enemy of Moon Knight.
Because a dude from the future pretending to be a Pharaoh of Egypt fighting against a man with DID chosen by an Egyptian god to protect humanity from the worst scum of the Earth would be really awesome.
Edited by MatthewWayne on Feb 20th 2023 at 10:34:06 AM
"I'm Mr. Blue, woah-woah-ooh..."I expected him to be kind of waved off as one of those uncomfortable ideas from the 60's that they referenced but didn't fully incorporate in the MCU, so it got a laugh out of me to see Jonathan Major in that full goofy outfit and to realize he's apparently going to be a principal antagonist.
This, MODOK, and the hyperintelligent ant civilization are the kind of crazy comic-book shit I love that we can finally go all-out on getting in the movies.
Disney100 Marathon | DreamWorks MarathonI have seen a lot of people say that Cassie is repeatedly rude to her father, but I only remember one scene where comes close to that.
I have to admit I don't think him being defeated undermines Kang's threat. Especially since I still don't think he's dead. I mean Cross survived something similar. I have to admit though the Council scene would not have worked without Majors' talent.
Edited by Bullman on Feb 20th 2023 at 6:16:04 AM
Fan-Preferred Couple cleanup threadI think it helps that this is specifically the Kang that the others have already defeated. However powerful this one is, the rest have already kicked his ass, and he's running on way less resources than he had beforehand by the time he meets Scott and company.
It also helps that the various other versions of Kang are such visibly different characters. You can tell just by looking at Rama Tut or the others that they're going to present, act and threaten differently than the Kang we've just met or any of the others.
Edited by KnownUnknown on Feb 20th 2023 at 4:25:13 AM

I personally don't think Kang being defeated in this movie undermines his threat at all. Yes, he lost... but just barely, and his defeat has drawn the eyes of the Council to 199999.
I also personally thought the ants defeating him was actually rather clever: Kang's technology is centuries ahead of modern tech, but Hank describes how the ants evolved their own society and technology for thousands of years. The ants were more advanced than Kang.
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