The MCU has already seen a big time-travel storyline in Avengers: Endgame, but one of their biggest time-traveling villains is just getting started. Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania will deliver the first look at the real Kang the Conqueror. After the benign He Who Remains, this time, Kang is a dominant force and certainly ready to fight for what he wants. But as one of Marvel Comics’ time-traveling masters, the early introduction of using the Quantum Realm to flit through time ended up altering the plans for Kang in both his upcoming Ant-Man movie appearance and Avengers: The Kang Dynasty. Writer Jeff Loveness told SFX Magazine in an upcoming issue:

“I haven’t seen a time-travelling character done with such intricacy and exploration. I’m a little bummed because ‘Endgame’ did so much time travel, so you almost need to broaden him out a little bit too, maybe broaden out into the multiverse a little more, the dimensionality of the character, the limitless freedom he has while also being completely uprooted from his time and himself. Is it just going to all fall apart again because another version of him can destroy it as well? What’s the purpose of building Rome if you are going to burn it down the next day, because they want to have their own Rome?
I certainly took a ton from the comics but the joy of these movies is you also get to put some of yourself into it, you get to put a completely new spin because if you just do a 100% comic book adaptation people know all the tricks and what to expect. You have to use that as a foundation and then throw a curveball. I’ve tried to lean into him being a more interesting character than people expect, hopefully.”

Related: Avengers: The Kang Dynasty Writer Says It Will ‘Throw Phase 4’s New Heroes Into the Fire’

More Variants of Kang Are Coming Before We Get to Avengers: Secret Wars

Marvel Studios

Variants have become an essential part of the MCU even before the opening up of the multiverse. Loki, in particular, began to explain the existence of variants who are out of their time and reality and what becomes of them. However, all that was before Loki’s finale saw timelines becoming fragile before Doctor Strange took his trip through the fractured multiverse and certainly before we learn exactly how powerful Kang is.

One of the biggest draws to the character of Kang for Jonathan Majors was that he would play many different versions of the character over his time in the MCU. Unlike Thanos, who was a singular enemy for the Avengers to deal with, Kang will be many, and that only means a lot of trouble heading to the MCU in the coming phases. Where and when new variants of Kang will turn up is unclear, but now the Marvel Cinematic Universe is on its way to the next big Avengers event movies, which means the action is only getting started.

Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania gets the multiverse ball rolling on Feb. 17.