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The Kang who arguably came the closest to conquering all things was ironically also a Kang who had all but given up on doing so.
WARNING: The following article contains spoilers for Loki, available on Disney +.
In the season finale of 2021’s Loki, Sylvie’s decision to kill the Time Variance Authority’s founder, He Who Remains, restored the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s long-suppressed multiverse and the infinite number of Earths its existence entails. This choice also opened the door for the arrival of the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s newest villain, Kang the Conquerer. With a variant existing in most of Marvel’s timelines, there is literally no limit to the ways any one version of the time-traveling tyrant could achieve his ultimate goal of conquering all of space and time.
However, there’s no need to simply imagine what could happen if a single Kang succeeds in his plans to acquire absolute power; as 1992’s What If #39 by Roy Thomas, Gavin Curtis, Ian Akin, and Ed Lazellari sees one timeline’s version of Kang’s future self, Immortus, ascend to the position of ultimate power he’s always sought with apocalyptic results. With Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantamania set to introduce what might very well be just the first of many Kangs into the MCU, the events of this single issue could hint at what Kang will be working towards over the next phase of the MCU.
Disillusioned with the seemingly impossible goal of conquering every dimension, Kang relinquished his throne and exiled himself to Limbo, a realm outside of time. In the depths of his malaise, the former conquerer was approached by the Time-Keepers, who had traveled from the end of time to offer Kang a new purpose. In exchange for giving him complete mastery over time, Kang would preserve history in accordance with the Time-Keepers’ will by ensuring that events unfold as the Time-Keepers wished them to and pruning the timelines that threatened their existence. With nothing left to lose, this Kang accepted their offer and took on a new name, Immortus, a villain who debuted in 1964’s Avengers #10, by Stan Lee and Don Heck.
Immortus would go on to manipulate the course of history over the span of thousands of years, often using the Avengers and other heroes as pawns to achieve his master’s ideal version of the timeline. However, Immortus eventually chafed against the restrictions placed on him by the Time-Keepers and slip back into old habits, seeking to gain true mastery over time and restart his conquest of the multiverse. Over the course of What If?’s “Timequake” event, Immortus achieved his goal by orchestrating the deaths of the Time-Keepers and absorbing the “nexus energy” of alternate versions of heroes who had drastically drifted from their intended destinies, including a vampiric Wolverine. Utilizing this energy, Immortus would transcend whatever remained of his humanity and become the Immortus Wave, a sentient cosmic storm bent on reshaping all realities to his will.
The threat of the Immortus Wave was so severe that it drove the Watcher to break his sacred vow not to interfere with the affairs of the universes he watches over and works directly with the TVA to stop the ascended Kang from conquering all of reality. To this end, they send the very same heroes the Immortus used to achieve his new form into Limbo to confront him directly. When this fails, The TVA sends a powerless variant of the Fantastic Four known as the Rocket Group to confront the man who would one day become Kang. After winning his trust, the Rocket Group injects him with a serum created by the Watcher that robs Immortus of his ability to absorb and accumulate quantum energy. By taking away Immortus’s power before he can use it to become the Immortus Wave, the Watcher creates a paradox that wipes the Immortus Wave from history, saving the multiverse from this version of Immortus, who moved on to other plans.
Seeing as there aren’t any Time-Keepers to hold him back, it’s possible that the Kang of the MCU could try and achieve his goals of multiversal domination by transcending into the Immortus Wave. Doing so would require an immense amount of quantum energy, but the recent return of the multiverse would almost certainly provide Kang with plenty of opportunities to get the energy he’ll need. Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantomania will more than likely feature the Quantum Realm, a realm of limitless quantum energy that a scientific genius like Kang could easily find a way to tap into. Given the role of a Fantastic Four in the “Timequake,” this could even present another avenue to bring them into the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
While the end of Loki established Kang as the ruler of time in the new multiverse, there’s no telling how far his ambitions might take him, and the Immortus Wave stands as proof that he may even lose his humanity to do it.
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