Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania is officially out in theaters.

While the MCU is still establishing a new overarching direction in the aftermath of Avengers: Endgame, it’s safe to say Kang the Conquerer is going to be a big deal in the years ahead. Jonathan Majors debuted as a version of this iconic Marvel villain in the Season 1 finale of Loki, but the death of He Who Remains merely set the stage for more versions of Kang to plague the timeline moving forward.

Kang’s First Appearance in the MCU
In the Season 1 finale of Loki, Loki and his Variant Sylvie finally make it to the end of time (should that be capitalized?) to confront the mysterious figure behind the TVA, a.k.a. the Time Variance Authority. No, not the Time Keepers, who we learned a couple of episodes back were fakes, but the actual figure who has been overseeing the pruning of the Sacred Timeline: He Who Remains.

Well, to a point. As the episode proceeds, He Who Remains explains his backstory, but also that they are now reaching a moment in the timeline where he will no longer know how things are going to play out — a juncture that will finally free him of the self-imposed prison he has been living in as master of the timeline. And it’s up to Sylvie and Loki to decide what comes next. At the same time, the one Sacred Timeline the Time Variance Authority has been maintaining under his watch will start to splinter into an untold number of timeline branches…

He Who Remains explains that it all began with a Variant of himself, a scientist from the 31st century, who discovered that other timelines/realities exist. At first things were friendly as other versions, or Variants of this scientist, began to meet up across different timelines. But then some Variants turned to conquering, and the Multiverse War we learned about in Episode 1 began. In the end, He Who Remains… well, remained.

And so now He Who Remains wants out, and Loki and Sylvie have a choice: Become the new masters of the Sacred Timeline, or kill He Who Remains, which will bring about the multiverse once again and, inevitably, the return of an untold number of He Who Remains/Kangs who will wind up re-starting the war. Loki wants to take over, if only to avoid the inevitable conflict that will result from killing He Who Remains.

The Loki finale ends with our title character landing back at the Time Variance Authority, but he soon realizes that it’s a TVA seemingly from a different timeline, because Mobius and Hunter B-15 have no idea who he is. (Or is it that the Timeline Formerly Known as Sacred has been rewritten?) And then he sees it — a statue of He Who Remains, who now looks a lot like Kang from the comics. Is Kang the Conqueror now the master of time (and the TVA)? We’ll surely find out in Season 2, which was revealed in post-credits tease that simply shows TVA paperwork being stamped with the words “Loki will return for Season 2.”

Who Is He Who Remains/Kang the Conqueror?
It’s not easy recapping the convoluted history of Kang the Conqueror. He’s a villain who’s gone by many names and many different motivations in his countless clashes with the Avengers and Fantastic Four. But through it all the basics have stayed the same. Kang is a man who sees himself as the rightful master of the world. Using the power of time travel and the most sophisticated weaponry his future world has to offer, Kang has repeatedly sought to rewrite history to his own whims and ensure his own rise to power.

Kang’s love of time travel is exactly what makes him such a dangerous and seemingly never-ending thorn in humanity’s side. No matter how often he’s defeated, banished or even destroyed utterly, some version of him is always out there, waiting and plotting. In the Season 1 Loki ending, He Who Remains is clearly a Kang Variant, but apparently a more benevolent one than the Kang (or Kangs) we’ll likely get moving forward in the MCU.

With Kang now firmly linked to the Fantastic Four, Avengers and X-Men, Marvel forged yet another connection in the 2015 series Uncanny Inhumans. There, Black Bolt gives his son Ahura to be fostered by Kang, seeing the time-traveling tyrant as the only safe haven in a world growing steadily more hostile toward the Inhumans.

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