Disney officially made its decision to fire the leading actor in Marvel Studios' Avengers 5.
Although Jonathan Majors made headlines for the MCU by portraying Kang the Conqueror and his Variants in both seasons of Loki and Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania, he spent most of 2023 entangled in legal trouble.
In March 2023, Majors was arrested in New York City after being accused of domestic abuse against his then-girlfriend after police found her with bruises, a fractured finger, and a laceration behind her ear.
Since then, fans have been anxiously waiting for the results of his trial while Majors himself vehemently denied the allegations, leaving his future in the MCU and the entire movie industry in serious jeopardy.
Disney Fires Avengers 5 Star
Deadline reported Disney officially fired Jonathan Majors from the Marvel Cinematic Universe ahead of his appearance in 2026's Avengers: The Kang Dynasty.
Avengers 5 is rumored to feature Kang the Conqueror as the leading character, although Majors will no longer be the actor to portray the supervillain.
This comes on the heels of his trial for domestic abuse, in which he was found guilty of reckless assault and harassment by a six-person jury in New York City on December 18.
No decision has been made yet on whether his role as Kang the Conqueror will be recast or whether the Marvel Studios team will go back to the drawing board to work out a new story without Kang as the Multiverse Saga's leading villain.
Where Do Disney & Marvel Go From Here?
With Jonathan Majors now officially out of the MCU, Marvel Studios has a couple of huge questions to ask regarding where to go next, especially considering that Kang was set to play a massive role across the entire Multiverse Saga.
The simplest choice would be to recast the role with a new actor, which has happened to various other characters across the MCU. The most notable cases include Mark Ruffalo replacing Edward Norton as the Hulk and Terrence leaving his role as War Machine in favor of Don Cheadle.
Particularly since Kang is a character who has countless Variants across space and time, it wouldn't be difficult to comprehend from a story perspective if the character had a different face moving forward.
The more difficult move would be to write Kang out of the MCU altogether and pivot to an entirely new villain for the Multiverse Saga, which would be quite a challenge after Kang played such huge roles in multiple recent projects.
Reports noted that Marvel previously changed its plans for the Multiverse Saga to make it more Kang-centric after being wowed by Majors, although it's unclear whether the new plan is too far in motion to change now.
While this is an admittedly difficult situation for Marvel Studios and Disney, the recent delays to the MCU's entire slate should at least help give the team some time to ideate where the story should now go without Majors.
Avengers: The Kang Dynasty is currently set to debut in theaters on May 1, 2026.
