Summary:
- As a well-known villain, Galactus could provide a more impactful and recurring threat than Kang.
- Marvel could pivot to make Galactus the main multiverse villain, elevating his threat levels for future MCU events.
Now with Jonathan Majors out and the future of Kang within the MCU in question, one would legitimately be worried about what the Avengers will do without a big bad to face. But never fear, Marvel had just cast an incredible replacement for the villain and more than likely setting in what comes next for the Avengers: The Kang Dynasty.
While recasting Kang is a very interesting notion, it will still leave a bit of a sour taste considering he had a pretty uninspiring entrance in Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania. Assuming Marvel does not recast Kang, The Fantastic Four will be the beginning of the MCU’s Phase 6, which likely will begin in the early months of 2025 after Phase 5.
Galactus, Marvel’s Famous Villain, Outshines Kang
Galactus, one of Marvel’s most powerful villains, was nerfed into being taken down in Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer as a giant space cloud. Well, fans want an authentic experience with the character in Marvel’s next productions.
Comparatively, Kang’s pull appears somewhat insipid, all the more now that every variant of him has been murdered in Multiverse Saga. Still, Galactus is quite larger and more powerful than Kang, making him inherently more threatening, which helps to single him out as the more villainous one. In the progression and evolution of the MCU, it’s imperative to make sure that he’s present and poses a threat in The Fantastic Four.
Marvel Needs to Give Galactus a Larger Role than Just One Movie
The MCU is all too familiar with one-and-done villains. For the most part, this only diminishes characters who should be a lot more powerful and memorable than the MCU allowed them to be. Villains such as Malekith and Ultron are stellar examples, but the same fate cannot befall Galactus.
In addition to near-omnipotent power and the size of a Goliath, Galactus is more of a force of nature than an out-and-out villain; his planet-eating modus operandi is meant to maintain “balance” in the universe. The fact that The Fantastic Four has intentionally kept him around is big.
The same can be said for Ultron, but Galactus is not the kind of villain that should be wasted after just one appearance. His importance to the Marvel Universe is at least equal to the likes of Thanos, who had several appearances within the movies in the Infinity Saga.
Certainly, he is more important than Kang, who was – and is perhaps still – prepped to appear in several Multiverse Saga movies. With so much debate over the character right now, it would do wonders for Marvel to instead have Galactus be the recurring villain of the Multiverse Saga, presenting the Avengers with their biggest challenge yet.
Ways Marvel Could Shift Focus to Make Galactus the Primary Multiverse Villain
When he shows up in the next Fantastic Four movie, it’s pretty clear that Galactus will be looking to eat a planet that The Fantastic Four don’t want to be eaten—most likely theirs.
The world-beaters’ MO is already cataclysmic enough to warrant a level of fear that Kang has thus far failed to inspire, but the MCU could ramp up his threat levels to better fit the Multiverse Saga. While eating worlds in one universe is threatening enough, the MCU is destined to set up a multiversal event that leads to Avengers: Secret Wars.
That said, however, there’s one way that this could possibly be accomplished: Galactus becoming the one to devour or annihilate entire universes. According to the theory, The Fantastic Four could be in a different universe than the mainline MCU Earth-616, and this could serve as a way to ship Galactus from The Fantastic Four’s universe into others once, likely, the team goes into Earth-616 themselves.
As it may, the MCU is under a lot of pressure to do justice to the iconic Marvel villain, and turning him into a greater threat than Kang is a sufficient route to pursue.
