Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania director Peyton Reed has reflected on his experience working with actor Jonathan Majors on the film and compared him to one of Hollywood's most famous actors. The third film in the Ant-Man franchise will see Paul Rudd's Scott Lang/Ant-Man and Evangeline Lilly's Hope van Dyne/Wasp explore the Quantum Realm while also coming up against the colossal threat of Majors' Kang the Conqueror. The threequel, which releases in 2023, marks the beginning of Phase 5 in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
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Majors made his MCU debut in the season 1 finale of Loki as He Who Remains, the creator of the Time Variance Authority (TVA) responsible for maintaining the correct flow of time and protecting the sacred timeline. When the multiverse was created after he was killed by Sylvie (Sophia Di Martino), He Who Remains used his dying moments to warn the MCU that a variant of himself, a multiversal time traveler, would be unleashed across the multiverse. That threat will come in the form of Kang the Conqueror, seemingly set up as the overarching antagonist of the Multiverse Saga, much like Thanos was teased and eventually established as the main villain of the Infinity Saga.
After Shang-Chi actor Simu Liu joked that the Avengers had no chance of defeating Kang after Majors was photographed looking physically intimidating, Peyton Reed went one step further and compared Majors to one of the Hollywood greats. Speaking to the New York Times, he described his on-set presence as akin to a young Marlon Brando and how his impact will be felt in Quantumania. Here's what Reed had to say:
“It’s become a cliché over the decades to compare somebody to a young Marlon Brando, but Jonathan has that. He has just this energy and this presence, and our movie is definitely benefiting from that.”
Fans have been anticipating Majors' return to the MCU since his first appearance in Loki, and it is evident from Reed's quotes that the actor is set to make a massive splash as Kang the Conqueror. It also seems that Majors will be very busy on villain duties in the near future. After tormenting the Lang's and van Dyne's in the Quantum Realm, it is nearly guaranteed that Majors will return as the big bad in 2025 Avengers: The Kang Dynasty and possibly in Avengers: Secret Wars later that year too. It remains to be seen whether he will also play a role in the second season of Loki as the show deals with the fallout of the death of He Who Remains and the multiverse being unleashed.
Peyton Reed will hope to have the same impact in the director's chair for his third Ant-Man film. After being drafted as a replacement for Edgar Wright on Ant-Man, Reed's Ant-Man trilogy joins Jon Watt's completed Spider-Man trilogy and James Gunn's Guardians of the Galaxy trilogy. Reed was once touted to helm Marvel Studios' reboot of the Fantastic Four in 2024, a film that Watts was eventually confirmed to be directing before he stepped down in April. It will be interesting to see if Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania will be Reed's last involvement in the MCU or if he is eventually attached to another future project.