Kang’s Battle Armor Is A Big Part Of What Makes The Marvel Villain So Terrifying
Kang #Kang
The “Loki” Season 1 finale introduces viewers to a character named He Who Remains portrayed by Jonathan Majors. While the show only refers to him by this name, those familiar with Marvel Comics quickly recognized the “Loki” villain as Kang the Conquerer, despite his “Loki” portrayal differing somewhat from his prior comic book appearances.
Kang’s Marvel Comics history is defined by time traveling hijinks, with Kang meeting alternate timeline versions of himself and traveling through eras in both our past and future frequently. In fact, He Who Remains is a multiverse variant of and thus a different character than the Kang the Conquerer set to antagonize the Avengers in future Marvel Cinematic Universe projects.
Kang is already confirmed to serve a key role in the upcoming “Avengers” movie subtitled “The Kang Dynasty,” which found a screenwriter in September. Before that, though, Kang will play a key role in the plot of “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania.” In advance of that film’s February 17, 2023 release, Disney dropped its first official trailer for the project on October 24, 2022, giving viewers their first proper look at the new version of Kang, who in his brief appearances is outfitted in a suit of armor. Beyond just differentiating this incarnation of the character from He Who Remains, Kang’s armor is a key component of what makes Kang such a formidable bad guy.
As fans of the character’s comic book run are aware, Kang isn’t strictly superpowered. Rather, he’s a highly intelligent and capable human being, like, say, Lex Luthor. Kang therefore can’t hold his own against his superpowered peers on his own, but manages to make up for this deficiency with a suit of armor constructed from futuristic materials. According to the Marvel fan wiki page about Kang’s battle armor, it boasts ten useful abilities, including super strength, powerful energy blasts, and a kind of flight.
Fans took notice of Kang’s armor in the MCU even before the premiere of the first “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania” trailer when @cosmic_marvel on Twitter noticed a reflection of the armored Kang in a shirt gifted to “Quantumania” stunt performers. Following the trailer’s release, Twitter users like @DanExclaims and @CromerZome singled out Kang’s armor as one of the trailer’s highlights.
The focus on Kang’s armor is no coincidence, because its wide range of powers make the already intellectually-intimidating Kang a formidable foe in battle too. Whereas without his armor Kang’s strength is merely human, his armor nullifies this glaring weak point, setting up the MCU version of his character to take on a multi-film, Thanos-like role as its number one big bad moving forward.
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