With the original Avengers team no longer active in the Avengers 5 – and a fan theory suggests Iron Man’s replacement will be a Kang variant. With the Infinity Saga now over, the MCU continues its expansion by exploring new characters, events, and concepts now not only in movies but in TV shows as well, and the biggest concept in the MCU in Phase 4 and possibly beyond is the multiverse.
Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness.
All this multiverse chaos in the MCU has made way for variants, which open many doors for this universe as they mean that different characters (even those from universes outside the MCU) can be brought to the MCU, and this could come in handy when forming a new Avengers team for Avengers 5. With all that in mind, a fan theory suggests Iron Man’s replacement in Avengers 5 will be a good variant of Kang, and there’s history in the comic books to the idea.
Loki Introduced Kang’s Variants To The MCU
Loki followed the God of Mischief after his escape with Tesseract in an alternate timeline of the events of Nathaniel Richards a.k.a. He Who Remains. It was explained in Loki that Nathaniel discovered the existence of the multiverse and his alternate versions, and one of his variants caused them to meet and share their vast knowledge. Unfortunately, some of those variants had different, more ambitious plans, such as Kang the Conqueror, who saw the different universes as places he could rule over, starting a Multiversal War. Nathaniel weaponized Alioth and ended the war, after which he isolated realities that followed the same baseline and named it the “Sacred Timeline”, took on the name of He Who Remains, and created the TVA.
At the end of Loki season 1, Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, and as two variants would have already been introduced to the MCU by then, it could be possible that a good variant will be introduced and given a big role in this universe: Iron Lad.
Who Is Iron Lad? Heroic Kang Variant Explained
Kang the Conqueror’s history in the comics is equal parts interesting and confusing, and looking at it, it’s not surprising that he has been brought to the MCU as this universe deals with multiversal chaos. Nathaniel Richards is a descendant of Fantastic Four’s Reed Richards’ time-traveling father Nathaniel, and one day discovers time-travel technology created by Victor von Doom, who is also another possible ancestor of his. Nathaniel travels to ancient Egypt and becomes the Pharaoh Rama-Tut, but his reign is cut short when he’s defeated by the time-displaced Fantastic Four. Angered by this, he travels back to the 20th century, meets Doctor Doom, and designs an armor based on Doom’s, calling himself the Scarlet Centurion. Under this identity, he pits the Avengers against alternate-reality counterparts, but the Avengers force him from the timeline.
Nathaniel tries to return to the 31st century but overshoots by a thousand years, landing on a war-torn Earth. Nathaniel finds it simple to conquer Earth and expands his dominion throughout the galaxy, thus becoming Kang the Conqueror. At one point during his many travels and fights, Kang traveled back to save his sixteen-year-old self from a knife attack by some bullies that would leave him hospitalized for years and which was key in his transformation into a villain. Kang took young Nathaniel through time to witness their future battles and glory as the Conqueror, but instead of being an inspirational trip for his young self, Nathaniel is horrified at what his future, evil self has done, and instead of accepting this fate, he travels back in time to avoid it.
Nathaniel seeks the Avengers for help but the team is no longer active, so he s what’s left of the destroyed Vision’s operating system into his armor. This reveals a plan created by Vision in case the Avengers disbanded or died, which consisted of locating the next generation of Avengers, all of them with some tie to the original team, and so Nathaniel forms the Young Avengers. Nathaniel models his armor after Iron Man’s and takes the mantle of Iron Lad.
Why Iron Lad Makes More Sense For Phase 5 Than Phase 4
Although Kang and his variants were introduced in the MCU’s Phase 4 and Kang the Conqueror will make his proper debut in Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, also part of Phase 4, his Iron Lad variant makes more sense for Phase 5 than 4 for a couple of reasons. First off, viewers are only starting to get acquainted with the multiverse, its dangers, variants, and with Kang himself, more so as He Who Remains’ screen time was very short. Another big reason why Iron Lad would be better in Phase 5 is because Phase 4 already has a lot of Iron Man legacy and replacements going on.
Phase 4 is introducing Armor Wars, which will follow Rhodey (Don Cheadle) as he confronts one of Tony’s greatest fears: Stark tech falling into the wrong hands. Iron Man might be gone, but Phase 4 is still dealing with his legacy and introducing a replacement through Ironheart, so in order to avoid oversaturating the audience with Iron Man legacy content, Iron Lad would fit a lot better in Phase 5.
Avengers 5 Theory: Iron Lad Will Be Iron Man’s Phase 5 Replacement
He Who Remains and his history in the multiversal war with his variants are too big and important that it would be a waste (and even nonsensical) to only have Kang appear as the villain in Ant-Man 3 and die without exploring his extensive history and his variants. This has led fans to theorize that Iron Lad will be introduced in Phase 5 as part of the new Avengers team in Avengers 5 and thus will be Iron Man’s replacement. This would also be a nice twist as so far Kang’s variants have been presented as antagonistic, but given that there are a number of variants of every character in the MCU’s multiverse, there’s obviously at least one good variant out there, and that’s Iron Lad.
Could Iron Lad Form The Young Avengers In The MCU?
Iron Lad’s arrival in the MCU would inevitably raise the question about the formation of the Young Avengers. The MCU has already introduced various characters who can be part of this long-awaited team, as are Cassie Lang/Stature, Kate Bishop/Hawkeye, Elijah Bradley/Patriot, Tommy/Speed and Billy/Wiccan, and Kamala Khan/Ms. Marvel, so there are many rumors about the MCU preparing the ground for the formation of the Young Avengers. This team could be the one taking the lead in Avengers 5, and as Iron Lad was the one who brought the team together in the comics, he could be the one to do so in the MCU as well. However, there’s one big question when it comes to the Young Avengers and Iron Lad replacing Iron Man: where would Ironheart fit? Perhaps Riri and Nathaniel could share leadership duties of the team like Iron Man and Captain America did, and given their genius intellect, they would be key to the development of the team. At this point, the MCU’s Phase 5 and Avengers 5 can go on a variety of routes, but if a good Kang variant is introduced through Iron Lad, Avengers 5 could see a younger and more advanced team than the original one.
