LOS ANGELES — A recent Variety article revealed Marvel’s plan to replace the archvillain Kang, played by alleged domestic abuser Jonathan Majors, with Emperor Palpatine from the Star Wars films, sources confirm.
“We took a lot of cues from our contemporary Disney franchise, Star Wars, and realized we could do whatever we wanted, including throwing out unresolved plotlines just to give the people what we assume that they want,” said Kevin Feige, president of Marvel Studios. “What the people want is less of this Kang guy and superhero crap, and more of Ian McDiarmid hamming it the fuck up on the big screen. So that will become the focus of our upcoming Phase Five!”
While interest in big superhero movies has been waning over the past few years, Feige is sure that clumsily hamfisting the Star Wars franchise into the MCU will surely lessen the franchise fatigue audiences are feeling.
“Look, this worked before when we did it with The Rise of Skywalker, and everyone loved it,” said Kathleen Kennedy, president of Lucasfilm. “So when Kevin Feige came to me and asked for how to solve his current problem with Kang, I had the perfect solution. The way I figure, we can do this another three or four times before people start catching on that it doesn’t make any sense. I’m trying to get Palpatine into the next season of The Bear as we speak.”
While Emperor Palpatine was what leadership at the MCU ultimately chose to replace Kang with, others on the shortlist included Thanos, Jeff Bridges’ character that died in the first Iron Man movie, Jesse Eisenberg’s Lex Luthor, and that one bird from Iron Man 2.
“Honestly, I’m just happy to have another opportunity to play a character that’s just a pure evil little dude,” said Ian McDiarmid, the actor portraying Emperor Palpatine in the next seven MCU movies. “No spoilers, but in the next Avengers film I’m finally thwarted by electrocuting myself yet again.”
UPDATE: After the originally publication of this article, Feige held a press conference announcing that they were also going to start adding Power Rangers to the MCU in an effort to ‘get whatever flavor of nerd we can interested in this shit again.’
