By now, we all know to stay for dessert when it comes to Marvel movies and that usually means one or two credit scenes, in the middle and at the end. We already covered the mid-credit scene for Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantummania, which introduces the Council of Kangs and (potentially) 6 Variants of the Conqueror that will play a primary role in other Phase 5 releases. You have a version of Kang that looks like a Skrull, a version of Kang in Red that could be Scarlet Centurion, a version of Kang that could be the new owner of Avengers Towers Mr. Gryphon, and then the big 3 Kangs in Rama Tut, Immortus, and one who may be either Iron Lad or the Silver Centurion. There is one Variant conspicuously absent from the Council, and it’s here we see in the end credit scene.
In the post-credit scene, we arrive in a small town for what really looks like an expo of some kind put together by a man named Victor Timely. Victor Timely bears a striking resemblance to Kang The Conqueror, and a bunch of the variants that have descended upon the coliseum in the mid-credits scene, so we have now met ANOTHER Kang Variant. Now, Loki is terrified to see Kang’s Victor Variant, whereas Mobius doesn’t seem to understand the worry. If you look closely around Timely’s stage, you see a very weathered-looking version of the core used to power the Conqueror’s Time Chair in Ant-Man, which begs a lot of questions about exactly how we are going to get to the Kang Dynasty.
The MCU was smart to connect the Conqueror to an original Avenger in the Wasp and a new Avenger Ant-Man, as it personalizes the fight ahead. Likewise, having Loki meet He Who Remains and having him be the one to encounter Victor Timely does the same. However, what if Timely’s not here to highlight a connection to Loki, but to Marvel’s first family and the original Iron Man?
Timely is an inventor in the MCU, that much we know, and in the comics, he is the inventor responsible for the original Human Torch. If you go back to Captain America: The First Avenger, you see Horton’s Human Torch at the Stark Expo that Howard Stark is putting together.
Also, introducing Timely now could mean that Howard Stark knew Timely and that Timely befriended Stark because he knew that it was Howard’s son whose technology would one day be needed to stop the other Kangs. Whereas the Conqueror says that he saw that the timeline was broken and he set to correct the mistakes the Council made, Timely may have decided he wanted nothing to do with the Council and just wanted to improve mankind.
Or, like in the comics, he’s just hiding and biding his time before he can return to destroy the Avengers.
