Kang quickly began one of my favorite villains recently but it sucks to see people insult Kang because he's not as cool as Doom. I want to see more of him, and did the Majors stuff ever actually meet a consensus in the first place?
Difference is that Thanos' big loss was the end of his story and unlike every other villain, he did get a win at one point. Thanos was set up as the shadowy figure behind the first Avengers film, then was this powerful dude who even his lieutants could be main villains like in the Guardians films, and was always lurking as the ever present threat. Then when he came to the forefront had the biggest film up to that point where he essentially beat the entire MCU despite multiple plots all converging to stop him. Then his final film was the heroes going through the ringer and breaking the timeline to undo what he did so they could fix everything and then the main hero of the entire MCU had to sacrafice himself to take Thanos out with the most powerful weapon in the universe.
If Thanos ended up being revived or popped up in another film, it would be a holy shit moment because the audience is conditioned to think that he's near unbeatable and it would take another hero dying and a weapon that is near impossible for the heroes to get.
Yeah it took a lot, but Kang got beat in his very first film. I get it, there are other variants. But that's kinda one of the reasons I never really cared much for Kang. The heroes can keep beating him, but it never feels like there is progress because there's always another variant around the corner.
The next time Kang pops up, audiences will still think that he can be beaten by some heroic efforts of the heroes and then another one will just pop up later.
Kang looses. That seems to be all he does- comes in strong, then looses. The hook is that his dopplegangers learn from those defeats and he comes back stronger.
The Council of Kangs knew that the Exile had been destroyed. They will learn the details, and put in place countermeasures to ensure that won't happen again. It will be up to the heroes to find a new way to defeat him.
Let me put this another way- the villain ultimately looses in almost every superhero movie. Infinity War the the exception- outside of that, audiences have been trained to know that the villain will be defeated by the hero(es) by the end of the film. The only real outlier outside of Infinity War that I can think of is The Dark Knight. Batman did defeat Joker and Two-Face, but it ended up being a very hollow victory.
The only time Thanos looked like a true threat was in Infinity War and Endgame. In the first Avengers, he was a cameo that some people didn't even know who he was. In Guardians, he talked a big game, but that was all. Ronan ended up ignoring him and taking the Power stone for himself. In Guardians 2, he was just seen putting on a glove. But he didn't feel like a legitimate threat until Infinity War.
It's basically like the Tallman from phantasm he gets killed over and over but another one takes he's place doesn't mean the tall man is weak or can't win as a matter of fact he always wins I can see the same thing happening with Kang.
Which is why they should have done Avengers: Under Siege
Make it a 2 parter with all the B team(Which they are making now) Get squashed by Zemo and his squad of Masters of Evil. Heck, you could even try to stretch it into a trilogy. Though that may be tough. 2 parter is better. And in Part two have the core Avengers and maybe some new friends, come and smack down the Masters of Evil. Overall I think the Avengers have been in Space too much. It's time to keep them on Earth and battle the rise of domestic villains. Might be easier on the budget too...
Honestly, they wouldn't even need to use former villains if they wanted to get the gist of the Thunderbolts.
A bunch of second stringers, also rans and science experiment cast offs stepping up and into the shoes of the Avengers? I'd watch that.
The current Thunderbolt team reminds me of the CW's Legends of Tomorrow. Basically, they hired some actors to play big roles and then realized that they needed to do something with the characters just to keep the characters around for later.