Kang The Conqueror Wasn't Just Killed By Ants While ants did play a major role in helping Ant-Man's team defeat Kang, they did not kill him. Kang had the upper hand during his battle with Ant-Man, the Wasp, and Cassie Lang.
Fueled by his love for Cassie and the anger from Kang threatening her, Paul Rudd's Scott Lang was able to ensure their mutual defeat. He sacrificed his ticket home, blowing up Kang's multiversal engine after an incredibly brutal fight between the two.
In his last opportunity to escape, he had a brutal duel against Ant-Man, which resulted in Kang being shrunken and decimated by his own Engine Core, though his death inadvertently alerted the Council of Kangs about people interacting with the Multiverse, prompting them to take their own measures.
It makes sense for ant man to singlehandedly beat A Kang, but "Kang" is undeterred by this. But even this is inaccurate because Ant-Man didn't "singlehandedly" beat a Kang. It, literally, took a swarming army of giant, super advanced ants and M.O.D.O.K. betraying him with his own tech just to disable Kang's suit.
In the end, Kang's greatest defeat happened not because of the betrayal of his son (which he was aware of), but because Kang himself was trying to put an end to his story, with what he considered an honorable defeat, entrusting his empire to Marcus.
Was Kang ACTUALLY defeated in Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania
Why is Kang so weak in Ant-Man?
Kang was trapped in the Quantum Realm with zero access to the Multiverse for a long time, and was full of vengeance and rage against Ant-Man and his family. So I guess he was really desperate and not thinking clearly.
Disabling his suit could potentially strip him of his technological powers and weaken him. Ant-Man has already shown the ability to sabotage technologically-advanced suits like he did with Falcon and Iron Man in previous movies. This could be a key advantage in defeating Kang.
According to Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania screenwriter Jeff Loveness, he describes Kang the Conqueror as a "lonely character" who lives in the Quantum Realm and develops the ability to become a multi-dimensional supervillain in Phase 5 of the MCU.
Kang forces Scott to retrieve the multiverse engine core that Janet damaged years ago, giving Kang the power to finally escape and launch an invasion of the larger world.
Kang winning in Quantumania would have meant no unexpected conflict in Phase 6. Now that Kang the Conqueror is presumably dead, it becomes more difficult to predict what or who the Avengers will face in The Kang Dynasty.
However, Kang teamed up with Janet van Dyne to repair his Time Sphere and Multiversal Engine Core and return to his annihilation of timelines. However, when van Dyne learned of Kang's true intentions, she turned on him and used multiple growth discs on the Core, enlarging it to where Kang couldn't use it.
The Council Of Kangs Exiled Kang To The Quantum Realm
However, Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania's end-credits scene confirms that the Council of Kangs did indeed unite against him, and presumably any rogue Kangs just like him, despite seeming to be a corrupt group of villains themselves.
During her isolation, she encountered Kang the Conqueror, who presented himself as a lost traveler, in order to manipulate her into helping him restore his Time Sphere.
This storyline saw Kang try and rewrite time in his own image but was tempted into battle with his old enemy Khonshu. It's left up to Moon Knight, Khonshu's avatar, to fix time and defeat Kang the Conqueror, which he does very effectively.
While Kang may have killed numerous Avengers, his defeat at the hands of Ant-Man and the Wasp was due to his desperation, ego, and the damage to his suit, showcasing the MCU heroes' intelligence and resilience.
He also ensures that some of the technology Kang will need gets invented (Tony's time travel machine). As he gamed this particular fight over and over, maybe more than 15 million times, He Who Remains chose this specific set of events. He caused Heimdall, Loki, Gamora, Black Widow, and Iron Man to die.
He warns Scott Lang that he's the only one who can "stop what's coming," e.g. the other Kang variants. So might he have been seeking to become the one true Kang, killing all the other versions of himself to stop them from messing with the multiverse and restoring a single timeline where he's in charge?
Polygon spoke to Quantumania director Peyton Reed about giving Kang such a big feature role only to kill him at the end of the story, and Reed confirmed: Kang is dead — long live Kang.
Kang isn't physically stronger than Thanos, and if the two were to square up in a one-vs-one fight then the Titan would arguably win. However, Kang's knowledge of the multiverse means that would quite literally be several steps ahead of Thanos at all times. As a result, Kang wins this battle.
Kang is his own worst enemy, constantly trying to prevent the future or undo the past. By doing so, he inadvertently creates variants of himself who sometimes hinder his world-conquering goals. Such variants include Immortus, Rama-Tut, Iron Lad, Victor Timely, Baby Kang, and the Council of Kangs.
Kang the Conqueror did not appear in the Loki series. This episode did feature a character named He Who Remains, who is a variant of Kang but still a different character. According to the show's director, Kate Herron, He Who Remains is in the comics, but the version in our show was very different.
By Quantumania's end, Ant-Man and the Wasp stopped Kang from heading into the Earth-616 universe. Instead, Wasp shoots him and pushes him into his multiversal ship's core, which explodes and drags him in.
Kang is usually known for going after greater stakes than anything that Moon Knight is usually involved in, but Moon Knight has defeated him before. Kang was trying to gather Khonshu's totems for himself, and Moon Knight, with the help of past versions of himself, was able to defeat the time-traveling villain.
It was a brilliant ending in which killing Kang is not the answer, in fact not killing him is one of the only paths forward, but Loki forges a new solution, holding the entire multiverse together as the new God of Stories nestled in a cosmic Yggdrasil world tree.
