‘X-Men ’97’ Season 2 Episode 3 Easter Egg Connects the Show to MCU’s Kang the Conqueror

Marvel Animation’s ‘X-Men ’97’ has spent its second season pulling from some of the deepest corners of the X-Men mythos, and this time the show is reaching directly into the MCU’s live-action side to do it.

The series returned this month with a three-episode premiere that splits the team across time, forcing an unlikely alliance in ancient Egypt while other mutants scramble to hold things together in the present.

That ancient Egypt storyline centers on a young En Sabah Nur, the future Apocalypse, and his uneasy rebellion against a ruthless pharaoh known as Rama-Tut.

Longtime Marvel fans immediately recognized the name as one of Kang the Conqueror’s many comic book aliases, and ‘X-Men ’97’ wastes no time confirming that connection by giving the character a full musical identity to match.

The official credits for ‘X-Men ’97’ Season 2 Episode 3 confirm that composer Natalie Holt’s score from ‘Loki’ was directly incorporated into the episode, marking the first time Kang’s iconic musical motif has resurfaced anywhere in Marvel’s output since Jonathan Majors exited the role.

The reorchestrated cue plays around the three-minute fifty mark of the episode, arriving right as Rama-Tut makes his commanding entrance and immediately signals to attentive viewers that this pharaoh is no ordinary villain.

Rather than lifting the theme wholesale, the show’s composers reworked Holt’s original cue into something that blends the multiversal grandeur of her Kang motif with an ancient Egyptian musical flavor suited to the episode’s setting.

That choice keeps the connective tissue to Loki intact while still grounding Rama-Tut firmly in his own animated world, giving the character a sound that feels both familiar and distinct from his live action counterpart.

It is a subtle move, but a deliberate one, since crediting Holt’s work in the episode’s official credits removes any ambiguity about whether the resemblance was intentional. For a show built on Easter eggs and deep cuts from ’90s X-Men lore, folding in a direct musical callback to Loki adds a new layer connecting Marvel Animation to the wider Multiverse Saga.

The timing of Rama-Tut’s arrival is impossible to separate from what happened to Kang’s live action future. Majors had been positioned as the connective villain across ‘Loki,’ ‘Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania,’ and the once planned ‘Avengers: The Kang Dynasty,’ with Quantumania’s mid credits scene teasing a full council of Kang variants working together toward some larger goal. That plan collapsed after Majors was found guilty of misdemeanor assault and harassment in December 2023, leading Marvel to cut ties with the actor and eventually retool the next Avengers film into ‘Avengers: Doomsday’ with Robert Downey Jr. stepping in as Doctor Doom.

Rather than abandoning Kang entirely, ‘X-Men ’97’ has quietly picked the character back up on the animated side, recasting Rama-Tut with Star Trek veteran John de Lancie instead of reusing Majors’ likeness or voice. The show also gave this version of the character a design pulled straight from the comics, complete with the green and gold pharaoh look, deliberately distancing him from the purple armored warlord Majors played in Quantumania’s post credits scene.

That distinction appears to be intentional on Marvel’s part, using the animated space to keep Kang narratively active without reopening the live action controversy tied to his previous portrayal. The show’s Rama-Tut storyline is loosely adapting the Rise of Apocalypse comic miniseries, giving the character a legitimate, comics accurate reason to anchor this stretch of the season beyond simply filling Majors’ absence.

Whether any of this eventually bleeds back into live action remains genuinely uncertain, especially with Marvel’s current attention squarely fixed on Doctor Doom heading into its next Avengers films. Still, reusing Holt’s Loki score for this version of the character suggests Marvel is not ready to treat Kang as a fully closed chapter, even if his path forward looks completely different than what was originally planned.

For now, ‘X-Men ’97’ gets to have it both ways, delivering a comics faithful Kang storyline while quietly reassuring longtime viewers that the multiversal menace they first heard scored in ‘Loki’ has not disappeared entirely. New episodes of ‘X-Men ’97’ Season 2 continue weekly on Disney Plus, building toward its season finale on August 12.

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