With the release of the second trailer for Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, Phase 5 of the Marvel Cinematic Universe It is just around the corner. Marvel is intensifying the push towards The Avengers: The Kang Dynasty, from 2025. The trailer says it and everything.
At first glance, it might not seem like Quantumania is the Marvel movie with the power to kick-start the Multiverse Saga. Neither of the two previous films of the character were of great importance for the MCU. As the official start of Phase 5 and the first film to feature Jonathan Majors’ Kang the Conqueror, Quantumania may be what the MCU needs to regain its momentum.
Let’s take a closer look at why Quantumania is shaping up to be so much more than just another Ant-Man sequeland why the Multiverse Saga will ultimately begin around Marvel’s smallest superhero family.
Meeting Kang the Conqueror
Quantumania’s biggest draw is undoubtedly the fact that it features the first film appearance of Jonathan Majors’ Kang the Conqueror. Majors had already appeared as another version of Kang (the strange hermit of time known as He Who Remains) in the Loki Season 1 finale, but this one It will be our first contact with the classic incarnation of this great Marvel villain.. Presumably, this is the Kang who will play a recurring role in the MCU in the build-up to 2025’s Avengers: Kang Dynasty.
That makes Quantumania a very important piece of the great puzzle that is the Multiverse Saga. The previous two Ant-Man movies featured relatively small-scale conflicts and villains seeking personal gain rather than world domination. But in Kang, we have a character who sees himself as the rightful ruler of his own time. Quantumania is sure to reveal a lot more about what its long-term goals are and how it all connects to the Quantum Realm, which has been a key element of this saga.
It is clear that Kang is the Multiverse Saga’s answer to Thanos. But the key difference is that we’re going to see a lot more of Kang in the run-up to The Kang Dynasty and Secret Wars than we did of Thanos before Infinity War. He Who Remains already had more screen time in Loki than Thanos did in the entirety of Phases 1 and 2. We’ll no doubt meet at least one other version of Kang in Loki season two, and there’s room for even more Kang in future. projects like Fantastic Four.
All this shows that Quantumania is central to the MCU in a way that none of its predecessors were.. If you found Phase 4 to be lacking direction or momentum, let’s hope that won’t be an issue for much longer.
Scott Lang and the deal with the devil
Post-Endgame, the MCU has divided its attention between establishing new heroes and exploring how the old guard navigates a post-Snap MCU. Quantumania seems to do a bit of both.. The first trailer focuses a lot on Scott Lang enjoying his new celebrity, but we also know that his daughter Cassie will be dressing up as Stature for the first time. In fact, Quantumania is the first MCU movie to focus on three generations of heroes, as Hank Pym and the recently released Janet van Dyne are also key players.
In many ways, Quantumania seems to crystallize the big themes of Phase 4. Having saved the literal universe from annihilation, where do you go next? How can a younger generation hope to live up to that impossible example? And how can the heroes who were robbed of five years of time with their loved ones make up for what was lost?
this last question seems to be at the heart of Scott’s character arc in Quantumania. It is about a father who has missed out on much of his daughter’s childhood, either because he was imprisoned or because time moved forward while he was trapped in the Quantum Realm. One of the most heartbreaking moments in the MCU comes when Scott returns home to Snap-ravaged San Francisco to see an almost unrecognizable Cassie answer the door.
How can heroes who have been robbed of five years of time with their loved ones make up for what they lost?
In the first trailer for Quantumania, Kang tells Scott, “I can take you back home and give you more time… if you help me.” The second trailer is even more explicit about what Kang wants.. She is offering Scott the chance to go back in time and experience those lost years with Cassie, in exchange for the secret of escaping the Quantum Realm and helping Kang return to the normal world. Having saved the universe through the power of time travel, how tempted will Scott be to accept this Faustian deal?
We suppose that very tempted. Several shots from the second trailer show Scott unfolding into multiple versions of himselfa sort of time travel side effect that is undoubtedly Kang’s doing.
And it’s not like Scott is the only character dealing with such a profound loss. Janet missed decades of life with her husband and her daughter. All the members of the Ant-Family have lost precious time that only Kang can recover..
With Kang about to play such a large role in the Multiverse Saga, this dynamic could even be a preview of what’s to come in Phases 5 and 6. Will Kang make similar offers to other heroes? What will happen when Bruce Banner is tempted with the chance to undo his transformation into the Hulk, or Thor to save Asgard from Ragnarok? What if Kang borrows a page from Mephisto and offers Peter Parker the chance to save Aunt May?
This could end up being a key plot point of The Kang Dynasty. Perhaps what makes Kang such a formidable threat isn’t the fact that he has all the resources of the future at his disposal, but that the Avengers are reluctant to fight him.
MODOK and the Quantum Realm
We’ve seen glimpses of the Quantum Realm in previous Ant-Man movies and in Endgame, but Quantumania promises to offer a much deeper look into this tiny universe. It all has a very Star Wars look to it. Quantumania will make the MCU a fundamentally bigger place by revealing the world that exists between the fabric of ours.
This is a significant change from the comics, where the Quantum Realm is known as the Microverse. The Microverse has been the setting for many stories over the years, but has never been so central to the Marvel Universe as the Quantum Realm is being for the UCM.
Kang isn’t the only major new inhabitant of the Quantum Realm to be introduced in this sequel, either. We will also meet MODOK, the giant brain science experiment that has been a thorn in the side of the Avengers for decades. He’s a major villain in his own right, and could pave the way for the MCU to tackle a more comic book-inspired version of the scientific terrorist organization AIM (as opposed to the version seen in Iron Man 3).
We’ll see what role MODOK plays in the future of the MCU, if any, but in the second trailer we learn an important detail. We see MODOK unmasked in a couple of shots around minute 0:57. If you look closely, you can see that MODOK is played by Corey Stoll, which seems to confirm that this villain is actually a mutated Darren Cross from the original Ant-Man movie. The last time we saw Cross in the climax of that movie, he was trapped inside the Yellowjacket suit as he shrank to subatomic size. He didn’t die, but he’s definitely not quite human anymore.
There are also actors whose characters have yet to be confirmed. Bill Murray plays someone related to Michelle Pfeiffer’s Janet (many speculate he’s her ex-boyfriend), and The Good Place’s William Jackson Harper also appears. Any of these characters could turn out to be more important for the Multiverse Saga from what we know.
Not to mention the rest of characters and cameos that Marvel keeps secret. Who or what else is hiding in the Quantum Realm? What other iconic Marvel characters could appear when our heroes venture into this microscopic universe? One popular fan theory is that Quantumania will lay the groundwork for the Fantastic Four, perhaps revealing that they were an older generation of heroes lost in the Quantum Realm, much like Janet herself. Everything is possible in such a big space.
Are you excited for Kang the Conqueror’s big screen debut? How important will Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania be in the multiversal saga of the UCM? Let us know your theories in the comments. And to learn more about the MCU, review what to expect from Marvel in 2023.