Introduced as an ex-con and making use of a superhero name and accompanying ability that’s easy to joke about — before you consider the potential of what Pym Particles are truly capable of — Ant-Man is not someone who’s nearly as easy to imagine jumping into battle alongside the Avengers as the likes of Iron Man, Captain America, or Thor, and yet that’s exactly what has occurred.
So given it’s a surprise a guy like Scott could even be on the Avengers, could things go even further? Could he possibly ever actually lead the team? Or is that going too far? We polled the community at Fandom’s MCU wiki and then spoke to Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania director Peyton Reed and producer Stephen Broussard about the results and Scott’s path so far.
Read on to see what Reed and Broussard had to say about that topic, along with Quantumania’s introduction of Kang the Conqueror (Jonathan Majors) and the film’s spotlight on Janet van Dyne (Michelle Pfeiffer).
ANT-MAN IN CHARGE??
Our poll offered three possible answers to whether Ant-Man could ever lead the Avengers – “Yes,” “No,” and “Co-Leading with Someone Else” – with Co-Leading getting the most votes.
“I think he can. He’s learned a lot during his tenure as Ant-Man, and Quantumania will probably make him more capable than ever based on the trailer (if he survives, that is).” – A Ghost Most Grim at the MCU Wiki on whether Ant-Man could lead the Avengers
However, Peyton Reed, who has directed all three Ant-Man films, said from his perspective, “I would say ‘Yes’ because I feel like he’s gone from a guy in the first movie who was really operating in the margins. He was on the outside, maybe even an Avengers fanboy himself. And now in Quantumania, he’s front and center. He and the Wasp are the first Avengers going up against Kang.”
At this point, with Paul Rudd‘s Scott now having years of experience behind him, Reed added, “I think Scott would make a great elder statesman. Who knows what’s in store for the Avengers but I think Scott has got to be front and center. I think if he’s willing to step up and do it, I think he’s got what it takes.”
“I can definitely see him co-leading in the future. Going forward, he’s going to end up being one of the more experienced heroes in the MCU, with many heroes out of the picture for various reasons. The fact that he’ll be among the first to properly encounter Kang has to mean something too, especially when he’s going to be such a major antagonist going forward. However, I don’t see him leading alone.” – SilverQuake616 at the MCU Wiki on whether Ant-Man could lead the Avengers
Producer Stephen Broussard agreed with Reed that Ant-Man could lead the Avengers and said Scott’s unusual path so far was an exciting element to the Quantumania team. “This unlikely person who never should have been here and never should have found this suit and had this journey… is suddenly toe to toe with essentially this universe level threat that is Thanos. The unexpectedness of that is interesting to us. But it’s also part of his journey, like from unlikely hero to [perhaps] co-leading or leading the Avengers someday. It feels like an amazing epic arc for this guy.”
“While it is not the same as the Avengers he did run his own company. Scott has leadership qualities. There is nothing wrong with having a sense of humor, it doesn’t mean weakness. Scott has been very brave and done things on his own. If he can somehow survive Kang in the Quantum [Realm], then of course he can be a leader for the next team of heroes.” – MarvelSharky at the MCU Wiki on whether Ant-Man could lead the Avengers
THE KANG CONNECTION
The previous two Ant-Man films were purposely designed as what Broussard referred to as “smaller stakes, crime-based movies” and while Pym Particles would end up being crucial to the time travel storyline of Avengers: Endgame, while watching the Ant-Man films on their own, there was no implication they were setting up something integral for the larger MCU storylines.
Quantumania is very different from the get go though, thanks to its prominent introduction of Kang, who has already been announced as a major player moving forward – so much so that his name is part of the subtitle for the next Avengers film, Avengers: The Kang Dynasty. Previously, we met a very different variation of Kang in Loki (more on that below), while Shang-Chi director Destin Daniel Cretton will be the one guiding the character in The Kang Dynasty.
Asked if all of this made Quantumania more complicated to plan out than the previous two Ant-Man films in terms of working out its place in the larger MCU, Broussard replied, “Yes and no. We sort of build each film brick by brick. It’s always been one of the founding principles of the studio is that interconnectivity is fun, but it’s meaningless if I’m not having a good time with my popcorn watching Quantumania on Friday night. And that comes from the top down. That’s Kevin [Feige]‘s philosophy.”
Broussard understood why people focused on the interconnectivity but said the goal was, “To those stories and make the best choices for everyone. Make the best choices for Loki and make the best choices for Quantumania. And Destin is going to be making the best choices moving forward on where you might see this character next. And then from there, I think there’s a gravity that starts to take shape in the larger narrative. It coalesces around things that excite us.”
Broussard noted that what has them especially excited for the larger narrative here is Jonathan Majors and the very different work he’s done already in Loki and Quantumania. “The notion of just Jonathan as a performer, Jonathan and what he’s capable of. The chameleon-like nature… ‘Where does he go next?’ is very exciting for us. Those ideas start to be our North Stars and we’ll start sailing towards that not necessarily knowing what the journey is going to be to get there but it has a gravity, if that makes sense. And that’s kind of always been the case a little bit.”
Reed said he didn’t feel Quantumania having a larger role to play in the MCU made things more complicated to make the film, remarking, “Really, it was exactly the same. We’ve had a lot of creative freedom on all the Ant-Man movies. For me, it was like, if we’re going to do a third one, I want to do something different. I think the audience deserves something different. Let’s take these characters that they’re familiar with and throw them in an entirely different situation and throw them in a situation where they really feel like they’re out of their league. I mean, on paper, if you’re doing a poll, and you’ve got Ant-Man and Wasp over here, and [you’ve got] Kang, you kind of know how that poll is gonna work out. And that was the creative challenge. Let’s make a compelling adventure out of that.”
Reed added, “The Quantum Realm was something that we introduced in the first Ant-Man and we kind of own that space, right? And in this movie, particularly, we were able to create not only the environments, but all the sort of denizens of the Quantum Realm. The creatures and the beings and the freedom fighters and all the people that Kang the Conqueror is currently oppressing in the Quantum Realm.”
JANET’S TIME TO SHINE
Michelle Pfeiffer became part of the MCU in 2018’s Ant-Man and the Wasp as Janet van Dyne, but she had a somewhat smaller role, given the film was designed around her rescue, which didn’t occur until the third act. In Quantumania though, Janet is front and center for the brunt of the story, giving the legendary Pfeiffer much more to do.
Reed said he was drawn to the fact that the third film’s journey into the Quantum Realm allowed them to, “Shed light on Janet’s backstory, what she was doing for 30 years down there, that she wasn’t just wandering around. She had a full life down there. And as she goes down there, it’s clearly a very dire situation, but you see her spring into action. You’re like, ‘Oh, she’s got this place wired. She knows where to go and who to talk to get a ride and how to do this.’ You see her kind of come back to life in a way. She was a vital hero at one point. That was something that was really important in this movie.”
Broussard recalled that when they first began discussing Quantumania, “The first big idea of the movie was ‘What if 90% is in the Quantum Realm?’ That was the thing that got us excited.”
Once they locked into that, Broussard said that as far as Janet was concerned, “There’s no version of going back there that doesn’t involve her playing a central part. And so she kind of became this very central figure and we built from there a backstory on what she experienced and who she experienced it with and the war and everything like that. So just by nature, I don’t know how you do it otherwise without leaning on her knowledge and her institutional expertise of everything she experienced down there. And when you have Michelle Pfeiffer, it’s pretty awesome to hand the movie to her for large chunks of it. She earned it, right?”
KANG WHO REMAINS
As mentioned above, while Quantumania truly introduces Kang truly as Kang for the first time, Jonathan Majors already appeared in the MCU in a surprise guest appearance in the Loki Season 1 finale as He Who Remains – a very offbeat man who warned of the danger of his multiverse variants and their conquering ways.
Given that Loki appearance was Majors’ first performance in the MCU, I asked Reed if he and the actor discussed it in terms of the Kang he was playing in Quantumania. This is very clearly an incredibly different and more dangerous person, but did they ponder if there should be some core echoes between Kang and He Who Remains beyond them sharing a face?
Said Reed, “I think Jonathan and I agreed very early on in our initial discussions that Kang the Conqueror, he shouldn’t be anything like He Who Remains. Technically, yes, they’re a variant. But they just have an entire different backstory, an entire different way of being. And our Kang the Conqueror is really the one that He Who Remains kind of refers to. There’s stuff coming that is kind of bad and he’s the baddest and most feared of all of them. There’s a reason that he’s in the Quantum Realm, right? He’s been banished there, he’s been exiled. We love that idea of this guy who has not only a backstory, but almost infinite backstories.”
When it comes to just how fearsome Kang is, Reed noted, “He talks to Scott about ‘You’re an Avenger, have I killed you before?’ And it implies that he’s fought the Avengers not maybe once or twice, but so many times he can’t keep it straight. And that’s a scary thing. It’s like, well, what’s he going to do to Scott and Cassie if he’s survived all that? Jeff Loveness, our writer, and Jonathan and myself, we talked a lot about Kang’s demeanor, and the fact that he has dominion over time, so he knows how to use time. He doesn’t waste his energy moving or talking when it’s not necessary. He’s a very calm, controlled character.”
Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania opens February 17.
