Peyton Reed's Marvel franchise may have started out small, but Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania will be essential viewing for the MCU moving forward.
The announcement of Avengers: The Kang Dynasty at San Diego Comic-Con proved that Jonathan Major's time-hopping villain will indeed be the next big threat to the Marvel Cinematic Universe. And while he debuted on Loki (as He Who Remains), Ant-Man 3 will properly position him as a villain. As such, the movie will likely have major ramifications for the MCU's future, something Reed touched on after Quantumania was announced as the start of Phase 5 during Marvel Studios' Hall H presentation.
"The energy was great," the director told Access. "And yeah, kicking off Phase 5 is really exciting for us, because we're the Ant-Man movies. It's our third movie. It's this trilogy now. But things happen in this movie that are going to change the Marvel Cinematic Universe permanently. And it's fun for us that Scott Lang is at the center of that change."
Ant-Man And The Wasp Are Now Major Players
While the first two Ant-Man movies were relatively standalone in the MCU, the use of the Quantum Realm proved pivotal in Avengers: Endgame. And as the subtitle of the third film suggests, the mysterious dimension will be the focal point of the new movie. With Kang also involved, it seems the Quantum Realm and the mysteries within could play a huge role in Phases 5 and 6 of the MCU. For Reed, he's just happy the franchise has gotten to grow so much.
"I think we were thrilled to get to do a third Ant-Man movie and do a trilogy," Reed told Entertainment Weekly after the big Comic-Con news. "And we knew if we were gonna do that we wanted to do some things differently. We really wanted to take a hard left turn and make a movie that was even more epic but still progress the story of these family dynamics. And everything that's going on between Scott and Hope and Cassie… Cassie, who's now 18 years old, and maybe Scott doesn't quite know how to relate to her as an adult, because he lost those five years from the events of Endgame. And we also knew that we wanted to put our heroes up against a very, very formidable opponent, and we were very fortunate. I grew up reading the comics and I knew the character of Kang the Conqueror, who's one of the big, big bad characters in the comics. So to be able to put our heroes up against Kang the Conqueror in this movie was a huge thing for us. So we went big and we also went small."
Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania releases February 17, 2023, in theaters.
Source: Access, Entertainment Weekly, via The Direct