Needless to say, this story is going to get into spoilers for Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania. So if you haven’t yet seen the film, and still want to remain unspoiled, bow out now.
A big part of the goal of Marvel’s new Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania was the introduction of Kang the Conqueror, as played by the phenomenal Jonathan Majors. He’s quite different from the previous Marvel threat, Thanos. And as we saw in the post-credit scenes, there are an awful lot of Kangs, gathered together in some form of council. The movie had to explain to the audience why Kang is so dangerous, and we learned through exposition that he has been destroying universes for a long time. And the movie almost showed that, but decided against it.
Jeff Loveness wrote the script for Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, which takes Scott Lang (Paul Rudd), Hope van Dyne (Evangeline Lilly), Cassie Lang (Kathryn Newton) and their family to the Quantum Realm on a surreal and trippy adventure. Loveness knows a thing or two about Kang, and will continue exploring the villain in Avengers: Kang Dynasty, scheduled to be released in May 2025. And when we had the opportunity to question him about this sequel we specifically asked about a Michelle Pfeiffer scene that filled in some of Kang’s murderous back story. And it was supposed to be more intricate.
Loveness talked about the scene where Pfeiffer’s character, Janet van Dyne, is collaborating with Kang and helping him repair the ship that allows him to travel between the Multiverses. But when she accesses Kang’s memories, she sees how brutal he has been, murdering countless worlds and populations in an attempt to conquer, basically, everything. When I asked Loveness if they thought of showing more in that scene, he explained:
That is stuff that'll be played out further as we go. We wanted more to play the emotion rather than the exact visuals. Like, I know everyone wants… hey, who wouldn't want a little cameo of (Kang) killing a Hulk here? Or like, sure, who wouldn't want a little cameo of like, you know, him snapping Wolverine in half and putting him through a tree or something. But we really wanted to play more of the relationship between those two. So throwing a cameo in the middle of that would've completely broken the claustrophobic energy of (Janet and Kang’s) friendship. I'm a big comic fan myself. I love X-Men more than anything, and I was certainly tempted. There was a scene where there was a lot more backstory. You know, it was almost like a Pensieve scene, a Harry Potter kind of scene. But as much as I want to give the people the candy that they want, that would've completely broken the intimacy of that scene and that relationship. So I'm pretty happy where we left it.
As it stands, the moment where Janet sees the reality of Kang flies by like a fever dream, and we see precious few details. But as Jeff Loveness says, those are details that will play out in upcoming Marvel movies, so now we have to wait and see where Jonathan Majors’s Kang appears next. My money is on Loki Season 2, given how important He Who Remains was to that show’s plotline. Like, how amazing is this scene?
Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania hasn’t exactly been tearing it up at the box office, but Marvel fans seem to like the movie more than critics did. Personally, I liked how it gave Hank Pym (Michael Douglas) and Janet (Michelle Pfeiffer) more to do in the MCU, with Hank being the one that actually triumphs over Kang with his ants. This is an Ant-Man movie, after all.
The next Marvel Studios movie arrives in May, when James Gunn concludes his trilogy with Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3. That movie likely has too much to handle on its own without involving Kang, but we will find out soon enough.
