via Layar
February may be the month to celebrate love, but to Marvel fans, it marks the release of the most anticipated MCU project of phase six: the 3rd instalment of the Ant-Man franchise! However, to understand what’s to happen in Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania and why the movie is such a big deal, we need to take you back to older MCU projects and connect the dots. Let’s begin!
Who Is Ant-Man?
via Heroic Hollywood
Scott Lang, aka Ant-Man, is an ex-convict and brilliant engineer who made poor life choices to provide for his daughter. In the first film, we see his path cross with Dr Hank Pym, a genius scientist who managed to create a super-suit that shrinks a human to ant size. Pym hires Lang for a special mission, and that’s when he becomes our beloved Ant-Man!
What Is the Quantum Realm?
via MCU Wiki Fandom
You must have heard “Quantum” a lot if you’ve already watched the Ant-Man films. The Quantum Realm is a super-small universe entangled with our own that only microscopic creatures can enter — and sometimes never return from. The laws of time and physics don’t apply there, which makes it interesting!
In the final scene of Ant-Man 2, we see Scott diving into the Quantum Realm for more research to understand this universe, but that’s when he gets lost for five years. This is because Thanos, the colossal purple villain of the MCU, snapped his fingers and, with the help of the infinity stones, wiped out half the population, including Dr Pym, Lang’s daughter Hope, and his wife. As a result, Scott is stuck in the Quantum Realm as the people meant to pull him out are snapped away.
Where Did We Last See Ant-Man in the MCU?
Via Time
Our latest brush with Ant-Man was in the iconic film Avengers: Endgame. Scott miraculously escaped the Quantum Realm and returned to our world, only to discover what Thanos had done to half the universe and his losing five years of his life along with his loved ones.
However, Ant-Man teamed up with our Avengers to devise a brilliant plan that uses the Quantum Realm to travel back in time and undo Thanos’ villainous deed. Thanks to Ant-Man, the Avengers could return the lost half of the universe to the present time. Thanos was additionally wiped away alongside his army due to Ironman’s noble sacrifice — try not to cry at the memory!
Who Is Kang the Conqueror?
via GQ
Goodbye, Thanos, and hello, Kang. The next big bad guy of the MCU, played by Jonathan Majors, first appeared in the hit Marvel series Loki. Kang the Conqueror is a human genius from the 31st century who discovered that there is more than one universe, where every person has “variants” living different lives in different universes (AKA the multiverse).
With his advanced technology and ability to navigate time, Kang and his evil variants started a “multiversal” war, with each Kang trying to claim supremacy over the others in their worlds. Long story short, the war finished with peace coming upon the universe and other universes and variants ceasing to exist for ions. That was until a Loki variant killed the Kang, who ended the war, thus opening the multiverse once again and releasing other Kangs meant to resurface and start another war on all universes!
What to Expect for Quantumania
via Comics Universe
This film is massively hyped and rumoured to be the best storyline Marvel has ever created because, for the first time, we will see evil Kang in action, going up against Ant-Man in an iconic war in the microscopic Quantum Realm. It is also rumoured that Ant-Man will die in the process of fighting Kang. We can’t have an excellent cinematic storyline without losing at least one beloved character, can we? But we hope it’s not true and Scott Lang lives as we’re not emotionally ready for the alternative!