According to a producer at Marvel, the upcoming finale to the Ant-Man trilogy could have massive stakes for the rest of the MCU, setting up a series of catastrophic dominoes leading up to Avengers: The Kang Dynasty and Avengers: Secret Wars.
Stephen Broussard, Marvel Studios VP of Production & Development, recently stated in a press release that Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania will be “as important and integral to the MCU going forward” as the Captain America sequels.
“We talk about movies like Captain America: The Winter Soldier, in which you saw the fall of S.H.I.E.L.D. and it felt like the entirety of the MCU turned on that,” Broussard said. “Captain America: Civil War was another film where you saw heroes divided and in camps and battle lines being drawn—it really felt like the future of the MCU was going to be defined by the action of that film. We really liked the idea of making this Ant-Man film as important and integral to the MCU going forward.”
Ant-Man 3 will be the first movie of the MCU’s Phase 5 lineup, finding Paul Rudd’s Scott Lang in his third solo movie alongside his fun-sized family of heroes. Scott and his family are sucked into the Quantum Realm after an experiment gone awry, and now they must find a way out of this strange and dangerous world.
“One of our philosophies that we’ve always applied at the studio is to just go back to character, and to root it in character, and the science-fiction and the world-building is fun but ultimately it’s window dressing to the characters who are on this journey,” Broussard added. “I think as long as we never forget that this is a story about a father and his daughter reconnecting, which essentially is what this film is, then the headiness of the multiverse, the headiness of the Quantum Realm sorts itself out because you only need to understand that it’s a father-and-daughter story.”
The upcoming film will also bring the Multiverse Saga’s big bad to the front of the screen: Kang the Conqueror. Jonathan Major’s rendition of the character first appeared in the finale episode of Loki, but the new film will likely see his power continue to grow. Seeing as 2025’s Avengers: The Kang Dynasty is likely predicated heavily on Kang, the impact of Ant-Man 3 could be as big as any in the upcoming slate of MCU projects.
Captain America: Civil War pulled Earth’s Mightiest Heroes apart and forever sent the MCU spiraling into a new direction. If Ant-Man 3 will be anything like that, be prepared for something big to happen in the Quantum Realm.
Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania hits theaters on February 17.
Carson Burton is a freelance news writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter at @carsonsburton.
