Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania builds on the remainder of the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s Phase 5 and 6 stories, primarily by introducing the deeply odd Multiverse villain Kang and his Infinite counterparts as a threat to everyone in the MCU. That leaves a lot of questions at the end of the film as Marvel announces parts of the story to come. But quantumThe frantic pace and choppy editing left us with other questions, thanks to gaps in the story that didn’t seem entirely intentional. The Polygon crew who saw the film put our heads together after the film to talk about things we had been wondering during or after the film, from the light and silly to the serious and confusing. Here’s what we’re wondering at this point.
[Ed. note: Significant spoilers ahead for Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania as well as Loki season 1.]
Why was Kang the Conqueror banished?
This actually seems to be important to the story of the film. There are infinitely many Kangs, but the one who was booted into the Quantum Realm by the Council of Kangs apparently did something so ruthless that the rest of them couldn’t handle it, and quantum hardly a glimpse of this idea. It is implied that he wanted to handle an upcoming crisis – almost certainly the threat of assault (see below) – differently than they did. And he suggests that if the heroes kill him, “everyone will die”. But the allusions to his crime are deliberately vague and superficial.
What does the Council of Kang want?
We’ll learn more about this in later films, but for now we have what Loki learned from Season 1 Loki by He Who Remains, the version of Kang who supposedly froze the entire timeline into a single arc before a variant of Loki killed him. “Someone is coming,” Loki tells Time Variance Authority chief Mobius (Owen Wilson) immediately after Kang dies. “Countless different versions of a very dangerous person. And they are all set for war. We have to prepare.”
What exactly does “go to war” mean? According to He Who Remains, many of the infinite variants of itself are combative, with “each variant fighting to preserve its universe and destroy the others”. We’ll likely see some of that in the future of the MCU, but the Council of Kangs seems like a different matter altogether. It suggests that at least some of the variants – possibly united under Immortus, the tall, bearded, very old Kang who appears in the film’s first post-credits scene – instead want to work together to pull off a series of break-ins to respond to the timeline. But what does that mean?
What is causing the assaults?
As we learned Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, incursions happen when two universes threaten to collide. As alternate universe Reed Richards (John Krasinski) explains, “A slump occurs when the boundary between two universes erodes and they collide. Destroy one or both completely.”
One of the things that erode those boundaries? According to Reed, a major cause is sloppy, arrogant imbeciles like Stephen Strange, who cross the lines between universes. It’s possible that the kangs are reacting to the assaults ant man 3The post-credits scene of is caused by something we haven’t seen yet that will show up in a future MCU story. But it’s also possible that they’re reacting to past, current MCU events – like Doctor Strange and America Chavez, willy-nilly bouncing between timelines and multiverses Multiverse of MadnessHunt and/or flee Wanda Maximoff after her break with morals and sanity WandaVision.
Does Kang the Conqueror have any powers?
What really are Kang the Conqueror’s superpowers? Upon his first arrival in the Quantum Realm, as Janet Van Dyne (Michelle Pfeiffer) looks back on her 30 years there, he just looks like an ordinary man, lost, sweaty, hurt and confused. But when Scott Lang (Paul Rudd) and the Ant-Man family reach the Microverse, Kang wields telekinesis, handheld lasers, force fields, and a host of other abilities.
If the MCU follows the Marvel Comics it adapts, Kang will have no powers aside from the super genius brain that he can equip in various ways throughout a variety of multiverses. All the things we see him in quantum would be technologically and probably tied to that fancy suit he’s wearing, with the face shield that makes his eyes glow blue. The film seems to carry that out – in quantum, Janet Van Dyne even says he was able to get his suit back by briefly powering up his damaged ship with the power core they repaired together, making him much more powerful. It seems safe to assume so far that this Kang doesn’t have any inherent superpowers – but that the MCU can give Kang pretty much any powers that fit a story and attribute them to supertechnology of the far future.
How many damn layers are there in Quantum Realm anyway?
It’s mildly ridiculous that the quantum realm is radically different in every Ant-Man film, be it an endless, inescapable void (in ant man), a kind of alternating, unstable energy source (in Ant Man and the Wasp), or a strange worldStar Wars-style fantasy universe with strong overtones (in quantum). Janet Van Dyne shrugs that off in a single, casual line about how many levels the quantum realm has – this latest version is exactly what you get when you step past the void and the energy field and all – but it sure ups those Ask how many versions of the Quantum Realm will we get before it’s all over. It’s sort of a Schrodinger’s plot device – it can be anything it needs to be for whatever story a particular film is telling.
Will Bill Murray die in Ant-Man 3?
It seems like a waste of a perfectly good Bill Murray to introduce him in the MCU (as Janet’s old Quantum Realm flame Lord Krylar) and then immediately kill him, but it sure seems like the movie did just that, by feeding him to an oversized, clearly pissed off version of a creature that locals consume in their cocktails. But the movie clearly doesn’t address whether or not he actually escapes. This may just depend on how many more MCU cameos Murray wants to make. Krylar is a fun character, but he might not make much sense outside of his home quantum realm. On the other hand, we’re in a multiverse situation with a billion trillion kangs roaming around, so it’s always possible that one day we’ll see an alternate version of him, even if the original has been chewed up.
Did Hank Pym just leave behind a massive army of ants to take over the Quantum Empire?
It really seems like there are ethical issues in just dropping an entire “class 2 civilization” of giant, high-tech ants into an existing populated world. The Ants have a massive army with warriors that outshine the local humanoid populace and all manner of killer laser technology. As we see in the film, they are capable of overrunning and destroying entire cities. Won’t they make things a lot more uncomfortable for the natives of the Quantum Realm? Even if they currently have a peaceful, socialist society, at least for what “socialism” means to Hank?
Where is Luis and the rest of Scott’s crew?
OK, quantum spends most of its runtime in the Quantum Realm, so there’s not much time to check in with Scott’s old pal Luis (Michael Peña) and his homeboys Dave (Tip “TI” Harris) and Kurt (David Dastmalchian). . But the film is packed with scenes from Scott’s super happy, fulfilling life on Earth, having everything he wants and feeling good about it. And he doesn’t have time to stop by his old friends or mention them and what they’re up to? Is he too good for her now that he’s a major memoirist and occasional world saver?
And here are some bonus questions:
Is the Kang of Loki the Kang of Ant-Man 3?
We didn’t have that question because we have to look at pretty much all Marvel stuff to keep up with the story for professional reasons. But judging by Google, a lot of people are confused about this, so we thought we’d bring it up. No he is not. The kan in Loki (played, like all Kangs before, by Jonathan Majors) was He Who Remains, a variant of Kang that ruled all timelines to ensure all other Kangs would not emerge and start a huge war. When Loki’s variant from another timeline, Sylvie, killed He Who Remains, the multiverse shattered again and all the other Kangs we see in it quantum had suddenly been there all along, throughout history. This is time travel for you!
Does Kang die in Ant-Man 3?
This is another question people have asked Google. Yes, Kang dies in ant man 3. Finally. Director Peyton Reed confirmed this to Polygon in an interview. That Kang, Kang the Conqueror who fought Ant-Man and the Wasp in the Quantum Realm is officially dead. This is also confirmed by the other Kangs in the post-credits scene. No, there is no body because it has been dragged into a special effect. And no, Scott/Ant-Man isn’t really clear on what happened to him, whether he’s dead, and what it means. But for our purposes as an audience, this one Kang and the original Loki Kang are both completely dead.
But one of the things that fundamentally defines Kang as a character is his ability to travel through time and alter reality, so in true comic book style, no ending can ever be considered final, no character can ever truly be considered dead and all death pools are invalidated forever. Welcome to the multiverse, folks.
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