Ant-Man & The Wasp: Quantumania’s first trailer introduces Kang the Conqueror

Ant-Man & The Wasp: Quantumania’s first trailer makes it clear that the movie’s going to be a family affair that brings back all of Scott Lang’s loved ones for an adventure that looks more than a bit like whatever’s going on in Strange World. But the trailer also reveals something rather interesting about how the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s next big Avengers-level villain, Kang the Conqueror, is stepping onto the scene and setting the stage for what’s to come.

Director Peyton Reed’s Ant-Man & The Wasp: Quantumania will tell the story of how Scott Lang (Paul Rudd), Hope van Dyne (Evangeline Lilly), and Hope’s mother Janet (Michelle Pfeiffer), all end up getting transported to the Quantum Realm after Scott’s daughter Cassie (Kathryn Newton) builds and activates a machine that inadvertently sends them all there. Though Scott and Hope both have experience dealing with extraterrestrial threats and saving the world by shrinking down to minuscule sizes, none of them really understand what Janet went through in the time she spent in the Quantum Realm — a subatomic plane of existence where the laws of physics behave wildly different, among other things.

As beautiful and nonsensical (and soundstage-y) as the Quantum Realm looks as Cassie and Scott first touch down in it, the trailer also establishes how, in addition to areas teeming with wildlife, there’s also some sort of highly advanced megacity populated by millions of microscopic people. Janet won’t tell her family who or what it is in the city that she’s so afraid of initially, but in time, Jonathan Major’s Kang the Conqueror reveals himself in his full regalia with a proposition for Ant-Man. After first being introduced in Loki as an eccentric madman at the end of reality, it’s interesting to see a Kang variant originating from the Quantum Realm, and (one imagines) escaping it to become a Big Problem down the line.

Given how Kang’s ambitions are going to get the Avengers all back together in 2025, it feels safe to assume that Scott’s not exactly going to “defeat” Kang when they clash next year. But it looks like Team Ant-Man’s going to go down swinging when Ant-Man & The Wasp: Quantumania hits theaters on February 17th, 2023.