Why Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania Kicking Off Phase 5

2023 has officially kicked off, and we can now look to the next twelve months of a whole bunch of superhero content from all sides of the aisle. The first ones to come out of the gate with a massive movie will be Marvel with Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania. Ant-Man does not seem like a superhero that would work, yet here we are mere months away from the character completing a trilogy. Is he the biggest superhero in the MCU? Not by a long shot, but he’s not the smallest, either. The movies have always performed well both critically and commercially, and now the mini-hero is getting the task of kicking off the next phase of the Marvel Universe. You wouldn’t think this is the hero to kick off a phase since both of the Ant-Man movies have been toward the end of their various phases, but Marvel Megaboss Kevin Feige explained to Empire that he thought Scott Lang had earned the right to be front and center.

“We wanted to kick off Phase Five with Ant-Man because he’d earned that position,” Feige tells Empire. “To not simply be the back-up or the comic relief, but to take his position at the front of the podium of the MCU.”

Right after the first Avengers film came out, there was a discussion among fans about how they would write their way around ‘why aren’t the Avengers taking care of this?’ In some ways, they managed to do that. In others, it became a little annoying that we were dealing with world-ending events, and no one thought to phone a friend. Well, it sounds like it’s Ant-Man’s turn to have world-ending events where he is unable to phone a friend [that isn’t Hope]; as Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania writer Jeff Loveness said, “the first discussion we had was, ‘What if Ant-Man is accidentally in an Avengers movie by himself?” Director Peyton Reed elaborated that “we’re not running around the streets of San Francisco anymore. We’re fighting one of the most powerful villains in Marvel history, and maybe these are the most unlikely Avengers to be the first to go up against this guy.” In terms of the first line of defense, people probably don’t think Scott, and considering that Kang is not going to be defeated entirely in this film, there is a chance that this might not end well for everyone involved.

Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania – Cast, Summary, Release Date

In the film, which officially kicks off phase 5 of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Super-Hero partners Scott Lang (Paul Rudd) and Hope Van Dyne (Evangeline Lilly) return to continue their adventures as Ant-Man and the Wasp. Together, with Hope’s parents Hank Pym (Michael Douglas) and Janet Van Dyne (Michelle Pfeiffer), the family finds themselves exploring the Quantum Realm, interacting with strange new creatures and embarking on an adventure that will push them beyond the limits of what they thought was possible. Jonathan Majors joins the adventure as Kang. Director Peyton Reed returns to direct the film; Kevin Feige and Stephen Broussard produce. Marvel Studios’ Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania—an epic, sci-fi adventure film, will hit the big screen on February 17, 2023.