Not even the most brilliant scientists in the multiverse can explain what's going on
with the Quantum Realm. But does it matter? Eh… not really. Here's everything audiences
have been scratching their heads about in "Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania."
"Quantumania" kicks off with a brief flashback that takes place in the Quantum Realm. Janet
is hiding out for her safety in a place that she later describes as
Subatomica. She sees a ship crash in the distance and on her way to approach it,
she deftly fends off some dangerous-looking creatures. But this isn't Hank's voyage to
fetch her from the hidden universe in "Ant-Man and the Wasp," which led to
their reunion. Instead, moments later, a distraught Kang reaches out for help.
"You cannot trust him."
A refresher: Janet got trapped in the Quantum Realm in approximately 1987 when she turned
off her regulator and went subatomic to stop a missile from killing thousands.
She put an antenna in Scott's head during his momentary visit to the Quantum Realm
in 2015 and was rescued by Hank in 2018, meaning she spent about 31 years there.
While the present timeline within "Quantumania," in which Cassie's device sucks the Pyms and Langs
into the subatomic universe, takes place in 2025, this flashback takes place sometime between 1987
and 2018... probably much closer to her arrival than her departure. After their falling out,
Kang had time to conquer the native population and build his citadel, but then again, time works
a little differently for him, so who knows how long that would take? Generally speaking, the
film's main action seems to run concurrently with most of Phase 4, which is largely set in 2025.
Throughout the film, Cassie alludes to the fact that she's had to take care of herself — and has
gotten pretty good at it. This isn't a reference to Scott's years in the slammer or his days under
house arrest. When Thanos snapped his fingers and wiped half of the population out of existence,
including Hank, Janet, and Hope, it had a profound impact on Cassie's upbringing. In
the mid-credits stinger of "Ant-Man and the Wasp," viewers saw that Hank, Janet,
and Hope all disappeared into dust as they were experimenting with a small,
mobile version of their quantum tunnel. Scott had just traveled back to the Quantum Realm
via that tunnel to gather particles in an effort to heal Ghost of her "disequilibrium".
Scott wasn't blipped, but he might as well have been. He
couldn't come back from the subatomic world without the help of Hank, Janet,
and Hope manning the machine on the other side. Nobody even knew he was down there,
and he only re-emerged because a rat inadvertently activated Hank's machine.
Regardless, Cassie was without a father for five years. It's also possible she was without
a mother and stepfather too. Maggie and Jim don't appear in "Avengers: Endgame," and there's a fan
theory that the blip is the reason why. They aren't in "Quantumania" either,
and Cassie's bitterness over having had to fend for herself suggests the fan theory might be true.
The Marvel Cinematic Universe has never taken great pains to explain the way science (or
sometimes magic or religion) works in its version of our world. The time heist in "Avengers:
Endgame" is just one example; the whole plot goes down smoother if the audience doesn't think
too much about it. The goal isn't to teach the audience how to travel through time and space,
it's to make something like Hank Pym's technology seem plausible by using
science jargon and creating comparisons to tech that already exists here and now,
on Earth. That's what "Quantumania" does with Cassie's invention.
To Scott and Janet's dismay, Hank and Hope have been encouraging the
budding engineer to tinker around the lab. She's been working on what Hank
calls a subatomic Hubble telescope in the basement. It's basically a satellite that
compiles signals from the Quantum Realm into data that can be read as a 3D map.
"We just need a map. And then we can study and explore the entire Quantum Realm.
Never even have to go."
Trying to take pictures of a hidden universe is one thing, but communicating is another,
and Janet realizes that someone (like Kang or, as it turns out,
M.O.D.O.K.) could be intercepting or even responding to Cassie's signals.
That's exactly what happens in the inciting incident of "Quantumania." Sure, it seems like
if teenage Cassie would've been able to fashion such a device, Hank probably would've been able
to as well, to ascertain Janet's whereabouts. But the invention's true purpose isn't to
map the mini-universe. It's to get the main characters from point A to point B in the story.
The act of going subatomic looms as a threat in the first and second "Ant-Man" movies,
the reason being the super suits and the Pym tech they rely upon aren't
able to return the wearer to their normal size after a certain point.
The horrifying concept of Janet going subatomic in "Ant-Man" flashbacks was derived from the notion
of her getting infinitely smaller and smaller without any means of control. Franchise fans
know that Hank and Hope made advancements to their research and improvements to their suits
between 2015's "Ant-Man" and 2018's "Ant-Man and the Wasp," and it can be assumed they've
continued to refine their suits into 2025. Still, it's odd that once in the Quantum
Realm, Pym tech functions exactly as it's supposed to on Earth's surface.
The Quantum Realm is still a pretty perilous place to be, but not because of the limitations
of Hank's gear. Scott, Hope, and Cassie all use their suits to shrink and grow at will in
"Quantumania," and characters use Hank's throwable discs to make various objects larger and smaller,
too. It's funny to think that when Ant-Man's the size of a Kaiju in his fight against
Kang, he's actually only a handful of subatomic particles tall.
But why doesn't getting bigger propel anyone from the Quantum Realm this time? Is it possible to go
sub-subatomic, and would that be just as dangerous? The real answer is that Marvel
Studios wanted Ant-Man to retain his trademark superpower in this fantastical new setting.
"I suppose the human mind just can't comprehend the experience."
If you take He Who Remains at his word, he was the Kang who defeated his counterparts
so he could restore order to the timeline. That version of the villain warned Sylvie
and Loki that if they struck him down, the power vacuum caused by his death
would be filled by a plethora of Kangs even more villainous. So,
why are there so many Kang variants in the first place, and why are they all so formidable?
Loki's Kang explained it this way: He was once a scientist named Nathaniel
Richards from an alternate 31st century who discovered the multiverse. The other
universes' Kang variants were making the same discovery at the same time. At first,
this led only to self-congratulation, but it wasn't long before some Kangs showed their
true colors. The multiverse erupted into Kangs at war with one another.
As far as anyone knows, He Who Remains is truly dead. But before he was dispatched,
he told Loki and Sylvie of a "conqueror," which is the same word Jentorra and Janet
use to describe the Kang stuck in the Quantum Realm. This is long before he ever shouts out
his own name. Kang the Conqueror is one of the character's most iconic forms in the comics.
"Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania" nails his facial markings which are depicted as scars,
as well as his blue face shield and unsettling, calm-until-he's-not authoritarian demeanor.
While it remains unknown if this Kang is Prime Kang, it's clear that he's bad news.
There aren't many beings in the multiverse capable of contending with Kang. As he
nonchalantly brags to Ant-Man, he's made short work of the Avengers before.
"You're an Avenger. Have I killed you before?"
"What?"
Janet realizes that he's not some poor stranded voyager,
but instead a banished despot, when she makes contact with the energy core bound to his mind,
which powers his ship. She has a vision of interdimensional cosmic chaos caused
by Kang in which whole timelines and universes were destroyed so that he could stay in power.
Presumably, he was exiled for exactly this. But who decided and enforced his sentence?
Kang the Conqueror alludes to the fact that others like him are responsible for his predicament.
But he doesn't see himself as a villain. Not unlike He Who Remains, this Kang thinks his
indiscriminately cruel rule is necessary for the survival of the multiverse itself, and he
tries to convince Scott that he's the lesser evil. Years earlier, Janet didn't believe him
and stopped cooperating with his efforts to escape immediately. The rebels, led by Jentorra and Quaz,
would agree. They describe a Kang who lays waste to every civilization that stands in his way,
which supports the idea that other, more benevolent Kangs sent the Conqueror to
the practically inescapable Quantum Realm to try to contain this most monstrous variant.
The Quantum Realm is practically inescapable. So Kang is elated when Scott pops up with
his daughter Cassie. Kidnapping Cassie gives Kang a way to restart his ship,
as well as something to hang over Scott's head so he'll go through with it. It makes
emotional sense to put Scott and Cassie in this position, but that Kang would really need their
help strains belief, especially for those who are familiar with the character's backstory.
Kang's human form, Nathaniel Richards, comes from an alternate 31st century in which there
never were Dark Ages that halted scientific and cultural progress. Even before he became Kang,
he still possessed vast, in-depth knowledge that would've been unimaginable in the
21st century on Earth-616. It stands to reason that, as brilliant as Hank Pym is,
his tech couldn't hold a candle to whatever Nathaniel would've been working on.
If Scott was able to bust out of the Quantum Realm with one of Hank's discs and Cassie was
able to invent a way to communicate and map the hidden universe, it seems highly unlikely that
a being as smart and powerful as Kang wouldn't have been able to solve this problem on his own.
"Quantumania" concludes as Scott takes stock of his almost-too-good-to-be-true life. Then,
he remembers something Kang said. The powerful conqueror claimed that if he didn't break free
from the Quantum Realm, life as Scott knows it could cease to exist. Suddenly,
Scott finds himself wondering if he did the right thing by conquering the Conqueror.
"So, what's it gonna be, Ant-man?"
The film cuts to black, and whether the world was saved or doomed by Scott's decision to
defeat Kang is left an open question. This depends on which (if any) Kangs you choose
to trust. So far, He Who Remains seems to have been telling the truth in "Loki." When he fell,
the timeline did branch, and more Kangs became part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
No one knows if Kang the Conqueror was being honest when he elicited Scott's help,
or if his warped point of view was merely a justification for his horrendous actions.
It's also unknown if he's truly dead. The first post-credits scene makes it
seem as though news has spread of Kang the Conqueror's demise. But what impact
Scott and Hope's actions will have on the rest of the MCU remain to be seen.
In the first post-credits scene, an arena full of Kang variants has gathered. This harkens
to a panel in "The Avengers" issue #292 where The Council of Cross-Time Kangs has gathered.
Though in "Quantumania," this is the Council of Kangs, part of a mind-bending arc from issues
#267-269 in which the multiverse's permutations of Kang convene. The group is led by Prime Kang,
with the stated purpose of pruning problem variants from existence. Three Kangs get
more attention than the others, and the identity of two of them seems clear.
Since Kang has the power to traverse time and multiverses, this otherwise normal flesh-and-blood
human likes to mix things up by, say, becoming an Egyptian Pharaoh for a while or occupying Limbo
and ordering around the Time Keepers. One of these Kangs is Rama-Tut, a variant who sent himself back
to 2960 B.C. and used his boundless knowledge to rule over ancient Egypt. He eventually turns
himself into a god-like figure and a supervillain who butts heads with Khonshu from "Moon Knight."
Another is Immortus, a powerful futuristic variant. A third figure
doesn't bear as obvious a resemblance to Kang's comic book appearances. He could
be Scarlett Centurion or Iron Lad, a composite of such Kang characters,
or a new variant created for the MCU. A final title card promises that Kang will return.
Expect to see more of him in Phases 5 and 6, leading up to "Avengers: The Kang Dynasty."
Kang is poised to become the primary antagonist of the Marvel Cinematic Universe after "Quantumania,"
but he made his debut on TV. So, it seems only appropriate that a "Quantumania" end-credits scene
brings a Kang back into Loki's orbit, setting up a likely plotline for his returning Disney+ show.
A man, not-so-coincidentally played by Jonathan Majors, is on a small stage presenting a
contraption to an audience. Judging from the clothes, the hairstyles, and the decor, this
all takes place around the turn of the century. Loki turns to show his face to the camera,
followed shortly thereafter by Mobius. It's clear that they've been on the trail of this Kang for
a while, though Mobius doesn't understand why the unassuming gentleman on stage is such a big deal.
This variant goes by the name Victor Timely. He's a disguised Kang, who travels to a small
town in Wisconsin in 1901 and uses his genius and inventions to wow the locals. Eventually,
he becomes mayor and sows the seeds for a broader and more permanent takeover.
Victor Timely could very well be the villain of "Loki" Season 2, or
perhaps the God of Mischief-turned-TVA agent and his partner may be in pursuit of multiple Kangs,
of which Timely is merely one. Either way, it seems likely that the series
will pick up where this teaser leaves off when it premieres later this year.