Ant-Man and the Wasp brings Paul Rudd and Evangeline Lilly back into the title roles
as the size-changing superhero duo.
Along for the ride are all of their pals, families, a collection of new villains, and
more tiny buildings and gigantic Pez dispensers than you can even try to count.
While the action-packed movie occurs in the space between Civil War and Infinity War,
Scott Lang's house arrest means that he keeps a very separate life from his one-off adventure
with the Avengers, so it's not too easy to find a whole lot of Easter Eggs in this film.
But there are a good deal of references that dive deep into Marvel lore, and at least one
extremely meta cameo.
Let's check out the secrets of Ant-Man and the Wasp, however small they may be.
Stan the Man
Let's get the most obvious, impossible-to-miss cameo out of the way first.
You'll find Stan Lee, the co-creator of Ant-Man and the man credited as one of the main architects
of the Marvel Comics universe, attempting to get into his car during the second half
of the film, during the car chase scene through the streets of San Francisco.
In April 2018, it was reported that Lee had filmed multiple cameos at the same time, not
because of fading health, but because he simply isn't into flying around to different movie
sets.
The same report confirmed that he's already filmed his cameo in Avengers 4.
Here's hoping we get to see him for another ten years of Marvel movies.
Young Avengers
Even if you're unfamiliar with Scott Lang in the comics, you can probably guess that
his badass daughter will one day become a superhero herself.
It's clear that she desperately wants to help out her dad.
"He's so ugly!
I love him!"
A brilliant kid in the comics, she ends up spending
time at the Four Freedoms Plaza with the Fantastic Four, where surrounded by superheroes herself
she develops a taste for adventure and eventually joins the Young Avengers.
For now, her conversations about being her dad's partner in heroism are a predictive,
but distant, dream.
They'll fight side-by-side someday, and if casting rumors are to be believed for Avengers
4, she'll be back much sooner than expected… as a 16-year old kid, probably ready for a
fight.
Egghead & Jimmy
Jimmy Woo's appearance in Ant-Man and the Wasp isn't so much an Easter Egg as a trip
deep into Marvel's past.
Originally appearing in the comics in 1956, Woo is a government agent, much like he is
on the big screen.
He's drifted in and out of secret organizations for decades, but he's most notable just for
being pretty good agent, as well as a very positive deviation from the negative stereotypes
Asians faced in the comics during the '50s and '60s.
Buried a little deeper is Elihas Starr.
On the big screen, he's the father of Ghost, but the comics tell a very different story.
Starr first appeared in 1962's Tales to Astonish #38 as the villainous Egghead.
His first arch-nemesis was, of course, Ant-Man, and his grand plot was to simply turn all
of Ant-Man's ants against him.
True love prevails, however, and Ant-Man is not betrayed by his ants, despite Egghead's
super-science.
As far as the comics are concerned, it's Starr who helped Darren Cross develop his Yellowjacket
armor.
The MCU's Starr might not be such a good guy after all either...
Co-hosts with the most
Possibly the most meta reference in the MCU is the appearance of comedian and professional
weirdo Tim Heidecker as Whale Boat Captain Daniel Gooobler, spelled with three O's.
"Sorry, I'm messing around."
Heidecker is the co-host of the satirical On Cinema at the Cinema video series, alongside
Gregg Turkington, where the two hosts battle for movie superiority… and to get the best
movie cameos.
You'll remember Turkington as the Baskin-Robbins manager in the original Ant-Man, a cameo which
enraged Tim to the point where he allegedly paid $15,000 for his brief cameo in Fox's
Fantastic Four reboot as Reed Richards' useless father.
Tim returns now with the best cameo yet, hosting San Francisco whale boat tours.
What does it all mean?
Only that Paul Rudd hangs out with some pretty funny people.
"I give it five bags of popcorn, along with ah..
Maybe an Ant-Man DVD.
That I would collect some residuals on."
Mass media
Obviously, Ant-Man isn't the first movie to play with the idea of objects and creatures
of unusual sizes.
1954's Them! was all about massive, irradiated ant invaders.
Ant-Man and the Wasp references this in two ways: it's the feature that Scott, Hope, and
Cassie are watching at the end of the film after Scott finally allows his daughter to
have a real adventure as a super-tiny person.
Additionally, when Bill Foster is cornered by Pym's giant ants in his lab, he utters,
"It's them!"
But if you know your 1970s movies, you'll also recognize Animal House playing on TV
in an early scene.
Specifically, we get a scene in which a very drug-induced conversation centers around the
idea of an entire universe being contained in an atom in a fingernail.
"One tiny atom in my fingernail, could be-"
"Could be one little, tiny universe."
That's basically the definition of the Quantum Realm.
Thanks for the enlightenment, stoner comedy.
Single frames
Many viewers left the original Ant-Man with the distinct impression that they'd seen Janet
Van Dyne trapped in the quantum realm, even for a split second.
Of course, it couldn't really be proven until home viewers could pause frames selectively
at home, but we knew she was there.
This time around, Marvel's Kevin Feige has definitely confirmed that we'll have to wait
for a home release to see the single frames of MCU hints that director Peyton Reed has
slipped into the movie's various realms.
We already know that Doctor Strange got a quick view of the Quantum Realm as he zipped
through the multiverses, and that the trip is made perilous by time vortices, and we
also know that Avengers 4 seems to be playing fast and loose with time travel, and the possibility
of multiverses.
With so many ways to traverse time and space, anything is possible, and anything can be
in there.
We just won't know what's up until we can hit the pause button.
One thing is for certain: it's not really the Marvel Universe until we see MODOK.
"I am MODOK! (no that's not Vince Vaughn)
I am the ultimate in human-machine interface!
I am designed only for conquest!"
Make it happen, Marvel.
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