MCU Retrospective: Ant-Man and the Wasp

Written by Anna Harrison

In these retrospectives, Anna will be looking back on the Marvel Cinematic Universe, providing context around the films, criticizing them, pointing out their groundwork for the future, and telling everyone her favorite scene, because her opinion is always correct and therefore her favorite scene should be everyone’s favorite scene. Anyone in need of a palate cleanser after the previous movie?

70/100

Avengers: Infinity War was a sprawling, sweeping epic that jumped between characters and planets so swiftly that the audience never got a chance to catch their breath, and it ended with the bleakest moment in the history of the MCU. Ant-Man and the Wasp, however, is as light and zippy as the insects it takes its name from, proving to be a much-needed break in between the gloom and doom of Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame; it’s nothing particularly special, but it doesn’t need to be, since it easily coasts by on the chemistry of its actors and its lighthearted humor. This time, there was no messy firing, and Ant-Man director Peyton Reed came back with no drama; the biggest hubbub during the production of the film surrounded its name, as Ant-Man and the Wasp marked the first time a woman shared titular status in the MCU. (To quote the end credits scene from Ant-Man, “It’s about damn time.”)

The last time we saw Scott Lang (Paul Rudd), he was in a prison cell on the Raft, put there for aiding Captain America (Chris Evans) in Captain America: Civil War. The last time we heard about Scott Lang, we were being told by Natasha Romanoff (Scarlett Johansson) that he and Clint Barton (Jeremy Renner) were on house arrest after taking a plea deal, thus explaining why they didn’t appear in Infinity War. So what has Scott been up to, post-Germany but pre-Thanos (Josh Brolin)?

Well, as we have all learned over Covid quarantine, being stuck in your house for an extended period of time results in some odd hobbies. For Scott, this includes makeshift bowling, reading The Fault in Our Stars, learning the drums, and organizing treasure hunts for his daughter, Cassie (Abby Ryder Forston). Even after the events of Captain America: Civil War, he’s still just a guy, a guy trying to make the most out of a bad situation. 

In addition to taking overlong baths, Scott now also helps his friends Luis (Michael Peña), Kurt (David Dastmalchian), and Dave (T.I.) run a security outfit called—fittingly, given their criminal backgrounds—X-Con Security. Contact with Hank Pym (Michael Douglas) and his daughter, Hope (Evangeline Lilly), has dwindled since they are on the run, trying to keep their technology from being taken by the government after Scott revealed himself in Civil War, but Scott—aside from bawling his eyes out over John Green—seems to be doing okay. He’s got his business, he has a good relationship with ex-wife Maggie (Judy Greer) and her husband, Paxton (Bobby Cannavale), and he has only three days until he’s free, though FBI agent and parole officer Jimmy Woo (Randall Park) keeps a watchful eye. In short, things are looking up, and the supporting performers are as charming and funny as ever, with Peña once again providing some top-tier comedy with his long-winded monologues.

However, when Scott has a vision of Hank’s presumed-dead wife, Janet (Michelle Pfieffer), in the Quantum Realm (the place you go when you shrink super small and keep shrinking, or something—it’s one of those Marvel scientific inventions where you nod during the explanation and try not to think too hard about it), he inevitably crosses paths yet again with Hope and her father. Hank thinks that, during Scott’s trip to the Quantum Realm during Ant-Man, he became entangled with Janet. “Hank, I would never do that. I respect you too much,” Scott says solemnly. 

“Quantum entanglement, Scott,” Hank replies, leaving us to ponder whatever the hell that means. 

Hope, while thrilled at the prospect of reuniting with her mother, was also understandably stung (ha) about Scott’s escapade to Germany during the events of Civil War, and not just because doing so put a target on all her and her father’s backs. Her iciness lies largely in the fact that Scott didn’t even ask her to come with him, despite having trained with him (and “other stuffing” with him): “If I had asked, would you have come?” Scott asks, to which Hope replies, “I guess we’ll never know. But I do know one thing… If I had, you’d never have been caught.”

Though never stated outright, Hope’s resentment feels very rooted in her womanhood. Her father passed her over in Ant-Man, and then her ostensible partner did the same thing in Civil War, and while neither say anything outright about Hope’s gender, and Hope doesn’t either, it’s clear that she feels they overlooked her, unintentionally or not, because she’s a woman. It’s a narrative that has clear resonance outside of the movie, and it’s handled with a subtlety and grace that Marvel often lacks when it comes to acknowledging social issues, so Hope comes off as sympathetic and understandable in her anger rather than simply an ice queen. She is an excellent addition to the male-dominated superhero roster: competent, flawed, and, unlike many (most) of her female counterparts, never sexualized. She’s allowed to have moments of intense vulnerability with her mother, but can be angry and cold in equal measure, giving her depth that was missing in Ant-Man where she exists primarily to be the token woman. Here, Lilly gets a chance to really shine in the role; while good in Ant-Man, when given a meatier role on equal footing with her male co-star, she eats it up, and it makes you wonder (as Hope herself does) why she was left out in the first place. (And, frankly, there’s no good answer to that.)

So, though off to a rocky start, everyone is soon off to build some quantum tunnel (whatever the hell that means) or some such, requiring a testy trade with shady tech mogul Sonny Burch (Walton Goggins, having a great bit of fun), but unfortunately the parts and Hank’s lab (which has been shrunk to the size of a suitcase) gets stolen by an unknown assailant. To get it back, the gang has to go to Bill Foster (Laurence Fishburne), a bitter former coworker of Hank’s known as Goliath in the comics. He helps them track down the lab through some more quantum stuff (“Do you guys just put the word ‘quantum’ in front of everything?” Scott wonders, echoing the audience’s thoughts), but when Scott, Hope, and Hank arrive to take the lab, they find themselves taken out again by that same unknown assailant, who reveals herself to be Ava Starr (Hannah John-Kamen), aka Ghost, and it turns out that Bill Foster is working with her too. Like Ant-Man, this sequel is all about parent-child relationships, even if only related in spirit: Scott and Cassie, Hank and Hope, Janet and Hope, Bill and Ava. Some are good, some are less so, most are messy, but it’s something that connects all of our main players.

Read More of Anna’s Ongoing Marvel Retrospective Series Here

Ava is, like most Marvel villains, a bit undercooked, but she has immense potential, due largely to John-Kamen’s immense charisma. Ava is a casualty of both Hank and S.H.I.E.L.D.: when Hank, the consummate asshole, fired Ava’s father, he continued to experiment on his own; one went awry and killed both him and his wife, leaving Ava alive but with molecular instability (again, whatever the hell that means). As a result, she inadvertently phases in and out of solid objects, so S.H.I.E.L.D. got a hold of her and used that for their own advantage on covert missions, making her their own version of the Winter Soldier (Sebastian Stan), but with a bit less brainwashing. Ava’s condition causes her constant pain and has begun to slowly kill her from the inside, and so father figure Bill wants to help her survive. 

Doing so apparently means getting the lab and using Janet’s quantum energy (…whatever the hell that means) to heal Ava, which may or may not kill Janet. Somehow. It doesn’t exactly make sense, but John-Kamen nonetheless proves compelling; unlike Killmonger (Michael B. Jordan) and Vulture (Michael Keaton) from previous MCU movies, here Ant-Man and the Wasp doesn’t try too hard to paint Ava as a villain. In fact, she purposely chooses not to use Scott’s daughter, ​​Cassie, as bait, though the option is brought up; most other MCU movies would have had the villain go down that route to establish that we shouldn’t sympathize too much with them. Here, we’re encouraged to. She’s only an antagonist because her goal of survival clashes with Hope, Hank, and Scott’s goal of freeing Janet, not because she is inherently evil or is going around beating up kids and killing her significant others. It’s an interesting take, and one with a lot of potential should Marvel ever pick up this thread down the road.

The remaining plot mostly involves four different groups trying to get to the lab: Ava, in an attempt to find a cure for her chronic pain; the bug trio, to try and get back the original Wasp; Burch, determined to sell it for a bunch of money; and the FBI, led by a Jimmy Woo determined to catch Scott breaking his house arrest. It’s not particularly complicated, nor is it particularly compelling in and of itself, but it allows for some killer comedy and sweet character beats amidst the chaos. In this case, less is more: Ant-Man and the Wasp is a better MCU entry because it doesn’t try too hard to connect to the greater universe, nor does it deal with world-ending apocalypses; instead, like its protagonists, it goes small.

It’s also very clever about its heroes’ use of their powers. It’s not only Scott who can shrink and grow, it’s now Hope, and it’s also a scientific lab, some Hot Wheels-looking cars, PEZ dispensers, and more. This makes all the car chase and fight scenes far more visually interesting than they would be otherwise, and provides no small amount of laughs. One great moment in particular involves Scott needing to make a run to his daughter’s school while his suit malfunctions, resulting in some incredible physical comedy when Scott gets stuck at around three feet tall. When you have a concept as absurd and delightful as a man who can shrink to the size of ants and grow to the size of whales, why not have as much fun as possible with it? Ant-Man and the Wasp certainly goes further with its main conceit than its predecessor did, and so even if there’s less plot to go around, it has a much firmer grasp on how best to deploy its characters and their powers. And, this time, we have double the shrinking shenanigans now that the Wasp has finally joined the team.

There is, frankly, not a lot to Ant-Man and the Wasp. But that’s okay—again, there doesn’t need to be. We just had an MCU-shattering event in Infinity War, so let’s take a little break, go back in time a bit, and enjoy watching some excellent actors bounce off each other. There’s some meat in here too, though: S.H.I.E.L.D.’s corruption continues to get exposed, once again showing that even our heroes can find themselves morally compromised; Hank and Janet reunite, and Douglas and Pfieffer, despite limited screentime together, sell the hell out of their relationship; Scott and Hope finally acknowledge each other as true partners and it isn’t some melodramatic, drawn-out saga like so many other MCU relationships are, but rather quiet and respectful. And, seriously, Michael Peña is an absolute gem in this franchise. It’s the perfect palate cleanser after Infinity War, and while it may not be the most memorable Marvel movie, but in terms of sheer enjoyment, it’s up there with the best of the best.

But, lest we get too comfortable, the end credits scenes are here to remind us that Ant-Man and the Wasp is part of a larger universe as Hope, Janet, and Hank all turn to dust from Thanos’ snap in Wakanda while Scott remains trapped in the Quantum Realm. The stinger at the very end, of a giant ant playing drums alone in Scott’s house, is equally absurd and eerie, as the camera pans over the static TV and the deserted streets of San Francisco. And so, even if you just tuned in to this movie for Paul Rudd, you’re gonna have to watch the next movie (technically the one after next) to figure out what happened to him—the Marvel machine keeps running, as always. But it was a nice break while it lasted.

Groundwork and stray observations: Marvel has no big master plan; rather, they plant seeds wherever they can in the hopes that some of them might one day germinate. None of these were planned from day one, lest the whole ship sink, but the seeds germinated nonetheless:

• Ghost in the comics is a member of the antihero team the Thunderbolts, and with recent events from The Falcon and the Winter Soldier and Black Widow, a Thunderbolts team seems inevitable; hopefully Ghost is a part of that team. (I want a Thunderbolts movie or show so badly, my god.) We already have Yelena (Florence Pugh), Zemo (Daniel Brühl), US Agent (Wyatt Russell), Abomination (Tim Roth), Winter Soldier, and many more, and it seems like Julia Louis-Dreyfus’ role as Val is to serve as the Thunderbolts’ version of Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson). “There was an idea…,” except it’s a group of slightly less remarkable people.
• Cassie makes multiple comments about being Scott’s superhero partner, alluding to her future superhero status (though she will be played as a superhero by Kathryn Newton, whom I greatly dislike, which is very, very unfortunate).
• Jimmy Woo, who expresses amazement at Scott’s card tricks in the movie, reappears in WandaVision performing the exact same trick he sees in Ant-Man and the Wasp.
• Kurt appears in What If…? and continues to fear Baba Yaga, eventually getting killed by a zombified Wanda Maximoff (Elizabeth Olsen normally, here a gurgling, animated zombie), but not before getting out one last, “Baba Yagaaaa!”
• “Berkeley” was filmed at Emory University, specifically in White Hall, which is the ugliest building on campus. White Hall sucks. There was always gum under the chairs and hair tangled in the cushions.
• On a similar note, Atlanta can passably stand in for many cities. It can’t really stand in for San Francisco, but they tried.

Anna’s Favorite Scene: Scott runs around an elementary school appearing like an oversized toddler. High-brow art. Or, honestly, the post-credits stinger, because it is so unsettling and such a weird vibe after a fun movie like this.

MCU Ranking: 1. Captain America: The Winter Soldier, 2. Avengers: Infinity War, 3. Captain America: Civil War, 4. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, 5. Thor: Ragnarok, 6. Guardians of the Galaxy, 7. The Avengers, 8. Spider-Man: Homecoming, 9. Captain America: The First Avenger, 10. Iron Man 3, 11. Iron Man, 12. Black Panther, 13. Ant-Man and the Wasp, 14. Doctor Strange, 15. Ant-Man, 16. Thor, 17. Avengers: Age of Ultron, 18. Thor: The Dark World, 19. Iron Man 2, 20. The Incredible Hulk

Ant-Man and the Wasp Trailer

Ant-Man and the Wasp is currently available to rent and purchase on most digital storefronts, and is streaming on Disney+.

You can follow more of Anna’s work on Letterboxd, Twitter, Instagram, and her website.