Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania trailer makes Kang an MCU mystery

It’s very hard to tell from one trailer just how weird Quantumania: Ant-Man and The Waspit will get. What the movie’s first look does give us, however, is promising: a whole secret universe full of Star Wars-ass stuff that includes some of the weirdest ideas in Marvel Comics lore.

What’s fun about QuantumaniaIt is true that while the Quantum Realm (first in) has been shown several times, Ant-Man Ant-Man & the WaspObliquely, in Doctor StrangeAs a way to time travel, Avengers: Endgame), What it is actually It isIt was a complete blank canvas. Now that this movie is finally diving in, the implications are much cooler than what we’ve seen before, and what was once a kaleidoscopic wasteland is revealed as a whole other universe with cities that feel lifted right out of the Star Wars prequels.

The Quantum Realm was created for MCU films. It is a combination of several Marvel Comics ideas, including the Microverse and the Negative Zone. To some extent, it also allows time travel. This means that there’s all sorts of potential for comic-lore surprises in Quantumania — with the first and biggest hint being the film’s villain, Kang (Jonathan Majors).

Once the Quantum Realm has been expanded, the second goal was to create the Quantum Realm. Quantumania’s trailer is establishing Kang as a mysterious and menacing presence in there. Kang’s comic story is complex, but there are two important things that remain constant: Kang is a time traveler and is very dangerous. It is notAn Ant-Man villain.

Disney Plus Loki did a lot of work to set up the rules of time travel in the MCU while also introducing a version of Kang known as He Who Remains — a man driven a little bit mad by the amount of time traveling and tinkering he had done in his lifetime, who’s now stranded at the end of the universe. This is the man that we see in Quantumania trailer is different, both going by the name Kang and more closely resembling the Conqueror we’ve seen in the comics.

So what’s a time traveler doing in Ant-Man’s weird secret universe? That’s a big part of Quantumania’s intrigue, but given the flexible nature of the Quantum Realm, it could be a lot of things — including the means by which Marvel’s heroes and villains travel the multiverse to cause the serious trouble that will lead to Avengers: The Kang Dynasty Secret Wars. Most importantly, it’s a great way for Marvel’s brain trust to pull just about any remaining heroes off the bench and on screen, from the previously announced Fantastic Four to the studio’s very secretive plans for the X-Men.