Rights Reserved To: Marvel Studios
On the 9th of January, Marvel released a trailer for Antman And The Wasp: Quantamania, which gave fans a better understanding of the story that this movie will have, along with 2 comic book characters, Kang The Conqueror and M.O.D.O.K., making their official MCU debut.
The Story
The trailer gave fans more of an insight into the story to the point where the Marvel community can now attempt to piece stuff together and try to make final predictions based purely off of what was shown in the trailer.
The story elements known so far are the following: after Ant-Man, The Wasp, Cassie Lang, Hank Pym, and Janet Van Dyne are sucked into the Quantum Realm by a device Cassie made that works similar to a satellite for deep space but is used for the Quantum Realm instead. Once they all get sucked in they find themselves in a bad situation and must now explore and escape the quantum realm, but they must first go through a Kang variant, Kang The Conqueror.
As shown in the trailer, Kang will manipulate Ant-Man into doing his bidding and collecting the Light Of Centuries, a sphere shaped item that in the comics allows Kang to tap into the fabric of the timestream. In other words it is an item that has enough energy to power Kang’s time machine and would then allow him to alter time.
The trailer shows Kang convincing Ant-Man to get him the sphere by offering him what he wants most, time. Ant-Man lost 5 years of his life trapped inside the Quantum Realm from Thanos’s snap at the end of both Avengers: Infinity War and Ant-Man And The Wasp and he was not able to spend time with his daughter.
Since Kang is a character who is capable of altering time and Ant-Man is willing to do anything to get that time back, he would of course be convinced to collect the sphere for Kang.
The Characters Introduced
Kang The Conqueror, played by Jonathan Majors, will be the main antagonist in this film and will become the next major villain in the MCU, as hinted at by the trailer. The text Marvel kept repeating is “Witness The Beginning Of A New Dynasty”. Dynasty being the keyword as the next Avengers film’s title is Avengers: The Kang Dynasty.
A variant of Kang was introduced back in 2021 with Disney+’s Original, Loki, who was ultimately killed by Sylvie, a female variant of Loki and is speculated that in her doing that, it gave rise to Kang The Conqueror. He is also shown to have an army inside the Quantum Realm and is prepared for battle.
M.O.D.O.K., played by Corey Stoll is speculated to be the same character as Yellow Jacket who appeared in the very first Ant-Man film. He is thought to be the same character for 2 reasons: 1. The same actor, and 2. Yellow Jacket’s character was sent to the Quantum Realm at the end of the first film and until now his fate was not shared.
We don’t know much about this version of M.O.D.O.K. but in the comics, his name stands for Mental Organism Designed Only For Killing. He was created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby who also created Kang.
His whole gimmick is being an intelligent organism who fights with his mind against heroes such as the avengers and has telepathic powers. He was altered via an experiment on him using his intelligence to upgrade the company he worked at but it failed and left him looking disfigured, with a small body, arms, and legs but a giant face.
In the trailer, it looks like he will be rocking an iron mask along with rockets as his weapons and more.
Current Fan Predictions
The trailer showed us a battle between Kang and Ant-Man that gives us a glimpse of the fight they have. For Ant-Man, his helmet is destroyed by a kick from Kang, and Kang’s arm sleeve is destroyed and it is currently unknown how that occurred.
The running fan theory is, because of the massive strength difference from Ant-Man and Kang, Ant-Man has a 50/50 chance of surviving.
Kang’s strength matches that of Thanos who is one opponent that Ant-Man could never defeat on his own. And his potential death is also backed by the fact that the MCU is setting up the young Avengers from the comics, which are family members, friends, and people who are taking up the mantle of the previous Avengers.
As much as the community does not want Ant-Man to die, it’s hard to see him living unless he outsmarts Kang. Another fan prediction going around is, if Ant-Man does live he’d probably do something to “freeze” him and Kang in time somewhere backed up by his line in the trailer “I don’t have to win, we both just have to lose.”
