Though Marvel fans are still blubbing after seeing Avengers: Infinity War, the franchise must go on, as the next entry in the MCU is coming in just a few short months. Ant-Man and the Wasp follows on from the 2015 movie and will see Evangeline Lilly’s Hope Van Dyne finally suiting up as the titular insect-inspired heroine (“about damn time!”).
Given that Hope and Paul Rudd’s Scott Lang developed an attraction to each other in Ant-Man, you might expect their relationship to be a big part of this film – the title does encourage us to think of them as a couple, after all. However, director Peyton Reed spoke to ComicBook.com and played down talk that it would all be about Scott and Hope’s romance. If anything, he said, it’s about Hope questioning whether she even wants to go down that road.
“Well, the movie is absolutely about Scott Lang and Hope van Dyne, and Hope becoming Wasp… and their relationship is a little fractured… I think for Hope particularly, the question is out there: “Do I need this guy in my life? I’m a fully formed hero in my own right, do I need a partner?” That was really a fun kind of premise to start from.”
As this sounds, The Wasp will really explore Hope as a character, as opposed to the supporting role she played in the previous movie. Reed went on to say that it could even be argued that the film is more about the Wasp than it is Ant-Man.
“It was very important to me in a movie called Ant-Man and the Wasp that she’s not a supporting character. She’s a lead character. That this story is really about both of them, and in some ways more about her.”
The trailers so far have done a good job of showing how Hope will kind of leave Scott in the dust on their superhero missions. She’s been waiting for the moment that her dad would entrust her with his shrinking tech all her life, so she’s a lot more prepared for it than he is. In fact, Evangeline Lilly’s previously teased that “you’ve never seen a superhero origin story with less blunders.”
We’ll see just how well Hope Van Dyne takes to the superhero life when Ant-Man and the Wasp flies into cinemas on July 6th (or August 3rd, if you’re in the UK).
