Ant-Man and the Wasp will introduce Janet Van Dyne, Hank Pym’s wife, Hope’s mother and the original Wasp – as played by Michelle Pfeiffer. And though the upcoming sequel will be the first time we see her face, the character did feature in some capacity in the first movie.
In particular, she appeared in costume in a flashback that revealed how Janet disappeared into the Quantum Realm during a mission she and her husband went on to disarm a nuclear bomb. In Ant-Man’s third act, Scott Lang himself falls into the mini-dimension and, for a brief second, a shape that resembled the Wasp could be glimpsed.
Fans assumed this meant that Janet was still alive, which was confirmed when details about the sequel arrived. However, Marvel never outright admitted that this Ant-Man easter egg was really there. Until now, that is, as producer Kevin Feige has revealed that we were on the right track all along and the easily-missed teaser was inserted to set up the story for Ant-Man and the Wasp.
“In the first film it was, we got a glimpse of it for people who like to go through frame-by-frame, there was a little silhouette of Janet as the Wasp in there, which is a big story element in this movie.”
Though we know that she’ll indeed be back, we don’t yet know how Janet returns. Michael Douglas has already dropped a potential spoiler, though, telling us that Scott’s key to her rescue. According to the actor, Lang receives a signal from her from the Quantum Realm, and now that we know for sure that that was her in Ant-Man, we can infer that she saw Scott in the Realm during that sequence and has somehow found a way to contact him.
Details beyond that remain unclear, but this easter egg will finally pay off when Janet escapes the Quantum Realm in Ant-Man and the Wasp, which hits theaters on July 6th.
