Is Ant-Man dead in ‘Deadpool & Wolverine?’

The official trailer for Deadpool & Wolverine is finally upon us, and hooo-boy is it a doozy.

The captivating two and a half minute trailer is jam-packed with teasing hints toward what fans may be able to expect from the long-awaited release. We finally see ‘Pool and Wolfie in all their frenemy glory, strutting their stuff in skin-tight spandex as the world(s) unravel around them.

The third Deadpool flick has long been teased as a cross-dimensional escapade, in which the MCU finally embraces the Merc with a Mouth and, in the process, grants him access to the mutiversal-traversing status that’s kept him hopping through sister comics for decades. In the process, the trailer invited heaps of questions, as people ponder which world contains which details, and which reveals are of MCU-shaking proportions.

Is Ant-Man dead in Deadpool 3?

One of the biggest reveals — and I mean that literally — in the titillating Deadpool & Wolverine trailer is nestled just ahead of the two-minute mark. It goes by in a flash, but its impossible to miss the towering proportions of Scott Lang’s instantly-recognizable helmet — along with the implications of that split-second glimpse.

Over right around two seconds of trailer time in total, viewers were given a glimpse of Ant-Man’s helmet, in all its oversized glory, seemingly situated as part of a town’s makeup. Careful examination of the scene gruesomely indicates that the area’s structure — aka its walls — are constructed of the oversized arms of the suit, and (based on what happens when the mask opens) Ant-Man himself.

That’s right — when the helmet opens, the massive, picked-clean skull of one Ant-Man is revealed, indicating that the arms that make up surrounding walls are likewise occupied by the massive remains of our own Scott Lang. Given the nature of the film, however, its all but guaranteed that things aren’t precisely as they seem, so don’t panic quite yet.

Its almost guaranteed that Ant-Man — or at least a version of Ant-Man — is, in fact, dead in Deadpool & Wolverine. There’s really no other explanation for the perfectly recognizable mask and the remains therein, but this is a flick about multiversal travel. That may not be the Scott Lang we know and love — or Scott Lang at all.

Over decades and numerous timelines, worlds, and baffling spin-offs, more than five different men have taken up the mantle of Ant-Man. Even in the comparatively limited MCU, Scott is already the second person to don the helm. He was preceded by Hank Pym, the inventor of the Pym Particle and first-ever Ant-Man, and in broad Marvel canon Scott is followed by a small handful of other Ant-options.

The skull we see in that oversized helmet may belong to Scott Lang, but it may also belong to Zayn Asghar, Eric O’Grady, Chris McCarthy — hell, it could even be Pym! Its hard to say who makes up the structure of that town, but one thing is all but guaranteed: Its not the Scott we know and love in there. Its almost certainly an alternate-universe version of the character, and one who seemingly died quite a long while back.

So yes, it appears Ant-Man is dead in Deadpool & Wolverine, but don’t hang up your Paul Rudd posters just yet. It likely doesn’t spell the end of his run as the character (though Quantumania makes a good argument for some major pivots) and in fact, considering the wild story prepped to unfold in Deadpool & Wolverine, it may have nothing at all to do with the version we know.

Some serious changes are in store following the third Deadpool movie, but killing off Paul Rudd likely isn’t among them. There’s always a chance Deadpool & Wolverine will prove me wrong, but if there’s anything years of avid Deadpool fandom have taught me, it’s never to make guesses where Wade Wilson is concerned.