We were first introduced to Scott Lang’s daughter Cassie Lang in the very first Ant-Man film. Since then the character has been played by three different actors and has done a serious amount of growing up.
Scott and Cassie’s father-daughter relationship was excessively sweet as displayed when Scott gives her a rather ugly rabbit toy that she loves at first sight. Beyond her love for the weird, Cassie also seems rather mature for her age. Given her parent’s divorce, and her father’s incarceration, she doesn’t bear any ill will towards anyone and instead seems to take it all in her stride. She isn’t even phased by the giant ants that show up at her house. Cassie is one tough cookie.
What must have been very tough for Cassie, though, was her father’s disappearance during the blip. Initially thought to have been one of the ones lost to Thanos’ snap, Scott was actually trapped in the Quantum Realm and arrived on her doorstep five years later to an emotional reunion. To Cassie, her father was her hero long before he donned the suit and the loss of him over that time changed her.
So, before we go into Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, let’s have a look at what we know about Cassie Lang and what she has been up to in all that time.
1. Super genius
Add Cassie to the list of all the other brainiacs in the MCU because she has been educating herself on all things Quantum. Cassie shows off her Quantum realm mapping device in the Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania trailer with Hank Pym saying: “Your daughter built a sub-atomic Hubble Telescope in a basement”. It would seem that the knowledge that her dad had been trapped in the Quantum realm with no one to get him out cut her deep, as she tells him: “If I had something like this when you were gone… I could have found you.”
We can only imagine how hard Cassie must have been studying to get to the level we find her at in Quantumania. Much like Tony Stark, Cassie has thrown herself into making sure she is prepared if anything like what happened to her father happens again in the future, and, like in many cases with Stark, she triggers something much worse than she ever intended.
2. She has a suit
In a clip from Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, we learn that Cassie somehow got her hands on a suit, much to her father’s surprise. We aren’t quite yet sure how she acquired it; it may be that after her father and the rest of the team disappeared she went snooping into Hank Pym’s house to find clues and took one of the suits for herself. Or considering that she is a genius, Cassie could have learned to make her own suit by reverse-engineering the ones left behind during the blip.
3. Superhero training
We know from Ant-Man and the Wasp that Cassie envisioned herself as her father’s superhero partner one day. She told her father that he needed someone to watch her back, leading Scott to believe she was talking about Hope van Dyne, when in fact she was referencing herself.
There are clips from featurettes and trailers that show Cassie has been getting in some training, perhaps during the blip, perhaps with The Wasp once she returned given that Hope also trained her father. In the Introducing Cassie featurette about the character, Katherine Newton explained about her character: “She likes the chaos, she wants to be fighting, and she wants to be in the middle of it.”
4. Trouble with the law
In one of the trailers for Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, we find Cassie leaving a police cell after Scott comes to pick her up. The clip is only very brief, but shows that she has potentially been putting herself in risky and illegal situations, something her father is likely not very happy to see given the time he lost in the system himself. Also, given the conversation they have in the car, it could be that she was carrying some extremely dangerous tech on her as Scott says: “What if the cops took it from you, hm?”
This shows that Cassie has a reckless side to her, one that could potentially see her get into trouble both in Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania and further down the line within the MCU.
5. Yellow Jacket still haunts her
In Ant-Man, Cassie had the rather unpleasant and traumatizing experience of being taken hostage in her own room by Darren Cross a.k.a Yellow Jacket. She was only six years old at the time, and although she seemed to handle it pretty well at the moment , that had to leave a lasting impression. In an Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania clip that has Cassie, Hope, and Scott in the car together, Scott says :”I just think you should get to have a normal life”. Cassie responds: “Dad, a guy dressed like a bee tried to kill me in my room when I was six. I’ve never had a normal life.”
It will be interesting then to see how Cassie will handle coming across Darren Cross again in the Quantum Realm, given that he is in fact alive and the face behind M.O.D.O.K. Will she be able to face her trauma and overcome it?
6. She is Ant-Man’s biggest weakness
We know already that Scott would do anything to protect his daughter. We saw it in the first Ant-Man film where he risked his life by going subatomic to defeat Darren Cross. It would appear Kang is also aware of this weakness as we see Cassie get taken prisoner and used as leverage to get Scott to do something for him.
If there is any way that Scott would give up everything, risk everything, it’s for his only daughter with who he has already lost so much time.
7. She is “kind of a mess”
This doesn’t really come as a surprise given what we know sha has been through already. Her dad went to prison, then got out, then saved the world, then got put under house arrest, then saved the world again, then disappeared for five years, then came back (likely after she lost all hope) then risked his life once more and saved the world another time. That is a lot for anyone to take and not come out just a smidge messed up.
In an interview with Entertainment Tonight she opened up about her character being “kind of a mess” despite trying her best to do the right thing she still makes a lot of mistakes. But hey, that sounds like every superhero we know!
Cassie has grown up since last we truly saw her (not counting the brief glimpse of her in Endgame played by Emma Furhmann), and with the likelihood that she will take on the mantle of Stature and become a Young Avenger further down the line, this is only the beginning for the character.
Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania will hit cinemas Feb. 17.