Angry ‘Ant-Man’ lovers aren’t buying ‘Quantumania’ director’s explanation for a fan-favorite’s absence

Michael Peña is a scene-stealer even when he’s not in the movie. One of the biggest talking points ever since Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania hit theaters last week has been the absence of Peña’s fan-favorite Luis from the familial adventures. Director Peyton Reed has said his piece on the matter, but fans aren’t buying it.

Reed has revealed, in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, that Luis was never in the plans for Quantumania, unfortunately. As much as the director loves the character, the fact that the core five would be going into the Quantum Realm so early on in the film ruled out any possibility of Luis’ participation. And besides, there were too many characters to introduce in the film anyway.

“There were no versions of this movie [with Luis]. There are a lot of characters in the movie. We obviously have our Lang, van Dyne and Pym family, but then we also introduced Kang, MODOK and all of our Freedom Fighter characters. So we had to make decisions early on about what stories we could tell and what stories we couldn’t tell. “I love those characters. They were really, really fun and part of the Lang family, but as we got further and further into [development] and knew we wanted to bring the family into the Quantum Realm pretty early in the movie, it just didn’t make sense [to include Luis and co.].””

It’s not uncommon for Marvel fans to find solutions that are much more creative than what we end up with in the movies. Naturally, there was no shortage of scenarios being suggested for how Luis could have still been included in the film, even without going subatomic.

A post-credits scene is always a good answer, even if the film already had two.

It would make a perfect scene to include him in Scott’s book tour. One thing’s for sure, he would definitely be a much better orator than the titular superhero.

Luis would have great advice for Cassie. Quantumania was a missed opportunity to show him as the coolest uncle of all time.

Or simply, just have him tag along with the family into the Quantum Realm. Seeing Luis come face-to-face with Kang could have been hilarious.

All of this to say that, if Reed and writer Jeff Loveness had really wanted Luis in Quantumania, they would have found a way, especially since Peña has said in the past “it would be great” to be in the third film.

The Luis-less Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania is now showing in theaters.