‘Ant-Man 3’ director reveals why Cassie Lang has a different view on superheroism than her father

We’re just one day out from the cinematic debut of Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, and audiences seem to find new ways to quake in their boots with every passing day. Whether it’s brought on by the terrifying impact that Kang is set to make, anticipation for those delectable mid-credits scenes, or fear that maybe the critics got this one right, the energy in the auditoriums tomorrow will be nothing short of abundant.

One of the more hopeful sources of excitement is the beginning of an arc for one of the MCU’s newest superheroes, Cassie Lang. It’s unclear whether the daughter of the eponymous Avenger will be donning her Stature or Stinger mantle for Quantumania, but witnessing the beginning of her road to Avengerhood will no doubt be one of the brighter spots in a film that doesn’t look ready to pull many punches with some of its heavier themes and plot points.

If there’s one thing we already know about Cassie’s justice, it’s that she doesn’t quite take after her father. In an interview with /Film, Quantumania director Peyton Reed remarked how she’s grown into her own person since we first met her in 2015’s Ant-Man, and that the independent nature of her maturity, given Scott’s relative absence for a good portion of her life, allowed her to forge a path that was very much her own.

“We inherited this great concept from the events of Endgame, which is, Scott’s lost another five years with Cassie. She’s no longer a little girl. She’s a young woman. This movie sort of starts to tell the arc of her becoming a hero in her own right, but also the idea that she’s not her dad. She has very different ideas about justice and what are the issues at hand, and the problems the world was facing. And she’s quite critical of her dad. ‘You’re signing books, man. You should be out there doing this other stuff.'”

The extra firepower of Cassie will surely come in handy as Scott and co. try to escape the Quantum Realm, but we still won’t hold our breath for much of a triumph over Kang. The villain still has at least two more films’ worth of conquering to do, and whether the events of Quantumania turn out to be fatal or not, we can almost certainly count on the passing of the torch to Cassie, making for a surefire ray of hope in a film that just might be in desperate need of one.

Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania releases to theaters on Feb. 17.