Warning: This article contains spoilers for Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania… duh.
Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania might have disappointed in a lot of departments, but fans love the pure comic book goodness of the movie’s mid-credits scene (note: other alternate opinions are out there). Yes, although you might’ve thought that Marvel was going to wait until Avengers: The Kang Dynasty to unleash this concept, Quantumania went ahead and introduced the Council of Kangs, wowing audience-members with an entire army of conquering variants.
But if you tear your eyes away from the legion of Jonathan Majors on screen (which is a tough ask, to be fair), you’ll notice that the arrival of the Council of Kangs also features a major callback to John Krasinski’s Mr. Fantastic. As Twitter account @Moth_Culture pointed out, among others, the teleporting tech the Kangs use to beam into their meeting chamber is the exact same kind as that used by Reed Richards to enter the Illuminati’s HQ in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness.
At first glance, this may appear to simply be a case of Marvel’s VFX editors reusing the same animation they used in Multiverse of Madness — and, well, maybe it was. We know they were being worked to the bone to create M.O.D.O.K.’s very own Minions moment, after all. On the other hand, though, it is likely also a deliberate hint at the hidden link between Kang and Mr. Fantastic. For those who might still be unaware, Kang’s real name is Nathaniel Richards, making him a descendant of the stretching superhero.
That’s why there’s a lot of speculation that Kang could have a secret impact on the Fantastic Four movie, that’s coming in just under a year’s time. We may even get an explanation behind this Richards family teleporting tech in Loki season two, as fans have previously speculated about a connection between the TVA’s technology and Reed’s. Quantumania was a bust, then, but at least it reminded us that fantastic things are still to come.
