Although Avengers: Infinity War didn’t need Ant-Man (Paul Rudd), nor the Wasp (Evangeline Lilly), for that matter, to smash through the elusive $2 billion barrier – a feat only ever achieved thrice before: Star Wars: The Force Awakens ($2.068B), Titanic ($2.187B) and Avatar ($2.788B) – Kevin Feige did recently confirm that not only will Ant-Man and the Wasp connect “directly to Avengers 4,” but the titular characters “are going to be very important” in the MCU “going forward.”
Granted, there wasn’t nearly as significant an uproar regarding their exclusion when compared to the hoopla surrounding the omission of Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner), but like the erasure of Clint Barton – which we fully expect to be explained in next May’s blockbuster – the absence of Ant-Man and the Wasp wasn’t an oversight.
During an interview with IGN, director Peyton Reed disclosed that the unavailability of Scott Lang and Hope van Dyne wasn’t in vain. According to the filmmaker, it was imperative that Ant-Man and the Wasp not only be “different, tonally, than, obviously, Infinity War,” but be its own “stand-alone thing.”
Here’s what Reed had to say on why they were absent from April’s event movie:
“Yeah, I mean, listen, I have jealousy issues. Whenever these heroes pop up in movies I’m not involved in I get jealous. It was important to have this movie be a stand-alone thing — its own beginning, middle, and end — to be different, tonally, than, obviously, Infinity War. For me, it was really about taking what we had done in the first movie and forwarding those characters in ways that were interesting and hopefully unexpected. And obviously most excited about introducing Wasp.”
Thankfully, had you suffered from Scott Lang and Hope van Dyne withdrawal during, or far more likely, after Avengers: Infinity War, the wait for the diminutive duo’s sophomore feature is almost over, as Ant-Man and the Wasp will be opening stateside next Friday. And judging by the first reactions, Marvel has hit it out of the park once again. Not that that comes as much of a surprise, mind you.
