As one of the writers for Ant-Man and the Wasp, Paul Rudd might’ve been informed beforehand about the genocidal climax of Avengers: Infinity War, but apparently he didn’t let his co-star Evangeline Lilly know about it, since the post-credits scene for Hope van Dyne’s last movie left her a little confused.
Speaking to ET, the star recalled how she showed up for her own death scene oblivious to this last-minute twist, and was even kept in the dark during filming.
“It was on the day, we got called in for a scene, we didn’t know really what the scene was going to be. We kind of had the rough shape of it — outside, van, Quantum tunnel — and that was kind of what we knew, and then we showed up and they handed us these pages and we were like, ‘OK, so then what is this thing at the end? What’s happening? I don’t really understand.’”
Those who’d seen Infinity War before checking out Ant-Man and the Wasp would’ve had a pretty good idea of the significance of this concluding gut-punch of a sequence, in which Hope and her parents are all turned into dust. But according to Lilly, it was only when she saw the latest Avengers flick that she understood what had been filmed.
Though Peyton Reed’s feature generally functioned as a self-contained, low-stakes spectacle that stood in contrast to the gloomy, universe-changing events of Infinity War, this post-credits teaser ropes the characters into the larger events of the MCU while leaving Scott Lang stranded in the Quantum Realm. It won’t be until next year’s Avengers 4 that Ant-Man will have a chance to escape this mysterious place, though this same sequence may also leave a hint or two on how Scott’s current predicament could prove significant in the Infinity War sequel.
Speaking of which, while things didn’t end so well for Hope in Ant-Man and the Wasp, you can expect to see her again in Avengers 4, which is set to hit theaters on May 3rd, 2019.