With the notable exception of Thor, whose fourth solo installment Love and Thunder is currently deep in pre-production, the Marvel Cinematic Universe has always tended to operate by the rule of three. Both Captain America and Iron Man were given solo trilogies, and if you look at Infinity War and Endgame as two parts of the same overarching story, then the Avengers also received a three-movie arc.
We’ll see if next year’s Spider-Man: Far From Home follow-up and the eventual Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 follow the same path, but the next officially confirmed Marvel Studios threequel that we’ll get focuses on the return of Paul Rudd’s Scott Lang, who of course played a pivotal role in Avengers: Endgame.
The Ant-Man franchise has never quite managed to hit the box office heights of other MCU blockbusters, with the two installments currently the lowest-earning movies in the entire franchise that happened after Phase One, but they’ve nonetheless offered solid and light-hearted capers that make a conscious effort to stay away from the massive-scale, universe-saving adventures that have become the studio’s bread and butter, and act essentially as the MCU’s B-movies.
Besides gifting audiences with the universally-popular decision to have Paul Rudd playing a superhero, one of the highlights of both Ant-Man entries so far has been Michael Pena’s Luis, and in a recent interview, the actor made it clear that he hopes Marvel decide to bring him back into the fold for the third effort, which has been rumored to start shooting next year.
“For the last one, I didn’t really know what capacity I was going to come back in, or if I was going to come back. I think they’re a year away from filming, I think it would be great if I could do a third one. But you never know, especially with all the stuff that happened in Endgame. Right now, Marvel’s in a situation where they can crush some expectations, they’re gonna have to crush some expectations of other characters, not just mine, so hopefully I make the cut.”
It would be fair to say that Michael Pena would be one of the first names that Marvel would sign up to Ant-Man 3, with Luis’ fast-talking and long-winded cutaways the closest thing that the series has to a visual or narrative signature. Outside of Rudd and arguably Michael Douglas’ Hank Pym, Luis is also the franchise’s most memorable character, and despite details being thin on the ground about the project, it would be a huge surprise if he wasn’t brought back.
