With Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania just days from entering theaters, the anxiety over the astonishing shrinking hero’s future in the MCU is at a peak. The whole fandom seems convinced that Paul Rudd’s Scott Lang isn’t going to make it out of his incoming confrontation with Jonathan Majors’ Kang the Conqueror alive, which may mean we could get a new hero stepping up to take on his mantle in the already discussed Ant-Man 4.
If that does happen, however, this is one time where Marvel seriously needs to avoid following in the footsteps of the comics as introducing the original third Ant-Man would no doubt result in a huge backlash from an offended fanbase. It just so happens that the character who follows Lang (and before him, Hank Pym) as Ant-Man #3 on the page is Eric O’Grady, quite possibly the most repellent hero in the history of the Marvel universe.
Starring in his own suitably titled series The Irredeemable Ant-Man, O’Grady started his crime-fighting career by stealing the Ant-Man suit, much like Scott, but that’s where the similarities end. Eric’s ambitions in swiping the shrinking ability was to use it for his own personal and sleazy aims, mostly theft and spying on women. In his most notorious moment, one that comic book readers have been wishing never happened for almost 20 years now, Eric leered over Carol Danvers while she was in the shower.
Eventually, O’Grady proved the title of his series somewhat inaccurate once he learned to be a true hero when he sacrificed his life to protect a child. Still, the skeeziness of his earlier actions ensured fans never took to him, and the comics have undercut his change of heart anyway through the introduction of his villainous double Black Ant. All in all, whatever happens to Scott in Quantumania, Marvel definitely needs to make literally anyone other than this guy our next Ant-Man.
