If there’s one silver lining to emerge from the debacle of the Secret Invasion finale, then it’s got to be the fact the series as a whole isn’t quite the worst-reviewed entry in Marvel Cinematic Universe history.
It’s damning with faint praise, sure, especially considering the final episode is currently the second lowest-rated comic book adaptation in the entire history of the medium on Rotten Tomatoes, and being dubbed marginally superior to Son of the Mask is not a place any project regardless of genre wants to find itself.
And yet, by conspiring to deliver a conclusion that was a damp squib unleashed on top of a wet fart that were both allowed to keep burning in the midst of a dumpster fire, Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania has been cut some slack for the very first time; in regards to its own finale, at least.
With a 46 percent approval rating on the aggregation site, Peyton Reed’s mundane misfire is the at the bottom of the MCU’s pile, and there were understandably a lot of people left confused that Kang the Conqueror – the ominous antagonist designated as the big bad of the entire Multiverse Saga – was so handily defeated by an army of ants when he’s quite literally the end-of-level boss designed to tie off years of storytelling in the fifth and sixth Avengers epics.
In fact, a hardy band of Redditors have even designated the discourse as “a gross exaggeration,” something that you definitely wouldn’t have heard at any point in the months following Quantumania‘s initial theatrical run and subsequent debut on Disney Plus. Not to say the two events are connected, but is it a coincidence that the response to the end of Secret Invasion has seen a sliver of leeway extended to the last MCU outing that left a bad taste in so many mouths?