When it came time to nominate which Marvel characters would go on to become Earth’s Mightiest Heroes, writer-director Joss Whedon originally had one eye trained on Hope van Dyne – the comic book mainstay better known to you, I and Scott Lang as The Wasp.
As Whedon tells Thrillist (h/t /Film), early on in the development of The Avengers, he drafted a “huge bunch of pages” starring Hope van Dyne, a role that would ultimately go to former Lost star Evangeline Lilly. Had things panned out differently, though, Marvel fans would have been given the chance to get acquainted with The Wasp just as Loki waged war against New York City and, by effect, the rest of humanity.
Here’s what the filmmaker told Thrillist:
I wrote a huge bunch of pages starring The Wasp. That was not useful. I also worried that one British character actor was not enough to take on Earth’s mightiest heroes, and that we’d feel like we were rooting for the overdog. So I wrote a huge draft with Ezekiel Stane, Obadiah Stane’s son, in it.
Drafting Ezekiel Stane into the equation would have been a pretty bold move, too, not least because he would have overshadowed Tom Hiddleston’s debut as the God of Mischief. And if history has taught us anything, it’s that the advent of Loki truly resonated with the Marvel community, given Hiddleston’s trickster quickly became the MCU villain people loved to hate.
Meanwhile, Hope van Dyne was eventually introduced via Peyton Reed’s original Ant-Man movie – fitting, really, given the pair are expected to join forces this summer for Ant-Man and the Wasp. So perhaps Joss Whedon made the right call when he scrapped those early plans for The Wasp to swoop into The Avengers? We’ll leave that one to you.
