Kevin Feige Confirms Ant-Man Fan Theory That Set Up Sequel

[Black Panther]

Marvel Studios boss Kevin Feige has confirmed a long-held fan theory that Ant-Man includes a brief glimpse of Janet van Dyne, the original Wasp, in the Quantum Realm. You can spot her near the end of the movie, after Scott Lang has shrunk down to the subatomic level in order to sabotage Yellow Jacket's suit, and finds himself shrinking smaller and smaller uncontrollably. Scott sees an array of lights as he shrinks, and at one point Wasp's silhouette can be seen - both in the light, and reflected in Ant-Man's helmet.

Of course, we'll see a lot more of Janet (played by Michelle Pfeiffer) in Peyton Reed's sequel Ant-Man and the Wasp, which is out in theaters in just a few more days. The movie is set before Avengers: Infinity War, and will find Scott dealing with the fallout of his decision to join Team Cap in Captain America: Civil War. This time around Evangeline Lilly's Hope van Dyne will finally be donning a superhero costume of her own, and Hank Pym, Hope and Scott will be venturing into the Quantum Realm on a rescue mission to find Janet.

While plenty of fans spotted Wasp's silhouette in Ant-Man, it could have just been a trick of the light. However, Feige confirmed at the Ant-Man and the Wasp junket press conference that Scott did indeed encounter Janet in the Quantum Realm, as a way of setting up the sequel: "In the first film it was, we got a glimpse of it for people who like to go through frame-by-frame, there was a little silhouette of Janet as the Wasp in there, which is a big story element in this movie."

This isn't the only time that Janet van Dyne appears in Ant-Man, as the movie also features a flashback scene that shows how she ended up becoming lost in the Quantum Realm. While she and Hank Pym were partnered up as Ant-Man and the Wasp, Janet went subatomic in order to slip through the casing of a bomb and deactivate it before it reached its target. Many lives were saved, but the original Wasp was lost. We don't yet know how the decades she spent in the Quantum Realm will have changed Janet, but we have heard that Pfeiffer has filmed scenes for next year's Avengers 4, so presumably the rescue mission is a success.

The Quantum Realm is reachable by shrinking down to the subatomic level, but there are other ways of accessing it. Doctor Strange director Scott Derrickson has confirmed that his movie shows the Quantum Realm among the various dimensions that Stephen Strange visits when the Ancient One first introduces him to magic. It's a thoroughly mysterious dimension, "where all concepts of time and space become irrelevant," according to Hank Pym, and we're definitely interested to find out more about it in Ant-Man and the Wasp.