With the release of Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania this past week, Phase 5 of the MCU has officially begun.
After a mixed Phase 4 amounted to a shaky beginning to the Multiverse Saga, it felt as if there was some extra pressure on Quantumania to get Marvel Studios’ next chapter started off properly. While the previous phase had some highlights, like Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings and WandaVision, far too many movies and TV shows failed to work as compelling stand-alone projects, and it wasn’t clear where the collective narrative was heading, either. Quantumania makes a tremendous effort to steer that larger narrative on track, but as a result, it loses much of the quirky charm that defined the previous Ant-Man movies.
Like almost every MCU release, Quantumania dominated the box office over its opening weekend, raking in an estimated $120 million four-day total. Yet it’s also following what has become a trend of the Multiverse Saga, as it currently stands to be one of the worst-reviewed Marvel Studios entries among critics and fans alike. It’s one of only two MCU movies to ever receive an undesirable “rotten” score on Rotten Tomatoes, and it tied the lowest audience-driven MCU CinemaScore to date, joining the company of 2021’s Eternals on both counts.
While Quantumania is technically an Ant-Man and the Wasp movie, the driving forces behind its story are Jonathan Majors’s Kang the Conqueror and major plot points from the first season of Loki. The film’s characters and primary setting in the Quantum Realm are continuations of the previous Ant-Man films, but it sacrifices a more narrowed focus on the stories of Scott Lang (Paul Rudd) and Hope van Dyne (Evangeline Lilly) to further expand the MCU into the multiverse. Some of the franchise’s soul feels lost in the process of better serving the MCU’s greater agenda. We never even get a chance to hear Michael Peña’s Luis tell a story about his experience during the Blip.
Loki featured Majors’s first MCU appearance; he played an alternate version—or variant—of Kang known as He Who Remains, and Quantumania now bridges that multiversal narrative to the main universe of the MCU. Above all else, the 31st movie in the MCU is positioned to set up the future of the Multiverse Saga as the studio ramps up to its two-part Avengers finale: The Kang Dynasty (2025) and Secret Wars (2026).
“In very generalized terms, as you see in Quantumania, it’s about setting up the big overarching thread that will go through the next phases,” Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige recently told Entertainment Weekly. “Not every film in the Infinity Saga focused on the Infinity Stones or Thanos, and it’ll be the same across [Phase 5] and [Phase 6]. But we’re gearing up. People will get a taste of this in a big way in Quantumania as we lead to Avengers: Secret Wars, which I’m extremely excited for.”
As messy of a spectacle as Quantumania is, it’s—for better or worse—a crucial table setter for the next few years of MCU content, which continues to come at a faster rate than ever. So let’s get into where it’s all heading.
What Happened to Kang?
Despite all the hype around Kang, at the end of Quantumania, the villain is defeated by a bunch of supersized ants and a giant floating head with tiny legs. And then he’s defeated again by Ant-Man and the Wasp. For a guy who’s been billed as the next Thanos, it doesn’t make for the most menacing debut, even if Majors’s terrific (and very sinister) performance serves as the film’s brightest spot by far.
But there’s something of a cardinal rule when it comes to characters dying in the MCU: If there isn’t a body, they’re probably not dead. (Or in the case of M.O.D.O.K., I guess, a massive head with tiny legs. And thankfully, we saw that the head died here, so we never have to see that monstrosity again.) Kang’s demise in Quantumania is reminiscent of Red Skull’s defeat at the end of Captain America: The First Avenger or, better yet, Darren Cross’s death in Ant-Man. When Kang “dies” at the end of the movie, he appears to get sucked into his ship’s multiversal energy core. After his exile to the Quantum Realm, he could just as easily be marooned in another realm in the multiverse.
No matter where or when Kang went at the end of Quantumania, I don’t know whether it’s ever been more certain that a dying character isn’t dead. Scott has a pretty heavy-handed interior monologue at the end of the film; the music intensifies, and he begins to wonder whether they actually defeated Kang or whether they’ve unleashed something worse by not letting him escape the Quantum Realm. The post-credits scenes almost immediately confirm his suspicions.
We’ll get into the stingers in a moment, but it’s also worth noting that the final tag of the film doesn’t promote the return of the title heroes, as most MCU films do. There’s no message that states that we’ll see Ant-Man and the Wasp again—it isn’t exactly clear what the future holds for either character. (Based on how much the Wasp was sidelined in the film—despite her name being in the title—I’m not sure we’ll be seeing her again anytime soon.) Instead, we get a stinger for the film’s villain: “Kang will return.” And as the post-credits scenes tell us, that line should really be “Kangs will return,” since the “Exiled One” is far from the last Kang variant we’ll see moving forward.
The Future of the Multiverse Saga and Avengers: Secret Wars
In Phase 4, we saw several stories touch on the concept of the multiverse in some way, whether that was through the introduction of new universes (like in Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings or Ms. Marvel) or of variants and the multiverse itself (like in Spider-Man: No Way Home or Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness). But Quantumania confirms that the story line that emerged in Loki—regarding He Who Remains and the multiversal war that his variants started—is what’s driving the main narrative that the Multiverse Saga is building toward.
Following Kang’s “death” near the end of the movie, the first stinger gives us a chance to meet some of the other dangerous variants that He Who Remains warned Loki and Sylvie about in Loki. Specifically, we meet three of them—all of whom are again played by Majors, who makes some choices in how he speaks as each variant. These three are Rama-Tut, a version of Kang who ruled as a pharaoh in ancient Egypt; (probably) Scarlet Centurion, who seems to have been remodeled in the MCU to become something of a cyborg; and Immortus, the oldest Kang of them all, who has quite the raspy voice to show for it.
Immortus has summoned the entire Council of Kangs, and the trio are revealed to be only a small fraction of an army of Kang variants gathered in an arena. (The rest of the Kangs are all riled up and barking, for some reason. Majors is just having a good time out here.) Immortus has convened them all to discuss the death of the Conqueror, or the “Exiled One,” as they refer to him; their plans for what to do next now that he’s out of the picture; and the superheroes who are responsible for defeating him. “None of us killed him,” Immortus says. “They did. They’re beginning to touch the multiverse. If we let them, they will take everything we built. So let’s stop wasting time.”
Before this very chaotic, goofy stinger even takes place, perhaps the most important explanation of where everything is headed comes from Kang himself (a.k.a. the Exiled One) when he explains his origins to Janet van Dyne (Michelle Pfeiffer) at his citadel. “My variants throughout the multiverse play with time like children,” Kang says. “But I saw how it ends. I saw their chaos, spreading across realities. Universes colliding. Endless incursions. I saw the multiverse, and it was dying—all because of them. So I took control.”
Between this scene and the first stinger, we get a more direct follow-up to Loki and the multiversal war that loomed over its first season. When Sylvie killed He Who Remains in the finale, she got rid of the one person who had been preventing the war from happening and let loose his more dangerous variants in the process. Now, there’s a clearer sense of exactly who’s involved in the multiversal conflict and what’s at stake—and the key word that points to where we’re headed is “incursions.”
The first time that we heard about incursions in the MCU was in 2022’s Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. Doctor Strange learns about them while stopping by another universe, and it’s John Krasinski’s Reed Richards who delivers the explanation: “An incursion occurs when the boundary between two universes erodes and they collide, destroying one or both entirely.”
That’s more or less how Kang describes them in Quantumania as well, and an incursion is also what kicks off the 2015 comics event Secret Wars, which the upcoming Avengers film will pull from. In the comics, the incursion afforded a narrative pathway to merge popular characters from alternate universes, such as the Ultimate universe’s Miles Morales, into the main Marvel universe. In the MCU, it could just as easily be used to introduce a group like the X-Men, bring in former actors and characters from other Marvel properties like Multiverse of Madness did, or even justify the resurrection of dead characters such as Iron Man.
There are still almost two entire phases of films and TV series until the Multiverse Saga ends with Avengers: Secret Wars, which means we’ll somehow receive more than 14 projects—with much of Phase 6 yet to be announced—in the interim. Quantumania provides the biggest hints yet about how we’ll get there, but there will be many opportunities to learn more about the upcoming Avengers films over the next few years.
Cassie Lang and the Young Avengers
The first time we’re reintroduced to Cassie in Quantumania, she looks … different. Scott’s daughter has grown up since the events of 2018’s Ant-Man and the Wasp, especially with the time jump in Avengers: Endgame. But she also looks different because, well, she is an entirely different person; Marvel Studios recast the actress playing Cassie for the second time—going from Abby Ryder Fortson (Ant-Man and Ant-Man and the Wasp) to Emma Fuhrmann (Endgame) to Kathryn Newton in Quantumania.
Given that Fuhrmann appeared in only a minor part of Endgame, Marvel Studios took the opportunity to recast Cassie with a bigger name—Newton previously starred in movies like Detective Pikachu, Blockers, and Freaky—for her expanded role in the latest Ant-Man film. In Quantumania, Cassie gets a Pym Tech suit just like her father’s, taking a pivotal step in becoming a superhero, Stature, in her own right.
Cassie is the latest teenage superhero in a growing roster as Marvel continues to set up the inevitable formation of the Young Avengers. In Phase 4, we were introduced to Kate Bishop (Hawkeye), the Maximoff twins (WandaVision), Elijah Bradley (The Falcon and the Winter Soldier), Kid Loki (Loki), and America Chavez (Multiverse of Madness), all of whom are members of the self-assembled youth team of Avengers in the comics. Kamala Khan (Ms. Marvel) and Riri Williams (Black Panther: Wakanda Forever) are members of a different teenage superhero team, the Champions, but they could just as easily fit into the MCU’s Young Avengers as well. (And while we’re throwing out options here, Hulk’s son from She-Hulk: Attorney at Law could join to show off that handsome head of hair, too.)
Marvel has yet to announce a series or film centered on the Young Avengers, but as it continues to bring in new, younger versions of the old guard of Avengers—including some who are even borrowing their names, like Bishop’s Hawkeye—it’s only a matter of time. Given Kang’s importance in the rest of the Multiverse Saga, it’s even possible that a younger variant of his could be a part of the team as well. Just as he does in the comics, the Kang variant known as Iron Lad might even be the one to bring the Young Avengers together in the MCU.
Loki Season 2
If there wasn’t enough of Majors’s Kang in Quantumania (and really, there wasn’t), the film did its very best to let the audience know that we’d be seeing plenty more of him moving forward. After an uncountable number of Kang variants appear in the first stinger, the second one focuses on only one: Victor Timely. And he’s joined by Mobius (Owen Wilson) and the Asgardian God of Mischief himself, Loki (Tom Hiddleston), in what serves as our first extended look at the upcoming second season of Loki.
The scene takes place in a theater in what appears to be the early 1900s, as Kang—or some variant of his going by the name Victor Timely—gives a presentation on his theory of time and relativity. Loki and Mobius are standing in the crowd, and as the curtain opens, Loki recognizes the man on-stage as He Who Remains. Mobius mockingly says to Loki that he “made him sound like this terrifying figure,” which Loki only reaffirms.
But more important than anything that Loki, Mobius, or even Timely says is the scene’s setting and the introduction of Timely in particular. The character made his first comics appearance in Avengers Annual no. 21 (published in 1992) as a version of Kang who traveled back in time to 1901 and founded a town in Wisconsin that he named Timely. (Along with the obvious reference to time in everything Kang-related, Timely is a reference to Timely Comics, the name of the publishing company that would eventually become Marvel Comics.) After taking on the name Victor Timely and establishing Timely Industries, Kang essentially uses this company to build the time travel technology that would grow and advance over generations to eventually allow Kang to be the so-called Master of Time in the first place. In a self-fulfilling way, it becomes ground zero for Kang’s empire.
As I speculated at the end of the first season of Loki, Timely could also be the place where He Who Remains was leading Ravonna when we last saw her (she just so happens to be Kang’s romantic partner in the comics). As always, it remains to be seen how closely Loki will follow the blueprint laid out by the comics, but we now know for sure that Timely will be a crucial setting in the second season, and that it won’t be long before we see Kang again.
Quantumania might not be the promising start to Phase 5 that fans were hoping for, but they can at least take solace in the fact that Majors played his part as best as he possibly could have. And starting with the second season of Loki later this year, there’ll be plenty more opportunities for the actor to show off his limitless range as the story of Kang—and his many variants—continues.