Marvel spent years building up to a clash between the Avengers and Thanos. And when it finally happened for real in Avengers: Infinity War, it was worth the wait.
The MCU hasn’t had an overarching villain like that since, although producers have one waiting in the wings: Kang the Conqueror, played by Jonathan Majors. We kinda-sorta met Kang in the Disney+ show Loki, where a crazy, slightly nicer version worked behind the scenes to keep his more tyrannical variants of himself from taking over reality. But by the end of that show, the real Kang was just around the corner.
And he’ll show up in the flesh in Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, the third Ant-Man film. Speaking to Nerdbunker, director Peyton Reed talked about how excited he was to bring Kang into the MCU:
"We wanted the responsibility. We wanted to put Ant-Man and the Wasp against one of the big great villains in the Marvel Comics universe. I loved Kang as a kid, and to get to create him, and figure out who he is in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, that’s always a fun thing, taking these characters that people have a relationship with in the comics and figuring out sort of what that is in the movie universe. Because they are two very different things."
Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania will be more serious than the first two films
So far as Marvel movies go, the first two Ant-Man films were comparatively light. The aren’t weren’t generally up against anyone angling to control the universe, and Paul Rudd’s Scott Lang kept things easy breezy, always ready with a quip or a zany antic.
It looks like Ant-Man 3 will change things. There won’t be as much time for goof-em-ups when you’re facing Kang the Conqueror.
Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania is due out in theaters on February 17.
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h/t Collider