An increasingly common criticism of the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s Phase Four has been its apparent aimlessness, a sentiment with which I am inclined to agree. While it does feature standouts in Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings and Spider-Man: No Way Home, both of which stand tall in the pantheon of Marvel’s best, it also includes the surprisingly dull Eternals, the utterly asinine farce that is Thor: Lord and Thunder, as well as middling outings like Black Widow and Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. Apart from sporadic multiversal dealings, these films share little thematic throughlines and can feel more like toy line commercials rather than actual pieces of cinema. It’s almost like Marvel have gone out of their way to prove Scorsese right.
While you might still be waiting for me to tell you how I really feel, I readily admit that the Disney+ era of TV shows, for which this phase acted as a launching pad, were far more consistent affairs than their feature film counterparts, even if they did spread the MCU thin in a manner than feeds into further criticisms of over-saturation mixed with a creeping sense of redundancy.
The upcoming final entry in Phase Four, Ryan Coogler’s Black Panther: Wakanda Forever could be the swan song that this batch of movies sorely needed, but I’m already looking to Phase Five with the first trailer of Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania having dropped earlier today. Finally, the MCU will move on from the meandering of Phase Four and lean into the franchise’s next big bad, Kang the Conqueror, played by the excellent Jonathan Majors.
Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania will see Paul Rudd and Evangeline Lily return for their respective titular roles, with Michael Douglas and Michelle Pfeiffer also reprising their roles as Hank Pym and Janet van Dyne, the parents of Lily’s Hope. While Ant-Man and the Wasp are not always named amongst the more popular of the MCU flagship characters, their movies have nonetheless been some of the more consistent in the shared universe, and the promise offered by this trailer alone is enough to fill one with hope for the future of the MCU.
Most importantly, this entry will be set in the Quantum Realm, which has already been touched up in Ant-Man and the Wasp, Avengers: Endgame and Loki, fully realizing the arc that leads to Jonathan Majors’ Kang. We have already seen a variant of this character with He Who Remains from the TV show Loki, but this is a whole different character with a vastly different set of goals (hence, Kang the Conqueror), and the trailer didn’t hold back, showcasing not only Majors’ different approach to the role, but offering generous looks at the supervillain’s delightfully comic-accurate look, namely his green and purple garb, accompanied by a helmet with a blue visor. Even the scarring down both his cheeks are a feature adapted from the source material.
However, it’s the larger implications on the entire MCU that is of most interest. It’s rare to see a recurring central villain in the MCU. There’s Vincent D’Onofrio’s Wilson Fisk/Kingpin, who is a Marvel TV staple having appeared in Daredevil (and in its revival series Daredevil: Born Again), Hawkeye, and will again be appearing in the upcoming spinoff show Echo. And then, of course, there’s Thanos, but even he didn’t appear as a main villain until Avengers: Infinity War, despite being in the background for much of the MCU’s initial stages. The fact that Kang is appearing as the main antagonist in a solo movie means that things won’t quite go to plan like they tend to in Marvel movies, especially since Avengers: The Kang Dynasty is slated for a 2025 release. This has led to much speculation online, and most prevalent among these whispers is that Marvel will break its most sacred tenet and actually kill off a character in their own solo movie, which in this case is said to be Paul Rudd’s Scott Lang/Ant-Man.
Of course, this is all just speculation, and while I do very much enjoy the MCU’s rendition of the Ant-Man character, much like the death of Robert Downey Jr.’s Iron Man, killing him off might be the exact shot in the arm the MCU needs. It would address more recent criticisms while delivering a blow like the (admittedly short-lived) death of Loki at the beginning of Infinity War, which was done to set the stage for a frightening villain from whom no one is safe. With the latest preview of Majors’ menacing presence as Kang, Marvel may very well be done with playing it too safe, potentially ushering in a new era for the MCU.