Ok so Ant-Man And The Wasp Quantumania is now out to own digitally and after re-watching the movie I thought I’d do a breakdown of the insane details in the movie that I haven’t seen in any other breakdowns.
Probability Storm
Now one of the coolest scenes in the film involves Scott travelling into a probability storm on a subterranean level. Down here we see as he creates multiple variants depending on what choices he makes. Huge shout outs to Canadian Lad for pointing out that a really cool way to start this notion is the fact that when Scott takes a step a version of him pops out behind him. Him taking a step forward is him making a choice and thus there’s an alternate version of him that didn’t do this.
However things go way beyond this and it actually nicely ties in with the previous Ant-man and the Wasp film.
In that we learned that the character ghost had ties to the quantum realm and after seeing this film it’s pretty obvious that she was tied in with some kind of probability storm. There’s a brilliant moment in the trailer that discusses the quantum realm and it also shows Ghosts abilities.
If you look closely at this moment of her walking through the door you can see that another version of her pops out the back that looks similar to how one appears from Scott. This is a version of her that opened the door whereas the main one we have doesn’t and thus its showing the two possible outcomes like what we get with scott.
This is also a domain in which reality itself is formed and it’s at this subatomic level that branching timelines are created. Dealing with reality also means that we get certain rules and we see a Giant version of Ant-man turning into ribbons at one point. This is a similar effect to what happened with Reed Richards in Multiverse Of Madness and this was because Wanda’s powers are tied in with reality.
Upon approaching the rings we also see that they have strange markings and glyphs on them. These look extremely similar to the ones that appeared on the Eternals in their movie and as we know they were created by the Celestials. The celestials also created the universe as well and it’s possible that these markings and glyphs are actually tied in with them directly.
I’ve gone back to both Blade Runner movies for the channel recently and all the Nexus 6 replicants in them have serial numbers on them at a subatomic level. I’d love it if we discovered this was something similar here with the celestials placing markings and code on things the further down you got as a sign of their craftmanship.
Eventually Scott is saved by Hope and behind her we see multiple versions all coming in. Eventually these and Scotts go back into the original and this is symbolic because it shows that this is the only goal they have at this point. Had they stayed apart then there would be conflict in them but them all coming together at once cements that the only choice Hope wants to make is to save Scott. Scotts come together because all he wants to do is save his daughter and this beats the variants that could be caused in the probability storm.
Now this probability storm also explains why Kang didn’t venture down there. The last thing that he wants to do is create more variants as this will inturn create more people that he has to fight off against. Come the end of the movie we meet the council of Kangs with a scene that’s ripped right out of their first appearance in Avengers 267. This is a giant crowd shot including some of the alien variants of the character from other parts of the multiverse. However at the centre of it is Rama Tut, what I believe is the Scarlett Centurion and also their leader Immortus.
In the comics this is the oldest version of Nathaniel Richards and at some point all of the Kangs eventually turn into him. Rama Tut is one of the first versions of him and he travelled back in time to ancient egypt in order to become a great pharoah until he was stopped by the Fantastic Four. Huge shout outs to New Rockstars for pointing out that Moon Knight actually had an Easter egg related to him and it’s clear that all these versions have had something to do with the MCU at some point.
Exiled Kang Explained & Details
Now we learn that the Kang we meet in this movie is actually known as the Exile and it’s possible that we’ve had a nod to him in the MCU already. Around the arena, we can catch three statues and we know that in He Who Remains castle in Loki that there were some there too. These were of the three timekeepers which could represent the main three members of the council of Kangs. There was a fourth statue there as well but we couldn’t tell who this was because it was smashed up.
Big Theory time, theory time, but it’s possible that this was actually the exiled Kang hence why it was broken up in several pieces and this could also help cement the fact that He Who Remains is actually the version of Kang that we meet in the movie. The three main Kangs probably built this great castle as a place to look over all the timelines and then I think He Who Remains won, destroyed all the other timelines and then took over this castle as a place to watch over everything. This is why there’s that destroyed statue but just the one version of Kang remaining instead of the three.
Their goals are the same too with the Exile saying that he wants to destroy all the timelines so that he can stop the inevitable incursions. He says that the multiverse is being destroyed because of the chaos caused by them and thus he wants to put an end to it.
However it’s also important to bear in mind that Kang also wants to be a conqueror that rules over all. Before he was cancelled Jonathan Majors talked about basing this version of Kang on Alexander The Great who much like him built his own Dynasty.
Known as the Argead Dynasty, his realm was so big that the sun never set on it. It’s said that when Alexander saw the breadth of his domain that he wept because there were no more worlds left to conquer and I could actually see this being the case with He Who Remains too. He seems like a bored old man who spends his time sitting around in his castle because he’s at a point where he has nothing left to do. It’s very similar to how we found Thanos in Endgame and they may potentially bring this across to the MCU as well.
When He Who Remains was telling the story about all his variants we actually saw him demonstrating the multiverse by having timelines on top of timelines. This is brought across later on when Kang is explaining the incusions to Janet and they may have used a similar explanation method to show they’re one in the same.
We can also catch Kang standing in the centre of a ring and this echoes He Who Remains telling his origin story in which he also stood inside one as well.
Though Kang is seen as the bad guy he’s very much just doing the thing we know that He Who Remains accomplished and Marvel paining him out as a hero is actually hinted to us in the opening logo. As always the Marvel Studio intro is back and every single version of this only ever has heroes in it.
That’s the case here too with Shuri now being added in as well along with He Who Remains.
Now a really nice design detail can be seen in Kangs chair as well and just like how the timelines are shown by He Who Remains we can see that his chairs design has a circular ring around the outside of it with a circular chair in the middle similar to how the centre of the unvirse is surrounded by a ring.
Time being a ring is also important as well as it shows that it all loops around so the things will he who remains and kang will continue to happen because they are all reliant on each other to happen in order to happen. All of Kangs tech deals with circles and later on when we see his soldiers on their monitors they overlays all of circles on them too. When we get a proper look of Chronolopis too we can see that circles exist in all the infrastructure as well showing how much this shape has influence Kang.
Now earlier we talked about Reed Richards and Kang is actually thought to be one of his descendants. They seem to confirm this is the case in the MCU as well as the versions that warp in at the end come in using similar portal tech to what we saw him using in Multiverse Of Madness.
When they come in you might also notice that there’s a guy on the right standing in a suit. It’s possible that this is actually Mr Gryphon who we’ve already had a nod to in Loki. At one point Kang came in masquerading as a business man named Gryphon who claimed to be the CEO of QENG industries.
We’ve already seen his name before and in the Void it could be seen on Avengers tower as we moved through the items that had been dumped there.
This episode also showed us Yellowjackets helmet and as we learn in this film he was scooped up by Kang to become Modok.
Anyway as we know the Void is where He Who Remains casts things off and it’s possible that he threw the armour down there at some point. Now if you’re enjoying the video so far we’d massively appreciate the thumbs up as it helps us in the algorithm and it also lets me know you’d prefer to watch this over the other s**t we put out. Looking at you Watership down ending explained.
Over the top of this we can hear the theme from the sitcom welcome back Kotter. This is actually playing off the back of the last movie in which we had Come On Get Happy by David Cassdy which was used for the Patridge Family.
Now though these aren’t insane details the reason I’m bringing them up is because of how they play into the ending. We get a similar scene to this with Scott walking down the street to the song. Everything seems like it’s ok but the production team actually do some really subtle things to hammer home the idea that Kang is slowly seeping his way into Kangs mind.
That final walk is awash with green and we can also catch multiple people wearing purple. These are both Kangs colours and we can catch a woman wearing it as she steps off the pavement, one with her dog in a pram and yeah, just lots of people wearing purple and green.
There is actually a couple that walk past him at one point and then they appear further up the street. I have seen theories that this could show time travel or something which, yeah I think it’s just a continuity error but the constant combo of purple and green helps add to the paranoia.
We get Scott meeting with Jimmy Woo and he busts out a sleight of hand trick which makes a card appear in his hand just like how Jimmy did it in Wandavision. Jimmy learned sleight of hand for that because he was obsessed with Scott doing it in Ant-man and the wasp and as I’ve been saying it’s all connected.
However the fact they grab dinner actually calls back to that movie as well when Jimmy said.
MCU Easter Eggs & Connections
Anyway we see Scott at Baskin and Robbins and can catch him winning an employee of the century award. We actually see his photo and if you zoom in you might notice that his name badge says Jack which was his alias in the film. This was actually a little nod to Paul Rudd’s real life son who he wanted to give a shoutout to in the movie.
Now speaking of Shoutouts we can see on the back of Scotts book from Bruce Banner and Christine Everhart. You might recognise Christine’s name and she did a big spread on Tony in the first Iron Man movie.
Everhart had fans forever hard and she…f**ks sake and she also did an exclusive interview with Scott which can be found on Youtube.
This book was actually given lip service to in Wakanda Forever and mention of it could be seen along the bottom of the Anderson Cooper news ticker.
As the camera goes into the book shop we can also see a sign outside that says The Avengers and then blank…Thanos. Guessing this said Killed but they wanna make it more family friendly for the window.
Though things seem good though we’re re-introduced to Cassie Lang in Jail. We find out that she was helping at a homeless protest for people who were evicted during the blip. This is a similar sort of thing to Falcon and The Winter Soldier where we joined the Flagsmashers who’d been left as refugees due to being brought back five years later. This is kind of on Scott in a way and I do like how they start Cassie off in jail much like how Scott was introduced in the first film.
This shot is also very similar in composition to the van one from Ant-man and The Wasp but now Scott is in Hanks seat being the disapproving adult who doesn’t think they should be messing around in day to day stuff.
Huge shootouts to our editor Matt for pointing out that the reason the planet bounced back might be down to Hope and we discover that she’s been using pym tech to help with deforestation and food production. The Earth would suddenly have over 3 billion more mouths to feed so they’d need someone like this leading the charge. You might also notice that the company is now called PymVanDyne instead of just being Pym tech because Hope is now the company’s CEO.
We see this food production in full effect come the next scene with a pizza getting doubled in size. Peyton Reed actually said that this was a nod to the back to the future scene from the second film in which they did something similar with a pizza oven.
Now Scott of course brought up back to the future in Endgame.
However they do a bit of a deeper cut to that movie later on when he and his daughter go big. They talk about getting citrus cravings.
And this calls back to two moments in the MCU. At the airport after the giant Man scene Scott asked if anyone had orange slices.
When Hawkeye returned from the quantum realm Scott also rushed over with some orange slices and these could be seen clearer during a deleted moment that was shown in TV spots and trailers.
We can also catch a worlds best dad mug which is a callback to the World’s Greatest Grandma trophy from the previous films.
Anyway in the Quantum Realm they encounter the rebels who are based slightly on the Micronauts. For the movie they’ve combined elements of the negative zone and microverse with them also adapting Krylar who appeared when Hulk travelled to the dimension in his 156th issue.
In a nice bit of attention to detail we can actually catch a miniature sun following Cassie and Kang over their shoulders which then transforms into the big hulking guy after making it’s attack. With Janet and co we watch as she explains the Quantum Realm and this line actually pulls from a deleted scene from the prior Ant-man and The Wasp movie.
Eventually Scott and Cassie are taken before Veb who’s voiced by David Dasmaltchian. Amongst his followers we can catch a group of people who all have coloured rock heads. I have seen on twitter that this could actually be the remnants of the infinity stones because as Thanos said he reduced them to atoms. They do need to still exist on some level for reality to still function so they may be down in the quantum realm out of reach of those on the surface.
Now speaking of writing, later on Hank Pym talks about how he dated a woman called Linda. This name is actually writer Jeff Loveness’ real life mothers name and originally Linda was going to be played by Jennifer Coolidge.
Now as Janet and co fly out we can catch a mural of Kang on the wall showing how he rules over this entire domain.
This is then signified by the blue glowing orbs and rings which are of course in line with his tech.
During the tour Janet mentions Subatomica which is actually a solar system from the comics that exists down in the microverse.
We also see some of Kangs forces and later on Quaz reads their mind which proves they are human. It’s possible that these are actually earlier versions of the TVA agents who’ve had their memories wiped so that they can function as slaves for Kang.
Eventually we come face to face with him and though it’s a bit obvious that he’s talking about killing Thor saying the one with the hammer could even mean Jane Foster or potentially Throg. Hope you get out that Jar fam. He was sentenced to the void and with all those loki variants we might end up encountering one that he killed.
Before that though we get MODOK which…..
Try to look away from the face for one second though mate….just look away and you might notice there’s a heart rate monitor on his chest and this ends up turning red and flat lining at the end when he dies. Now learning about him and his backstory is easily my favourite scene in the film due to Michelle Pffeifers performance. This very much feels like it’s building off the back of the cave scene in Iron Man 1 and we have her working away with her ally similar to how Tony did back then. Both were trying to escape their confines but whereas Tony got away Janet doomed herself to remain there to stop Kang getting out.
In a flashback we see Kang wiping out timelines and we catch a man disintegrating which appears similar to how people disappear in Loki when they’re hit with one of the TVAs sticks.
The scars on his face also dominate his look and in the comics they were given as a war for Kang to potentially always remember who he was and who he was destined to be. The new origin story for him titled Only Myself Left To Conquer dealt with a young Nathanial coming across his older version and he did whatever he could to stop himself from becoming him. The scars sealed this fate though and Kangs rebellious side of course leads to the incoming war that he’s trying to avert.
Kang also later calls Cassie Jellybean which is a nickname Janet gave to her as a child showing how close they actually were.
Either way it leads to a big battle between the good guys and Kang and we basically get a dictatorship vs socialism metaphor. Yaaaaay. Lots of honey I shrunk the kids mirroring in here with the ants helping our heroes to escape.
Modok learns not to be a d**k and Scott also uses a giant platform as a shield which is a callback to his idol being Captain America. They seemingly defeat the greatest threat in the multiverse using ants but he returns before they can get back to the surface.
One thing I noticed though is that we get a big boot stomp from Kang and it had me thinking.
Kang is kicked into the multiversal engine but in comics the rule is that if you never see a body then the characters not dead. Who knows if we will see Majors again as well and at the point of making this video there’s been no word from Marvel over what’s going on.
We will of course see Kang back though and there’s even a nice little nod to him in those final few scenes. As Scott walks along the street we can catch some grafitti on the wall with ant-mans face in it and at the restaurant we can see his colours return once more. The balloons are big and purple and the cake itself is bright green.
We do have Majors as Victor Timely in that second post credits scene with him being a variant that travelled back to the dawn of the 20th century to build an entire town around him.
The credits also end by saying Kang Will Return and this version we see here may potentially be the one we met in the movie now masquerading as Victor Timely.
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