*Quantumania spoilers.*
Apparently I didn’t know what day it was yesterday, so have this week’s Marvelous Wednesday post a day late. While this post is obviously coming on the heels of Quantumania, which I reviewed last week, I want to talk about Cassie’s whole tenure in the MCU to date. So far, she’s been in four movies played by three different actresses, so there’s a decent amount of ground to cover.
When we first meet Cassie, she’s six years old. She lives with her mom and stepdad, and she hasn’t been able to see her dad since he got out of prison. We’re introduced to her as a mostly happy kid who misses her dad. When Scott shows up uninvited to her birthday party, Cassie is thrilled and seemingly oblivious to the custody arguments that have been keeping him away. She adores the “ugly” stuffed animal Scott gives her, and even before Scott becomes Ant-Man, it's clear that her dad is her hero.
Over the years, Cassie experiences a lot, in terms of both regular-life stuff and superhero stuff. She’s menaced by Yellow Jacket, who engages in an epic size-shifting fight with her dad in her bedroom. Scott finally gets joint custody, but for two years, her stays with her dad are somewhat contained, because Scott is under house arrest after the events of Civil War. She escapes the Snap, but although Scott doesn’t get Blipped, he winds up trapped in the Quantum Realm for five years, so Cassie is again without her dad. By the time he gets back to her, she’s a teenager.
During the Blip, Cassie gets interested in Hank’s notes and starts researching the Quantum Realm. After the events of Endgame, when everyone is brought back from the Blip, Hank helps her build a device to map the Quantum Realm, but when Kang picks up her signal, he sucks Cassie and the Ant-Man crew into the micro-universe.
So, other than wanting to be with her dad more than she’s often able to, what are the throughlines for Cassie’s character? She has a strong sense of justice, which doesn’t necessarily equate to what’s lawful. Maybe because Scott’s initial imprisonment is over a Robin Hood-style burglary and he’s later punished in the course of performing his superhero duties, Cassie’s distrustful of police—while she likes her stepdad Paxton, who’s a cop, she’s not shy about telling him she hopes he doesn’t catch Scott in Ant-Man. As a teenager, she’s arrested at a peaceful protest when she shrinks a police car to stop officers from clearing a homeless encampment. This might be Cassie’s way of feeling close to her dad during the times they couldn’t be together, or she may have simply adopted his brand of flexible morals led by inner values.
In the Quantum Realm, this translates to Cassie stepping up to be a hero herself. Despite Scott’s desire to prioritize her safety, which means getting her out of the Quantum Realm as soon as possible, Cassie sees how the people there have been oppressed and terrorized by Kang, and her first instinct is to help. She has a suit that Hank made for her, and while her moves are clumsier than Scott’s or Hope’s, she insists on throwing herself into the fray and doing what she can. Even when she’s scared, she finds a way to push through, guided by that strong urge to do what’s just.
It's been heavily speculated that Marvel is setting up a Young Avengers project down the road. If that happens and Cassie’s a part of it, it could be fun to see her interact with other young heroes. Having a parent who’s a superhero could give her some common ground with the Maximoff twins, and more than a few young heroes could relate to diving into a dangerous situation that they’re not super equipped for.
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