Relationship Spotlight Scott & Cassie Lang (Ant-Man and the Wasp)

*Scott-Cassie-related spoilers, including for Quantumania.*

After Quantumania came out, I did a long-overdue write-up about Cassie Lang, and even though I very naturally talked quite a bit about Scott there, I wanted to write a dedicated post about their relationship as well. Family stuff—of both the biological and found variety—looms large in the MCU, and Scott and Cassie’s father/daughter relationship is crucial to the Ant-Man and the Wasp franchise.

Honestly, without Cassie, I’m not sure if Scott ever would’ve become Ant-Man. Or at least, if Hank was still determined to give him the suit and enlist his help, he would’ve had a trickier time getting Scott involved. After his release from prison, Scott is desperate to be with his daughter, but Maggie isn’t willing to entertain visitation, let alone joint custody, until he can prove he’s gotten his act together. And a lot of that means money: child support, an apartment, a job, etc.

(Side note: I’m not sure if it’s ever stated how long Scott was in prison or how much contact he had with Cassie while he was inside, whether he was able to call her or if Maggie brought her for visits.)

Even though Scott has vowed not to get into any more trouble, because he knows how much time he’s already missed with Cassie, it’s tough for him to get steady employment as a formerly incarcerated person. Every setback just makes him think of how much longer it’ll be before he’s able to see her. So, when Luis proposes a big one-time score—unbeknownst to him, one deliberated orchestrated and dangled by Hank in order to reel Scott in—Scott agrees. It’s over the course of this burglary that he discovers the Ant-Man suit, is arrested, and, with a nudge from Hank to use the suit, breaks back out. Now he’s been swept up into something bigger than he's ever experienced, and Hank has him on the hook.

I mentioned in my Cassie post that her relationship with her dad is almost marked more by the time they’re separated than the time that they’re together, but despite all the various forces that conspire to keep them apart, I really love it when we do see their relationship in action. Scott is Cassie’s hero and she doesn’t care that he was in prison. His goofiness tickles her, and he gets that she’d rather have or do something interesting than something cool or pretty, like the “ugly” stuffed animal he gives her for her birthday. When he’s on house arrest in Ant-Man and the Wasp, I love that he constructs elaborate pretend Ant-Man missions for them to do together at his place, that he spends hours taking an online course in close-up magic, just so he can give her fun things to do when she stays with him.

There’s a great moment in Ant-Man and the Wasp where Scott is wrestling with the task before him and Cassie suggests that he needs a partner. Assuming she means Hope, he says, “Well, she’s made it clear that’s about the last thing she wants.” But Cassie shyly admits that she was talking about herself. Realizing that his reaction hurt her feelings, Scott reassures her while letting her down gently, saying, “Aww, peanut. You would be awesome. And if I let you, I would be a terrible dad.” The whole scene is so sweet and lovely.

By the time Quantumania rolls around, a lot has changed. Scott and Cassie were separated again, this time for five years when he was stuck in the Quantum Realm during the Blip. It doesn’t feel like that much time for him, because timey-wimey, but he’s suddenly confronted with the fact that his daughter is now a teenager. In Quantumania, it’s obvious that both still love each other hugely, but they don’t have the same easy closeness that they did when Cassie was a kid. Cassie is more independent now, and Scott worries about some of what she gets up to, like getting arrested after she shrinks a cop car during a peaceful protest. While Cassie thinks she’s doing what her dad does—helping people by doing what’s right, not by following the rules—Scott only sees a daughter who’s getting in trouble and fears he’s not doing enough as a parent.

Things come to a head when the whole Ant-Man/Wasp crew is sucked into the Quantum Realm. Once they realize the state of affairs there, Cassie thinks the time has finally come: she can fight by Scott’s side and be his partner. But allowing his daughter to be put in even more danger is the last thing on Scott’s mind. He’s in full protective-dad mode, basically wanting Cassie to stay quiet and do exactly as he says until he’s able to get them out. But that’s not going to fly this time. Cassie’s a teenager, she has her own suit, she’s trained with it, and she learned a lot about the Quantum Realm during the Blip. She has skills she can contribute and wants to stand beside her dad, not hide behind him. Over the course of the film, she has to learn to listen better and defer to his experience, but he also has to learn to treat her like a capable young person and not a little girl.

Character Highlight: Janet van Dyne (Ant-Man and the Wasp)

*Spoilers for the Ant-Man and the Wasp films, including Quantumania.*

Janet’s presence has loomed over these films since the first Ant-Man, but while the notion of her has been important, we really hadn’t seen enough for me to be able to write about her until now. But now that Quantumania has given us much more of Janet, it’s time to dive a little deeper into the original Wasp.

When we first hear about Janet, we believe her to be dead, as does her family. Her apparent death is the origination for the wedge between Hope and Hank, both because Hope blames her dad for not being there for her when her mom died and because Hank’s fears keep him from letting his daughter take up the Wasp mantle, though he won’t tell her why. It’s not until the middle of the movie that Hope even learns how Janet really died. In fact, she’d known nothing about the Wasp at all—in the same breath that Hank tells her that her mom was a superhero, he tells her that she was lost in the Quantum Realm when she made a noble sacrifice in the heat of the moment.

So: dead mom who was once a source of conflict between father and daughter, but who’s now brought them back together. Fiction is littered with beloved deceased parents like this. But the thing is, when Scott is forced to enter the Quantum Realm during the third act and only just manages to get back out, we see the briefest flash of the Wasp, only for a second.

Which leads us to Ant-Man and the Wasp, where we learn that Hank and Hope have spent the time between movies acquiring parts to build a quantum tunnel and a craft that will help them safely enter the Quantum Realm as a rescue mission. Even though Janet is the driving focus of this movie, and although we get our first look at her as an actual character in a flashback, we still don’t really see her get to be active. She’s still an object, something to be rescued, something worth braving the Quantum Realm for.

It's not until Quantumania that we properly see Janet in action. The glimpses we got earlier gave us an idea of who she is—brave, selfless, a loving mom—but without a dynamic character to layer those traits upon, they would remain quasi-saintly thumbnails and Janet would only ever be what Hope and Hank think of her. As such, I’m glad that we see multiple sides to her in the new film. We get flashbacks to her time in the Quantum Realm, where she unknowingly helped Kang but once she realized what he was planning, she destroyed her own chance of escape to stop him. We see her hiding this past from her family, and when they’re pulled back into the Quantum Realm, she’s frantic to get them back out as quickly as possible without telling them why.

There’s so much she hasn’t told them, all in the name of keeping this shameful secret. Again, Janet did the right thing as soon as she learned who Kang really was, and in the process she condemned herself to many more years stuck in the Quantum Realm. But she still blames herself for unleashing Kang on the people there. And so she never told Hank and Hope about him, or about the fact that the Quantum Realm is populated by sentient life at all. She never told them about the life she lived there, the allies she made, or her resistance efforts against Kang.

Understandably, Hope is upset when all of this comes out—not because she blames Janet for Kang, but because she’s saddened that her mom kept so much from her, and she wonders if she really knows Janet at all. I appreciate this plotline. The snippets we get of Janet in the first two films are heroic and winning and borderline perfect, and it’s important to see her making mistakes because she’s afraid or ashamed.

And really, that just gives her the drive to make it up to those she loves. Janet is full-on mama bear throughout Quantumania, doing absolutely everything in her power to keep her people safe. Hank and Hope are stunned to see these new sides of her, but they’re also a little blown away seeing how easily she navigates the wild weirdness of the Quantum Realm. The real Janet may be flawed, but she’s still pretty darn impressive.

Favorite Characters: Kang the Conqueror (Marvel Cinematic Universe)

*DISCLAIMER: the news has only recently come out, but it was saddening to hear about the allegations against Jonathan Majors. I'm not going to join the speculation train for what this might mean for the MCU. I just hope this victim and any others receive the support they need.*

*Quantumania spoilers.*

One of the best parts of the latest Ant-Man and the Wasp film is its villain, making his big splash as the MCU’s newest Big Bad (sort of—more on that later.) Even though we already glimpsed one Kang at the end of Loki’s first season, Quantumania gives us a memorable introduction to another.

When the Ant-Man/Wasp crew get pulled into the Quantum Realm, they’re pulled into a micro-universe cruelly ruled by an outsider—someone who, like Janet, wound up there by accident years ago. He has a history in the Quantum Realm with Janet, and for a time, she helped him try to fix his damaged multiverse-traveling craft in the hopes that he could get them both home. But once she realized his true character, she understood that her own freedom wasn’t worth unleashing Kang back on the multiverse.

So who is this version of Kang? As per his title, he’s a conqueror, traveling to different universes and taking them over, building tyrannical empires wherever he goes. A council of his own Variants conspired to trap him in the Quantum Realm, ridding the multiverse of his warfare and insatiable lust for power.

Janet is able to stop Kang from escaping, but not before she’s helped him repair enough of his ship that he has the technology to take over the Quantum Realm. I don’t recall if it’s ever stated when this happened in relation to Janet’s rescue at the end of Ant-Man and the Wasp, but by the time we return to the micro universe in Quantumania, it’s been thoroughly subjugated by Kang. He has a palace, ships, and a robot army to do his bidding, and they keep the people of the Quantum Realm under his brutal thumb.

One thing I really enjoy about Kang is that, as a villain, he’s both larger-than-life and remarkably understated. His power, intelligence, and abilities are enormous, such that he was only ever stopped initially by other versions of himself. Bringing Scott, Hope, and co. into direct conflict with him really feels like sending this group of characters up to the big leagues. But at the same time, his manner is uncompromisingly tyrannical and yet somehow also unassuming. He often speaks quietly and calmly. It’s an assurance, maybe, that comes from his power—he doesn’t really have to throw his weight around because his many resources will do it for him. His rage is threaded through every fiber of him, but it simmers under his skin, only rarely bubbling over to the point that he raises his voice or lashes out.

Given all this, it’s kind of disappointing that Scott, Hope, and the others are actually able to dispatch him. It gives the end of the film a somewhat anticlimactic feel, and it takes some of the air out of Kang’s sails that a second-string Avengers teams could seemingly take him down in a single movie. But the credits scenes confirm that Kang’s place as the MCU’s new Big Bad doesn’t exist within a character. Rather, it exists within an entire line, as we see the whole Council of Kangs convening to react to recent events. I’m of two minds about that going forward. On the one hand, I don’t doubt Jonathan Majors’ ability to make each Kang distinct while still feeling like variations of the same man. On the other, if Marvel isn’t careful, the next few phases could start to feel like a game of whack-a-mole with Kangs. I hope they’re thoughtful as they go into the coming films.