It’s been 15 years, 31 films, 8 shows, and 2 TV Specials since the MCU started. In that time we’ve met dozens of characters, both hero and villain. We’ve seen the world, and universe, halved by the Mad Titan, we saw Sokovia lifted from the earth and hurtling towards the ground in rocky debris. We’ve lost the King of Wakanda to illness, we’ve lost Captain America to time, we lost Iron Man to the Infinity Gauntlet. Doctor Strange has jumped universes and Spider-Man erased knowledge of his alter ego from every universe. So here we are. Losses piled up beside us, building the future from the still smoldering pieces of everything we knew. A new Phase has started, with a capital C on account of the word denoting Marvel Studios’ demarcation of plot. Phase 4, the previous Phase, was a swan song for what we had come to know. Our heroes struggled in the aftermath of End Game. We saw PTSD, depression, grief, survivor’s guilt. We saw the snapped return to a world that had moved on. Crises of housing, refugees, and political instability. In and through all of this we have the rise of bad actors, seeking to capitalize on the numerous vacuums. Valentina Allegra de Fontaine is the head of the CIA, Thaddeus “Thunderbolt” Ross is on the path to becoming President, and we know the Skrulls are on the horizon. US Agent is exonerated, Abomination has returned, Namor and the Talokanil are poised for war, and our Guardians of the Galaxy are squaring off with The High Evolutionary.

It’s understandable to look at that laundry list of MCU goings-on and raise your shoulders, cock your head, and ask…what the hell is going on? The answer to that specific question is, well, nonspecific: a lot. A lot is going on. And I left out the fact that Loki and Mobius Mobius Mobius (yes that’s his full name) set off a series of events that unleashed Kang on the universe, endangering the sacred timeline and all other variations of that timeline and establishing that there are an infinite number of universes that hold alternate versions of everyone we know, called Variants.

That’s it then. Phase 4 complete. Phase 5 initiated. One last question: how do you take this roiling molecular spaghetti of a universe and push it forward in almost every direction at once? I will answer that question…with a question of my own.

Did you know ants can carry 10-50 times their body weight?

Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania actually feels like the only jumping off point. While we could spend hours debating what hero might be better suited for this incipient moment, the reality is, Ant-Man is actually perfect. Let me explain.

Our insectoid hero has had two prior films. The first saw him stealing from the wrong guy, Hank Pym, and then, to pay off his debt, helping Pym steal from the right guy. The second saw him helping Pym atone for past transgressions and, on the side, retrieving Pam’s wife from the Quantum Realm, where she had been imprisoned for 30 years. In just two films you immediately see a pattern. Scott Lang fights for the little guy, which is equal parts brilliant marketing and groan-inducingly silly puncraft.

In the years since our heroes reverted Thanos’ actions Lang has been trying to catch up with his daughter. Cassie wasn’t snapped, so when Scott returned from his little entrapment in the Quantum Realm his little girl had grown up. Whether or not the speed of her aging is consistent with the time passed is…well…unimportant. Scott has also penned his own memoire. Queue head-smashingly corny hero reminiscing. But it is made abundantly clear that Scott is kinda clueless. He walks around the city with a smile, interacting with people like a street-level hero, because that’s what he is. He’s a dad, a former convict, and a hero that frequently rides on the backs of ants. He is silly. His family is silly. His movies are silly.

Hank Pym and Janet van Dyne are the grandparents everyone wants to have: rich. That feels like more of a joke than it is. Hope van Dyne, Scott’s unlikely partner, is a career woman, filling the recently abdicated shoes of Tony Stark as a humanitarian and tech genius (lots of those floating around the MCU suddenly. It’s almost as if Tony snapped smarter people into existence in his absence).

The rising action of Quantumania is set off when Cassie, unbeknownst to her grandmother, turns on a device made for mapping the Quantum Realm. This device, as per its function, sends a signal into the Quantum Realm and when it pings back, collects the data. The problem lies in the fact that sending a signal or code into the Quantum Realm, a QR Code, if you will, is it allows a singular certain someone to identify it. Janet van Dyne responds to this as if she’s seen a ghost and unceremoniously rips the plug out of the wall, but just too late. The device faults, opens a portal, and sucks the entire Ant-family into the Quantum Realm.

Quantumania has the unfortunate responsibility of starting a new MCU Phase, a task paired with such an obtuse responsibility even the best films would shake in their boots. The task is made infinitely more obtuse by Phase 4’s introductions of timelines, universes, variants, and nexus beings, all concepts that need and indeed have their own shows and movies detailing their existence and definition. In this new universe, filled with possibility, Quantumania has to introduce us, in earnest, to our next big bad: Kang the Conqueror. Jonathon Majors, of Lovecraft Country acclaim, has swiftly made himself known as a force to be reckoned with. He oozes power and strength in every scene he is in, which makes the moments he breaks composure and lashes out in anger significantly more resonant. Fans of the Comics know Kang the Conqueror to be an upper tier villain. One who sits among the company of names like Dr. Doom, Thanos, and even Galactus. How does anyone expect Ant-Man and the Wasp to be able to muster the strength to be more than a speed bump in this menace’s path?

The easy answer here is…they aren’t? What Quantumania does is put Kang at a significant disadvantage. He’s trapped in the Quantum Realm. His most lethal tool is damaged, preventing him from simply thinking universes out of existence. As a result we see Kang desperate. But I will also remind you, this is his introduction. We are seeing why he is a problem. We are being made to understand the devastation he could cause in the event of his escape. That message is illustrated clearly and concisely.

What remains is a movie about a dad trying to do better by his daughter, thrust into a conflict he isn’t cut out for, mustering the courage to face annihilation because to turn away from it is to doom everyone he loves. It’s on this front Quantumania succeeds. In a movie tasked with kickstarting the next series of films, it’s choice to focus on broken family and their desire to do right by those they care for sets up the core of what I believe Phase 5 is going to target. Guardians of Galaxy is clearly going to continue this theme, as is The Marvels, due this summer. Introducing a villain whose sole purpose is to eliminate divergent realities might feel like a distraction from this point, but Kangs potential to kill trillions is going to force our heroes to do things. Things with deep and cascading consequences, to protect those they love. An unavoidable reality made more explicit by the post credits scenes. Kang is here to stay, and there is nothing good about that.

This installment is an oversized task for both the film itself and its hero. The art department pulled out all of the stops in creating a deeply weird and wacky place in subatomic space. The Quantum Realm is chock full of strange beings that run the gamut from vegetable-like, to steampunk, to 1960s goofy sci-fi jelly-folk. The surrounding cast of characters is diverse and sensibly motivated, refugees from the Conqueror’s conquests, denizens of the myriad cities of this fantastical and non-Euclidean space. And while there may have been a few things I could see myself doing differently, Ant-Man and the Wasp step up and shoulder the responsibility of this film well. The most important accomplishment by far being the lens focusing it does for what comes next.

Like the Ant-Man movies before it, Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania is an endearingly sincere, familiarly goofy movie about heroes who just want to do right by theirs. It’s a great time, it’s beautiful, and for a universe that is simultaneously moving in so many strange and wacky directions, does an admirable job of making sense of what’s happening, to give us a good idea of what comes next. Is it as good as End Game? No. Nothing will be. Not for a long time. Go watch it and have fun. And if you catch yourself pondering how realistic all of this is, remember your watching a movie about a guy who rides ants and can make himself 300 feet tall.

@LubWub

~Caleb