Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania is turning a number of Marvel tropes into actual themes. The weirdness of variants has been explored in Loki and Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, but it comes full circle in Quantumania with the reintroduction of Jonathan Majors’ Kang.
But there’s a trope that’s really been brought to the forefront in the third Ant-Man movie: generations. Cassie Lang gets a new look and a new superheroic persona in this movie, giving more weight to the rumors that a Young Avengers project may be on the horizon. Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania producer Stephen Broussard tells Inverse just how that rumor fits into the MCU’s plans.
In conversation with Inverse, Broussard initially said there are no plans for a Young Avengers project at this time. That isn’t a surprise, as we’ve heard that plenty of times before. Thankfully, that was followed with a surprisingly hopeful sentiment. “But a lot of Phase Four was about introducing the next generation and introducing new characters,” Broussard tells Inverse.
Evidence for this goes all the way back to The Falcon and The Winter Soldier, which established Sam Wilson as the new Captain America. Throughout Marvel’s Phase Four, there have been “next gen” heroes popping up left and right. Black Panther: Wakanda Forever even double-dipped and gave us Shuri taking on her late brother’s role as Black Panther and Riri Williams becoming Ironheart, the next-gen version of her fellow MIT alum Iron Man.
But according to Broussard, these elements are entrenched even further in Quantumania. “I think it's very germane to the Ant-Man film because it's a generational film,” he said. “The Ant-Man mantle gets passed down from Hank to Scott and now essentially to Cassie, who's almost more of like the new Ant-Man, even though she doesn't go by such, more so than the new Wasp.”
So even if there isn’t a Young Avengers, it’s clear that the Avengers are skewing younger and leaning more to the next generation, whether that’s symbolic, like Yelena Belova taking on her sister’s heroic title as Black Widow, or more straightforward, like Cassie Lang taking over after her father.
Still, there are still possibilities of team-ups in the future. “I think that's one of the themes that the next generation reminds us and that would be exciting to explore with Cassie going forward, or with any of the new characters, like Kate Bishop,” Broussard says. “People like that, who have inherited the mantle, and keeping to fight the fight, and make the world a better place.”
Could we possibly see Cassie Lang team up with her fellow freshman class of MCU heroes? The franchise has always explored unifying themes in larger-scale movies, so why not explore what it means to continue someone else’s fight and deal with the legacy left by them? It’s long been bubbling under the surface — we just need another movie like this one to cement the theme.
Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania premieres in theaters February 17, 2023.
