The first Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania trailer is here, and it gives us a tease of the villain we've been waiting over a year to see. Yes, Kang the Conqueror, and not He Who Remains is finally in the MCU.
It all starts off when Scott Lang (Paul Rudd) and Cassie (Kathryn Newton, replacing Emma Fuhrmann) decide they want to do good and help. Or maybe this is just Cassie's idea. But when the family sends a signal to the Quantum Realm, they wind up getting sucked in — and eventually meeting the next big bad of the MCU. Check it out for yourself:
Janet Van Dyne (Michelle Pfeiffer) knows there's something wrong, but she didn't get to warn everyone that there's something she hasn't told them yet before our heroes are in a "secret universe beneath ours." Hope (Evangeline Lilly) isn't the only one wondering what secrets have been kept.
And then we hear a very calm voice over say "this place, it isn't what you think." That voice belongs to Jonathan Majors, who we last saw in the Loki series playing the timeline hopping mastermind He Who Remains. Here, he's playing Kang the Conqueror, though the character isn't named outright in the trailer (except in the subtitles).
Kang then says "I can get you home... and give you more time, if you help me. So, what's it gonna be, Ant-Man?" And so while we look at the deep purples and greens of Kang's costume, we wonder what bargain the villain is striking with the bumbling Ant-Man. We will find out more as more trailers drop, and Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania comes to theaters on February 17, 2023.
Analysis: Who is Ant-Man's Kang the Conqueror?
In the Marvel Comics lore, Kang the Conqueror first went by the name Nathaniel Richards. Yes, he's a relative of Reed Richards — which is why Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania could give us our first glimpse of the cast of the MCU Fantastic Four movie.
In the comics, Kang has a very complicated story, where he jumped all around the Marvel universe. In the MCU, he looks to be a variant of He Who Remains, the character revealed in the Loki season finale.
He Who Remains was basically controlling all the timelines, so expect Kang to have some connection to the universe-bending abilities. Especially if — as is expected — he's to succeed Thanos as the next big bad of the MCU.
