Do Ant-Man & The Wasp's Quantum Realm Easter Eggs Tease MCU Multiverse?
Where could Ant-Man's rabbit-hole lead?
There's nothing Marvel film-makers like more than dropping little hints into their movies to seed future sequels and entirely different movies that will come further down the line in Kevin Feige's grand franchise vision. In fact, the studio pretty much insist on it, which is why we never got to see Edgar Wright's vision for Ant-Man, apparently.
And speaking of the smallest hero in the MCU (both in stature and in terms of predicted box office draw), there's apparently more future MCU hints in the sequel that is about to be released in the US. Not in the UK though, because apparently Football Is Coming Home and nobody could possibly spare two hours to see something entertaining or something. I AM NOT OVER THIS AND NEVER WILL BE.
Anyway, according to Kevin Feige, there are some hints in the film's Quantum Realm sequences that might hint at the future of the MCU:
“Like the first movie there are clues in the Quantum Realm to other possibilities and things. I’m talking frames [of film].”
Talk about an invitation to painstakingly go through your blu-ray once it comes out. Director Peyton Reed also talked about what the sequel might be seeding:
“We have definitely laid some groundwork for some stuff down there… similar to what we did in the first movie. [In the first movie,] it was not until really DVD or Blu-ray release when people started freeze-framing it like ‘Wait a second. There’s a reflection. Is that Wasp down there? Is it Janet?’”
The fact that he specifically mentions the Wasp shadow from the first Ant-Man is interesting as it might suggest that there are other characters trapped there? Perhaps we'll see a hint of the Infinity War victims in there to seed how they'll return?
Even more interestingly, it could mean the Quantum Realm could be established as a crossroads of sorts for the multiverse. Since it's been established that time and space don't matter there, it would make sense that it could be used in that way as a stationary means to travel to any time or any universe, which would all coexist at once thanks to the rules of the dimension.
And along those lines, Evangeline Lilly has already spoken to Vanity Fair, about what it could mean to the multiverse:
“In Ant-Man and the Wasp, they are trying everything in their power to safely enter the Quantum Realm and return back from it because they have evidence from the first film that Scott Lang was able to do that. If he can do it, why can’t we? If we do succeed in Ant-Man and the Wasp, then that does open a whole entire new multiverse to enter into and play around in.”
It makes a lot of sense for Marvel to open the multiverse, particularly with the possibility of mutants and the Fantastic Four coming to join the MCU. And it would also - crucially - allow the studio to experiment more with non-mainline movies (like one-shots and stand-alones) that wouldn't need to impact on the MCU and which could allow for events like Marvel Zombies or characters like Blade, as well as introducing alternate universe versions of already established characters.
Because who wouldn't watch another Captain America movie with another actor after Chris Evans retires from the MCU, safe in the knowledge that the alternate universe character wasn't actually replacing the OG hero? It'd be like printing money.
So maybe keep an eye out when the heroes go down the rabbit hole...