When Ant-Man came out back in 2015, I was so uninterested in the character and this particular MCU story that I didn’t even plan to go see it. I ultimately watched it in a theater just because it was the next film playing, and that was a good enough reason. The film turned out to be a lot funnier and a lot better than I had hoped, and I knew for sure I would watch the next one in theaters as soon as it came out. Little did I know back then that Avengers: Infinity War would happen, which made me want to watch Ant-Man and the Wasp even more.
Since then, we’ve learned that Ant-Man is an essential piece of the Endgame puzzle, a character who was stranded in the Quantum Real just as the snap happens. That’s likely something Doctor Strange orchestrated just so Scott Lang would be safe during the snap. Now, a new theory suggests that Ant-Man might be even more important for the massive MCU storyline that Marvel created beginning with Iron Man than we thought.
We know from Infinity War that there’s only one way for the Avengers to beat Thanos. Doctor Strange has seen millions of timelines and may have spent a few thousand years peering through time to see what they need to do in order to win. That’s why Lang needs to be in the Quantum Realm when the snap kills half of the universe, including the three people who sent Ant-Man to the Realm.
Thanks to the first Endgame movie, we now know that Lang will surprise the Avengers left alive by showing up at the Avengers headquarters.
Reddit user burghghuy3 believes that Ant-Man will also be responsible for other events in the past, visiting other time periods before getting back to the present. Remember, Ant-Man is stranded in the Quantum Realm where you’ll find time vortexes that you need to pay attention to. But it’s unlikely these vortexes will take him to present day New York on his first try.
In fact, before we look at this brilliant theory, I’d also like to point out one puzzling thing from Ant-Man and the Wasp. One of the things the filmmakers never explained during the movie is why Janet van Dyne decided to spend all these years stuck in the Quantum Realm rather than take one of the time vortexes and attempting to go home. One answer is that these time vortexes are random. Another one is that she may have had to make this particular sacrifice to make sure that the future isn’t altered in any way.
This new theory says that Ant-Man may go back in time to 1993 by mistake, and that’s how he’d meet Hank Pym, the one person who understands the Quantum Realm. This would explain why Hank chooses him years later to become Ant-Man. It’s practically a self-fulfilling prophecy:
I think most people have seen the theories from the Endgame trailer that Scott was back in 1993 in front of Stark Industries. Well, if he is, I don’t think that would be his first stop. I think if he suddenly came out of the QR and realized he was back in 1993, his first stop would be to Hank. Hank was his mentor, Hank knew about the QR, about the suits, I mean, he literally invented the Pym Particles that brought him to the past. Hank also lives in town.
Some additional evidence: In Ant-man, Hank mentions that he’d been “watching Scott for some time now.” While that could be due to Scott’s criminal exploits, I think it’s because he met him in the past. Hank was also WAY too trusting of Scott with his Pym-tech. This is a guy who goes to great lengths to hide his tech from other people; the whole first movie is about Hank not wanting one of his former mentees from inventing his own version. Yet he hands it over on a silver platter to an ex-con he’s never even met before? It’s because he has met him, in the past, and he already had one of his suits, so Hank knew, logically, that he eventually trusted him with it.
The Redditor also speculates that Emma Furhmann, the actress many people believe will play an older version of Lang’s daughter Cassie, is actually a younger version of Hope, who was a teenager in the ‘90s. The same Redditor adapted the theory to account for an important detail. Lang may end up traveling back to 1983 rather than 1993. In this case, Ant-Man might actually be the catalyst that influences Hank’s future research. Hope wouldn’t be a teenager, but Lang would get to meet a younger Janet instead. Both Hank and Janet from the past will then wait to meet this Ant-Man dude from the future.
Avengers: Endgame comes out on April 26th, which gives you plenty of time to enjoy this full Ant-Man theory below:
[Avengers Endgame] Ant-Man visits Hank in the past + casting speculation from FanTheories
