You might have not paid too much attention to the first Ant-Man movie, but Avengers: Infinity War should have made you a lot more interested in the sequel. Ant-Man and the Wasp proved to be not only a decent MCU film with plenty of humor and action but also an essential film for the overall plot, revealing the importance of the Quantum Realm for the MCU. Later in Endgame, we discovered how critical Scott Lang’s Quantum experience really was, as he was the person to propose — and prove — that time travel is possible. Moving forward with the MCU, we know that an Ant-Man 3 is in the making, and a new report says that the film might introduce the next major threat the Avengers will have to face down the road, now that Thanos is gone.
It was Charlie Murphy from Murphy’s Multiverse who said the next Ant-Man film was a go. He didn’t provide a release date but said that production will start in 2020, which might be a clue that the film “might be a much larger film than what people are expecting.” Payton Reed is set to return, after directing the previous two episodes.
The same Murphy said that Ant-Man 3 may be the film that will get us a first glimpse of the Young Avengers, which might be an exciting thing to happen. With all that in mind, it wouldn’t be surprising to see the next Ant-Man 3 film premiere on February 18th, 2022, he said. That’s when the first MCU Phase 5 film hits theaters. Marvel already confirmed eight movie dates for 2022 and 2023, each year getting four releases. Of those, Black Panther 2 is confirmed for a May 2022 launch.
This brings us to the new Ant-Man 3 rumor that says the film might introduce one of the two major villains that are rumored to appear in the MCU in the coming phases. According to We Got This Covered’s sources, we’re looking at either Doctor Doom or Norman Osborn:
His true identity [Ant-Man and The Wasp’s benefactor] has yet to be decided upon, but our sources – the same ones who revealed that Taskmaster would be the villain in Black Widow and that the real Mandarin will be the villain in Shang-Chi, both of which ended up being confirmed – have told us that it’ll 100% be either Doctor Doom or Norman Osborn. This fits in with a similar report shared by The Geeks Worldwide back in June as well, which revealed that the Benefactor is on his way to the MCU and could end up being Osborn. According to our intel, we can definitely narrow the search down to him or Doom and whichever one it turns out to be, their end goal is to get hold of the Pym tech in order to gain its power.
I will remind you of something we talked about back in July 2018, after the Ant-Man and the Wasp premiere. We told you that the film has given us a huge mystery that not many people seemed to care about at the time: the real villain. It wasn’t Sonny Burch, and it wasn’t Ghost. It was the person willing to pay a billion dollars for the Pym particles. Marvel never told us who that person was, and Doctor Doom or Norman Osborn both make sense. Both these names were shortlisted in previous reports.
What’s also interesting to note is that the same Murphy’s Multiverse said that Doctor Doom will be one of the villains of Black Panther 2:
Victor Von Doom will began expanding his empire, conquering parts of Africa and, ultimately, come into conflict with the nation of Wakanda and the Black Panther.
Could Doctor Doom appear in a villain capacity in two MCU movies back to back? Well, Thanos was teased in several of the films that preceded Infinity War and Endgame, though he was usually used in credits scenes. Things could be different for the next major villain, especially if it’s a human from Earth. The various Avengers heroes left will inevitably run into Doctor Doom (or Norman Osborn) long before they’d have to face him as a team in an Avengers 5 type of sequel. And Doom’s appearances might amount to more than just credits scenes cameos. With that in mind, seeing Doom in multiple MCU films before a massive Avengers crossover sounds plausible. Then again, this is just speculation based on rumors that can’t be confirmed at this time.
