As if facing off Kang The Conqueror wasn’t bad enough…
We’ve known for some time now that Kang The Conqueror (played by Jonathan Majors) was going to be the primary antagonist in Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania. Having first appeared in the finale of season one of Loki, we also know that Kang is going to be a major villain in the entirety of the MCU going forward, getting his own Thanos-esque epic two-part culmination – 2025’s Avengers: The Kang Dynasty and 2026’s Avengers: Secret Wars.
He pops up again throughout the latest trailer for the third Ant-Man movie, which sees the return of the characters played by Paul Rudd, Evangeline Lilly, Michael Douglas and Michelle Pfeiffer.
The trailer also heavily features Ant-Man’s daughter Cassie Lang (here played by Kathyrn Newton), which would seem to be setting that character up to take on a superheroic role of her own – she’s known as Stature in the comics – and likely to eventually join the ranks of the still-unannounced Young Avengers movie, alongside New Hawkeye (Hailee Steinfeld), America Chavez (Xochitl Gomez), Ms. Marvel (Iman Vellani), Ironheart (Dominique Thorne) and we’re sure more besides.
However, the trailer also reveals another HUGE supervillain from Marvel history. See if you can spot it before we point it out…
Did you see him?
The most obvious placement is 1.46, when he pops up with his mask on, armed with what looks like some huge laser canons. Yep, that is MODOK, aka the Mental Organism Designed Only for Killing.
In the comics, he was an employee of A.I.M. (the competition to Stark Technologies), who is the subject of an experiment that grants him extreme intelligence, but as a side-effect, his cranium expands to massive proportions.
However, for the eagle-eyed amongst you, he actually appears even earlier in the trailer. At 0.57, he shows up behind Kang, Scott and Cassie Long, and what looks like two masked guards.
More interestingly, he appears with no mask on. And MORE interestingly, we can actually see that he is being played by Corey Stoll, who had previously played the villainous Darren Cross, aka Yellowjacket, in the first Ant-Man movie.
It is currently unclear if this is the same Darren Cross from that first movie – who was shrunk by Scott into presumable nothingness – or if this is a Darren Cross from somewhere else in the multiverse.
Thankfully we don’t have too long to wait and find out, as Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania arrives in Irish cinemas on Friday, 17 February.
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