The Aftermath of Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania – How It Sets the Stage for the Next Phase of the MCU

Ant-Man with the Wasp: The title of Quantumania says it all: There are many moving parts between the Quantum Realm, Ant-Man’s family, and the time traveler warlord Kang Conqueror. This movie isn’t finished yet. There are many MCU stories ahead. This is all before two credit scenes.

What does this mean for Marvel Universe’s future? Marvels: The Kang Dynasty and Marvel’s Secret Wars. Let’s look at how we can unravel these quantum threads with no… Controversy.

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Quantumania is billed as the first real introduction of Jonathan Majors’ Kang the Conqueror. A time-traveling warlord from the past, Kang the Conqueror will act as the final boss over the remaining three years in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. It’s not surprising that he ends up with his head in the air when he is given his mega-hand.

Kang is taken into a shrinky portal and it appears that it will destroy him. All of Ant-Man manages to escape the Quantum Realm. The Quantum Realm is liberated from tyranny. Scott Lang can return to his happy, go-lucky lifestyle.

Or does he?

Is Kang deceased?

Polygon talked with Quantumaniadirector Peyton Reed, about Kang getting such a large feature role but killing him at end of the story. Reed confirmed that Kang has died — long live Kang.

Reed said that the idea was for the Kang in this movie to be “the greatest fearful, most formidable Kang among all of them”. However, the part that set that up was creating the future threat of all the alternate Kangs shown in mid-credits.

Reed said to Polygon: “At this point in the movie, Scott doesn’t know that Scott has many secrets.” All those secrets are exposed by the movie’s conclusion. Scott Lang has a secret. And it’s this self-doubt. Kang — Kang has it, he won’t get out of Quantum Realm. But wait! Kang also said that if Kang did not get out, all the other bad versions of Kang would come. Am I wrong to think that Earth is doomed? Scott allowed us to express our self-doubt and to see how it might affect the future MCU. It was fun. It’s that final note at the end.

It seems that Quantumania’s Kang may have been a red herring. That arena with wild Kang variants is what threatens.

What was the matter with all the Kangas?

There is plenty of comic book precedent to a Council of Kings. However, for our purposes here we’ll stick with the MCU.

He Whoremains, the boss of the Time Variance Authority was the first Kang-type we met. As seen in Loki. He had devoted his time to strict policing, removing any variant choices from the “Sacred Timeline”, which was the only instance in which he had figured out the way to cross the barriers between the parallel universes. He warned Sylvie (and Loki) that if they killed Him, and restored free Will to the Universe, the timeline will splinter, resulting in a multiverse that eventually would see the He Who Remains variants meet and collide, leading to a time war that would decimate all of creation.

Sylvie ends the show by killing He Who Remembrance. Loki is then transported to the future timeline in which a Kang Conqueror has openly ruled the Time Variance Authority. He claims that the Sacred Timeline had been dissolved into an infinite multiverse of infinitely variable parallel worlds and that he is the only one who still remembers it being different.

The Quantum Realm Kang speaks of the infinite Kang variants. They exiled him to that Quantum Realm because they disagreed with him on the matter of an imminent threat. Ant-Man was warned by him and others that if his ship is not rebuilt and he doesn’t escape the Quantum Realm then there will be no one to stop all the other variants. He wasn’t very clear about what other variants wanted and why he thought it was wrong. And what exactly would happen to the disaster?

In Quantumania’s credits sequence, we can hear some conversation between the three Kangs of the Council of Kangs. We still have a lot of information, but we find another clue. The Kangas have met to discuss incursions.

Wait, what exactly are Incursions?!

Incursions are cosmic natural events in which two universes in a multiverse collide. Stephen Strange visited the universe where his variant inadvertently caused an incursion and was executed. In another, he found evidence of an Incursion in which his variant had caused it. Clea approached Strange, telling him that he’d caused an Incursion and that she would come to him to fix it.

We don’t know much else about Incursions. However, in the comics, they were created by Jonathan Hickman as the underpinning menace that eventually led to Secret Wars. That threat is what the Marvel Cinematic Universe intends to adapt in Avengers’ Secret Wars. Incursions can’t be caused by superheroes. They are a natural disaster that affects the entire universe and were set off by some of Marvel Comics’ almost omnipotent cosmic beings.

The MCU could be trying to make Incursions less of a villainous plot and more of an entropic effect, and the Council of Kangs could be a way to do that.

When do we see Kang again?

According to Ant-Man: Quantumania’s credits sequence, we may see him in the second season of Loki. This makes it likely that he’ll be appearing in other Marvel shows or movies before 2025’s Avengers The Kang Dynasty.

We may see him on The Marvels this Nov., Shang Chi 2, and Agata: Covens Of Chaos in winter 2023. Marvel has yet to reveal if Jonathan Majors is signed up for any future projects. So for now, Loki 2 is it.