‘Ant-Man and the Wasp’ Director on Deciding Who Would Disappear as Part of ‘Avengers: Infinity War’ Snap

After the depressing confrontation with Thanos in Avengers: Infinity War, Marvel Studios decided to lighten the mood with the release of Ant-Man and the Wasp. Unfortunately, that film also ended on a down note.

In the mid-credits stinger for the film, Thanos’ snap takes place and many of Scott Lang’s close allies are wiped from existence, including Hank Pym, Janet, and Hope van Dyne. Director Peyton Reed spoke with Huffington Post about this cliffhanger and how he decided on the characters who were snapped away along with half of all life in the universe.

“A big part of it was deciding who was going to be in that scene to begin with, because there was a version of that scene I think where it’s like, ‘OK, maybe Bill Foster is here as well, maybe Ava Starr is here as well.’” Reed said. “We talked about versions with ― and maybe Luis, or whoever, it could’ve been anybody ― but then there’s a certain percentage issue that’s set up obviously in Infinity War that we couldn’t ignore. When we finally landed on the version that you saw, the final version in the movie, it just seemed right.”

It obviously needed to be a dramatic ending with Scott being trapped in the Quantum Realm, so the lesser amount of people observing the experiment would increase their odds of all being snapped away. So this does stand to reason that Foster, Ava, Luis, and possibly even Cassie Lang all survived Thanos’ action.

That scene also teased some major possibilities for Avengers 4, which is heavily rumored to involve time travel in some capacity. Janet caused a lot of fans’ ears to perk up when she cautioned Scott to avoid “time vortexes” during his trip through the Quantum Realm. Reed played coy when speaking about that tease.

“Based on the science that we’ve set up in the first movie and this one, I won’t rule out the possibility,” Reed said. “Because, again, we are dealing with a time vortex. That could happen… I have to be careful here, as you well know.”

Reed previously addressed the stinger while speaking with the Empire Film Podcast, though he might have been trying to confuse fans who think they have it figured out.

“She mentions tardigrade fields, she mentions time vortexes as these warnings to Scott about what not to get involved in,” Reed said. “These things might prove valuable. They’re not just randomly spouted off in the moment. But, again, part of the fun of that was putting detail in there and throwing it out for the audience to guess which ones might be pertinent and which ones might not.”

Ant-Man and the Wasp is now playing in theaters.