Will 'Ant-Man and the Wasp Go Into Quantum Realm to Save Janet?

The first trailer for Ant-Man and the Wasp impressed the majority of Marvel fans (judging by online reactions), offering a familiar mix of humor and lighthearted adventure, while also teasing us with a new storyline that could have far-reaching impact on the larger Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Indeed, Ant-Man 2 will affect a much larger universe by further exploring a much smaller one: The Quantum Realm. The sequel's story revolves around Hank Pym (Michael Douglas) and Hope van Dyne's (Evangeline Lily) research experiments into the Quantum Realm, in the hopes of rescuing Janet van Dyne, the original Wasp. The first Ant-Man and the Wasp trailer featured some fleeting (yet important) shots that suggest there will be a major portion of the movie set in the sub-atomic Quantum Realm - and fans have been speculating like crazy about it.

See for yourself:

They went subatomic to save Janet . from r/marvelstudios

This Reddit thread breaks down the footage of the strange vessel that will apparently carry Team Ant-Man into the Quantum Realm, with one important caveat: we cannot yet confirm that there will be a Quantum Realm sequence, because this footage is not actually of a sub-atomic world.

What we're seeing in these two shots framed above is a full-sized vessel capable of holding several people - and that same vessel afloat while in a cellular-level ratio of size. That's pretty clear from the Tardigrades (or "Water Bears") that are included in the shot; Tardigrades are near-microscopic animals, no for their nearly indestructible bodies, which can even survive in space. The Quantum Realm exist on a much smaller level than cellular, so what are we actually seeing here?

The most popular point of consensus is that the vessel is "jumping" to increasingly smaller levels of shrinkage, from a standard size to micro; micro to cellular; cellular to atomic; and atomic to the sub-atomic level of the Quantum Realm. That does track to a certain extent, as such a sequence seems like something that director Peyton Reed and Marvel would include in the film.

Whatever the case may be with the footage we've seen, it seems almost certain that Ant-Man and the Wasp is going to be taking the characters (and fans) into this mysterious Quantum Realm - possibly for pivotal reasons in the future. Avengers 4 will end the war between Earth and Thanos, and one of the biggest theories on how the Mad Titan can be defeated rests with Ant-Man and Wasp's mastery of the Quantum Realm as a pathway to attack and/or escape from Thanos and the Infinity Gauntlet.

Black Panther opens in theaters on February 16th. Other upcoming Marvel Cinematic Universemovies include; Avengers: Infinity War on May 4th, Ant-Man and the Wasp on July 6th, Captain Marvel on March 8, 2019, the fourth Avengers movie on May 3, 2019, the sequel to Spider-Man: Homecoming on July 5, 2019, and Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 in 2020.