Ant-Man and the Wasp opened in theaters this weekend to a warm reception from Marvel Cinematic Universe fans, and now we’re breaking the film down to pick out its most standout moments.
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Ant-Man and the Wasp‘s story is a race against the clock to save the original Wasp, Janet van Dyne. When you break the story down and remove the science fiction elements it is actually a relatively simple plot. Our heroes need a handful of items to achieve their goal. Two other groups of characters require those same items for opposing ends. The three competing groups grapple over control of the item, gaining and losing them multiple times, all while the clock continues to tick away.
While the bones of the movie are simple enough to see, director Peyton Reed fills the movie with warmth and humor that makes it stand out from the rest of the Marvel Studios line. This is all built on the strength of the film’s cast, from Paul Rudd’s performance as the everyman hero Scott Lang to Evangeline Lilly playing the woman of action Hope van Dyne, and Michael Douglas reprising his role as the cantankerous original Ant-Man, Hank Pym.
Those leads are backed up by delightful supporting performances by Michael Pena as Luis and Randall Park as Jimmy Woo, plus more straight-laced performances by Laurence Fishburne as Bill Foster and Hannah John-Kamen as the villain Ghost.
With a movie full of so much talent, and so many heartwarming and humorous moments – not to mention some truly entertaining action sequences – it can be hard to choose favorites. Nonetheless, we’ve done our best here to try to narrow it down to the ten best moments from Ant-Man and the Wasp. Keep reading to see our picks.
Marvel’s Ant-Man and the Wasp is now playing in theaters.
Jimmy Woo’s Recap
Jimmy Woo is one of those minor Marvel characters that many fans love, but no one ever really expected to make a big splash on the big screen.
Randall Park’s version of Woo is put to excellent use in Ant-Man and the Wasp, playing the somewhat bumbling and overeager but good-natured law enforcement officer in charge of monitoring Scott Lang’s house arrest.
His first moment to shine really comes when he takes a moment to explain the circumstances of Scott’s arrest to his young daughter’s arrest. What follows is an impressive recap of the events of Captain America: Civil War.
Scott’s Replacement Ant
Scott Lang’s daily routine while under house arrestย isn’t the most inspiring, especially not for a superhero.
Since Scott can’t use his Ant-Man suit under the Sokoviaย accords, he can’t really do much to hone his superhero skills. Instead, he falls into a pattern of wasting time with trivial amusements and enjoying a couple of hours in the bath.
However, when Hope van Dyne shows up to spring Scott Lang from captivity, they have to do something to make sure that his departure goes unnoticed by Woo and his team.
To do so, they leave behind a giant ant with Lang’s ankle monitor strapped to it, and watching that giantย ant go through Scott’s daily routine really puts things into perspective.
Wasp and Ghost in Sonny Birch’s Restaurant
Evangeline Lilly as Hope van Dyne was mostly sidelined during the first Ant-Man movie, relegated to being Scott Lang’s emotional support and to workingย out here issues with her father, Hank Pym.
As teased by the Ant-Man post-credits scene, Hope finally gets to suit up as the Wasp in the sequel, and she makes quite the introduction.
Wasp’s raid of Sonny Birch’s restaurant is a fantastic action sequence that really shows how capable Hope is, how well she’s able to blend her own fighting prowess with the Wasp suit’s capabilities, and how different her fighting style is from any other Marvel hero, including Ant-Man.
That she goes toe-to-toe with Ghost and has her first team-up moment with Scott in this same scene makes this a true standout moment in Ant-Man and the Wasp.
Janet Possesses Scott
The core mission of Ant-Man and the Wasp is a race against time as Scott Lang, Hank Pym, and Hope van Dyne attempt to rescue the original Wasp, Pym’s wife and Hope’s mother Janet van Dyne, from the Quantum Realm where she’s been trapped for 30 years.
The only reason they believe its even possible for Janet to survive in the Quantum Realm is because of Scott, who shrunk down into the Quantum Realm in the first Ant-Man movie and then managed to return, which was previously believed to be impossible.
It turns out Janet noticed Scott while he was down there and tagged him some kind of quantum antenna. Much to everyone’s surprise, that antenna allowed Janet to possess Scott’s body for long enough to tell Hope and Hank what they needed to know to properly mount their rescue mission.
Watching Paul Rudd do his best impersonationย of Michelle Pfeiffer as Janet van Dyne is easily one of the most memorable scenes in Ant-Man and the Wasp.
The School Mission
When Janet takes control of Scott’s body, she tells Hank and Hope that in order to reach her they’re going to need a particular device that isย only present in older models of the Ant-Man suit.
Luckily for them, Scott may have lied a little bit when he had previously told them that he destroyed Hank’s original Ant-Man suit. Rather than destroy the suit, Scott shrank it down and hid it inside the “world’s greatest grandma” trophy that Cassie had given him for Father’s Day.
Unfortunately, Cassie decided to take the trophy to school for show-and-tell. Sneaking into the school to retrieve the suit should have been an easy task for Ant-Man and the Wasp, except that Scott’s new Ant-Man suit still has a few bugs (no pun intended) and leaves him student-sized. Hilarity ensues.
Luis’ Story
In addition to Paul Rudd, Evangeline Lilly, and Michael Douglas returning as Scott Lang, Hope van Dyne, and Hank Pym respectively,ย Michael Pena is also back as Scott’s lovable former cellmate Luis.
Luis is on the up and up since last fans saw him. He’s started a security business with Scott and the rest of their crew called X-CON, playing on the idea that a criminal would have the knowledge to protect your home or business from other criminals.
Luis runs into some trouble when Sonny Birch and his henchman barge into the X-CON office demanding to know where Team Ant-Man is. To get the answers they want, Birch’s men drug Luis with truth serum.
They didn’t know what they were getting into and soon Luis was launching into one of his signature stories going all the way back to when he first met Scott and recapping the events of Ant-Man.
Luis Wants to Be a Hero
Another great Luis moment comes slightly later in the movie.
Luis becomes entangled in the chase involving Ant-Man, the Wasp, Sonny Birch and his men, and Ghost where everyone is trying to get their hands on Hank Pym’s shrunken lab.
The momentย is especially tense since Hank Pym is currently in the Quantum Realm and need his lab to be full-sized before he can return, hopefully with his wife Janet alongside him.
Luis is suitably impressed when he sees Hope in action as the Wasp. He hints that he too may one day like to have his own costume, even if it doesn’t come with superpowers.
Hank and Janet Reunite
As mentioned, the entire plot of Ant-Man and the Wasp revolves around the search for and rescue of Janet van Dyne.
The original plan was to have Scott and Hope go into the Quantum Realm and search for Janet while Hank monitored them from the laboratory.
Things got complicated when Ghost found out where they were and gave chase. Hank quickly realized that he’d have to be the one to go into the Quantum Real to find Janet while Scott and Hope did their best to stop Ghost from interfering.
This meant that audiences got to see one of the emotional peaks of the Marvel Cinematic Universe as the original Ant-Man and the original Wasp reunited in the Quantum Realm after decades apart from one another.
Jimmy Woo asks Scott on a Date
Jimmy Woo was in charge of handling Scott Lang’s house arrest, but throughout Ant-Man and the Wasp it seems pretty clear that Woo is a bit in an awe of Scott.
There’s the moment when Woo is genuinely impressed by Lang’s close-up magic. Later Woo is seen trying to learn the same magic tricks from the same online magic schools.
The entire gag comes to a head towards the end of the film, when Woo is racing to Lang’s home to try to confirm that Scott has indeed broken house arrest. Lang gets back before Woo does, but Woo seems more bemused than legitimately angry.
Its all capped off by the perfect gag when Lang makes a joke about Woo asking him out to dinner only for Woo to then actually ask if Lang wants to go get dinner. Hopefully, this isn’t the last we see of Jimmy Woo in the MCU.
The Mid-Credits Scene
Last but obviously not least is Ant-Man and the Wasp’s mid-credits scene.
Ant-Man and the Wasp is almost entirely a self-contained story. The mid-credits scene is where it connects to the larger Marvel Cinematic Universe saga, specifically the events of Avengers: Infinity War.
The mid-credits scene sees Janet, Hank, Hope, and Scott reconvening to send Scott back into the Quantum Realms so that he can gather more quantum energy to use to continue trying to heal Ghost.
Scott goes in, but when he calls to be pulled back out there’s no one there to answer. That’s because Thanosย snapped his finger and Hank, Janet, and Hope were all among the 50 percent of life on Earth that vanished in an instant.
