‘Ant-Man and the Wasp’ Director Explains Reasoning Behind Shocking Mid-Credits Scene

Ant-Man and the Wasp director Peyton Reed wanted that spoiler-y mid-credits scene to “punch the audience in the gut.”

The scene in question comes after the comedy-heavy blockbuster has finally reunited Scott Lang (Paul Rudd), Hope van Dyne (Evangeline Lilly), Hank Pym (Michael Douglas) and the long-lost Janet van Dyne (Michelle Pfeiffer) in the middle of a Quantum Realm-centric science experiment.

After sending Scott into the Quantum Realm through a miniaturized Quantum Tunnel, Scott is abruptly cut off from the outside world — because Hope, Hank, and Janet have disappeared, turned to dust as result of Thanos’ (Josh Brolin) snap that eradicated half of all life in the universe in Avengers: Infinity War.

“The thing that really appealed to us, was because it was a thing the whole way through of how are we going to deal with this issue Infinity War, and it occurred to us we were going to do it in an Ant-Man and the Wasp way. Which was to tell our story, make it self-contained, and make the ending of the movie with everything wrapped up in such a neat bow at the end of the movie,” Reed told Uproxx.

“The mission at hand, Scott Lang being on house arrest and seeing his daughter, the X-Con guys landing the big fish and getting their company saved, Hank and Janet reunited – it’s all The Partridge Family, the neatest possible bow of all time. And then we go into a colorful credit sequence. And then do this scene that would hopefully punch the audience in the gut.”

“And even in the scene, we introduce all of these elements all at once to the audience,” he added. “It’s like, oh, this is the first time I’ve seen Janet in street clothes. And they are in a parking lot? And there’s Luis’ van? And Scott in the suit and he’s going to the quantum realm in a shrunken tunnel? So everyone’s mind is on trying to make sense of the stuff at hand, so that hopefully the thing we were ultimately doing wasn’t immediately occurring to them.”

Reed knew audiences would be anticipating an Infinity War-slash-Avengers 4 tie-in, but they wouldn’t know which characters would suffer the effects of the snap — which made the scene fun.

“I think everybody in the back of their minds’ are like, ‘okay, they can’t ignore it, they can’t ignore it.’ What’s going to happen and who is it going to happen to?” Reed said. “So we wanted to just have fun with that. And for me, you’re not going to do the event in a bigger way than Infinity War did it. It had to be its own different tone and it had to be specific to our movie.”

Reed saw an early unfinished version of Infinity War and didn’t attempt to top it with the breezier Ant-Man and the Wasp – especially after that heartbreaking death scene for Spider-Man (Tom Holland).

“Oh God, when I first saw that moment in Infinity War – in an early cut where the effects weren’t done; I think they were still grayscale effects – it killed me,” Reed said. “It was like Saving Private Ryan stuff. It’s like, oh my god, the extended Peter Parker moment was fantastic. I love it. So we don’t bask in it the way they did.”

Ant-Man returns in Avengers 4, out May 3, 2019.