Evangeline Lilly Wanted More Romance in ‘Ant-Man and the Wasp’

Marvel star Evangeline Lilly advocated for a bigger romantic presence in Ant-Man and the Wasp and added the kiss shared between Hope and Scott (Paul Rudd).

“You might be surprised to find out that if anything in these films, I’ve sort of pushed the romance to up up, like just a notch, just the tiniest bit, because it was there all the time,” Lilly told Digital Spy.

“But the Marvel executives and [director] Peyton [Reed] were so cool — and Paul I think as well — about really not wanting that to be at all what she’s about, and wanting her to have this incredible career, this incredible drive and motivation, and for the love story to be absolutely backseat to almost everything else in the movie, which I love, and I think it’s appropriate.”

Despite their initial frustrations, the first Ant-Man culminated in a romantic pairing between Lilly’s newly minted superhero and Rudd’s ex-con single father.

Two years after Scott’s illegal defiance of the superhero-limiting Sokovia Accords in Captain America: Civil War, Hope and Scott have split because his last-minute Avengers assist resulted in fugitive status for Hope and scientist father Hank Pym (Michael Douglas). In Ant-Man and the Wasp, the father-daughter team have cut ties with the house-arrested Scott for letting Pym tech fall into the hands of the government.

Ant-Man and Wasp are then forced together to pull off a desperate rescue of Hope’s long-lost mother, Janet (Michelle Pfeiffer), and the new superhero partners are inevitably drawn back together — after a push from Lilly.

“I did find myself just sitting back as a voyeur, sort of sitting back as an audience member, and being like, ‘These two characters are so adorable together, we want some satisfaction as an audience. We want to see the fruition of that chemistry,’” Lilly said.

“And so it was actually in Ant-Man and the Wasp, it was me who added the — spoiler alert — the kiss. There wasn’t one in the script. And on the day, when we got there to shoot, I said, ‘Listen, I’m just saying, this is what I feel like I want to do and I feel like it’s what Hope wants to do, so can I do it?’”

Reed said his Marvel blockbuster follow-up is not a romantic comedy, but the director did take inspiration from 1972 Barbra Streisand-led romcom What’s Up, Doc?, namely in a lively and frantic car chase set on the streets of San Francisco.

Ant-Man and the Wasp is now playing.