How the Avengers: Endgame Team Changed the Quantum Realm

As the culmination of over 20 films throughout the last decade, Marvel Studios brought all of their franchises together in Avengers: Endgame for an epic battle against the Mad Titan known as Thanos. But in order to to right the wrongs he inflicted on the universe, Earth’s Mightiest Heroes had to embark on what Ant-Man described as a “time heist” by utilizing the Quantum Realm.

This version of the Quantum Realm had quite a few changes from what we saw in Ant-Man and the Wasp, even though the same visual effects team worked on these scenes across both Ant-Man movies and Endgame. Russell Earl, the visual effects supervisor of Industrial Light and Magic, explained why they needed to change the Quantum Realm for the new movie.

“It was all about trying to tell the story of, okay, they’re coming off the platform through the quantum tunnel, so we’re referencing the quantum tunnel stuff from the van that was in Ant-Man and the Wasp,” said Earl. “That was the driving force there and then we were tying into some of the stuff we had done in the prior film on Ant-Man and the Wasp, sort of traveling through the different layers of the Quantum Realm. Before, the big thing was trying to tell that story of ‘Okay, the time GPS is able to guide them on these different paths.’ It’s funny because they go by so quickly, but a lot of love and time and effort goes into just trying to give a sneak peek of each of those levels, tell the story that they’re traveling through, and just try to bring something new to it.”

This new look at the Quantum Realm might be setting up future storylines in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, as producer Kevin Feige teased in the Marvel Studios celebration book released by Titan late last year.

“At the end of Ant-Man we followed Scott Lang into the Quantum Realm for the first time,” said Feige. “We were beginning to peel back the onion that would later be completely peeled back in Doctor Strange as we go into the multiverse. So that was our little test into that. But now the Quantum Realm is a whole other territory that we can play with to tell our stories. This Quantum Realm is much larger than we ever imagined, and there are all sorts of adventures to be had at that level, which perhaps we will explore in another film.”

Fans can take their own trip through the Quantum Realm by going to see Avengers: Endgame, now playing in theaters.