‘Ant-Man and the Wasp’ Director Clarifies His Feelings About Yellowjacket

Peyton Reed wants to clear the air about Yellowjacket.

Reed recently told io9 that he didn’t exactly love the first Ant-Man movie’s villain, Darren Cross, aka Yellowjacket, but today the director of that movie and its upcoming sequel, Ant-Man and the Wasp, too to Twitter to clarify what he meant by that.

“There have been a couple of clickbaity headlines claiming that I’m not a fan of Yellowjacket, the villain in Ant-Man,” Reed wrote. “For the record: I LOVE Yellowjacket! I LOVE Darren Cross, I LOVE Corey Stoll’s performance, and I LOVE the design of the character. Thank you for listening.”

So, with all of the love for Yellowjacket, how did things get misconstrued? Reed recently told io9 that he felt like Yellowjacket was leftover from a different era of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. It’s a comment that makes sense when one considers that when it came to Ant-Man, Reed replaced Edgar Wright as the director. While Wright’s original script — written with Joe Cornish at a much earlier point in the Marvel Cinematic Universe — was rewritten by Adam McKay, Yellowjacket remained the villain. That, for Reed, didn’t feel like a good fit and led him to do something different with the film’s sequel.

“The villain in that movie felt like a bit of a vestige from the era in which that project was started, [which was] around the time of Iron Man 1, where you have an antagonist who has a similar power set [as the hero],” Reed said. “I was hell-bent on doing something different in [Ant-Man and the Wasp].”

Reed being “hell-bent” on doing something different with his next villain is something more in line with the current state of the MCU. While early villains in were, like Yellowjacket, twisted versions of the heroes — think Obadiah Stane’s Iron Monger in Iron Man — the bad guys have changed up quite a bit more recently. Thanos, for example, is fairly unique in Avengers: Infinity War. It makes sense then that Reed might like the character and be pleased with Stoll’s performance in the role and still wish he had been able to choose a different villain for Ant-Man.

Fortunately, he had that opportunity for Ant-Man and the Wasp. Ghost is set to be a very different villain than Yellowjacket, something that producer Stephen Broussard discussed a bit during a visit to the set of the film.

“We thought that was a cool opportunity to create a character that was all about mystery and kind of, ‘What are the origins? and ‘What is the backstory? What is the goals and agendas of this person?’” Broussard shared. “It was a great vehicle for the kind of the story you wanted to tell because Ghost in the comics itself was a mystery. So, she’s very different from what has come before in the comics but in ways that kind of…Suffice it to say that she is on a path and she is on a mission at odds with our heroes on this journey but of a similar goal, of a similar aim, at the worst possible time for Scott Lang.”

Ant-Man and the Wasp opens in theaters on July 6th. Be sure to check out ComicBook.com’s review of the film.

Avengers: Infinity War is now playing in theaters. Other upcoming Marvel Cinematic Universe movies include Captain Marvel on March 8, 2019, the fourth Avengers movie on May 3, 2019, Spider-Man: Far From Home on July 5th, 2019, and Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 in 2020.

What do you think about Reed’s clarification? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.