Ant-Man And The Wasp: Quantumania Director Reveals Credits Scenes Secrets (Exclusive)
Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania is priding itself on setting the trajectory for the Marvel Cinematic Universe's overall story by giving Kang the Conqueror some hefty screen time. Jonathan Majors plays the menacing Marvel villain, having debuted as a variant going by He Who Remains in the Season 1 finale of Loki before going to play Kang the Conqueror in the Quantumania movie. With Avengers: The Kang Dynasty on the way, Majors and all of his Kangs are just getting started, as indicated by the pair of scenes in and after the credits of Quantumania. Speaking to ComicBook.com, Quantumania director Peyton Reed opened up about those scenes.
"I directed the first one which is the Council of Kangs scene," Reed told ComicBook.com. The first scene brought the pages of Avengers #267 to life, the book where the Council of Kangs first appeared and culminated with an onslaught of the villain's variants filling a colosseum, just as they did at the end of this movie. "We did this, in terms of, there's a very famous comics panel where you see the Council of Kangs and all these variants in there," Reed went on. "We definitely wanted to recreate that and give Jonathan [Majors] a starting point to deal with, 'Who do we bring in of the variants?' There's Rama Tut and there's a character based on Scarlet Centurion and, of course, Immortus. We wanted to go full Kurasawa Ran with it and make it really operatic."
Rama Tut was previously referenced in Moon Knight, with imagery showing up to indicate the character's history in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Now, it seems the Egyptian-ruler variant of the character who traveled back in time to conquer the ancient era of the land is indeed going to be a factor. Immortus, meanwhile, can be labeled as the Kang of all Kangs. As was made clear in the sequence Reed described, Immortus calls the shots for these variants and should be expected to play a key role in the story of The Kang Dynasty.
"There are some different Kangs and part of it was coming up with different, quick versions," Reed said. "It was sitting down with Jonathan and with Stephen Broussard and talking about like, 'This one could be perceived as this Kang and this Kang.' But what we really wanted to show was just the totality of it, how many variants there might be, when we get that that final panel. Trying to recreate that famous panel in the Council of Kangs right down to weird alien looking Kang in the top right corner, was really fun to do. With Jonathan, of course, that's his sweet spot, playing all these different versions of Kang."
As for the second credits scene, Reed did not direct it. "The end-credits thing is a tease for Loki Season 2," Reed explained. This marks the return of Moon Knight directors Aaron Moorhead and Justin Benson to the Marvel Cinematic Universe as they stepped into the role once held by Kate Herron for Season 2 of Loki. Loki Season 2 is slated to arrive on Disney+ later this year, bringing Tom Hiddleston's Loki and Owen Wilson's Mobius together again after the two were last seen in the final moments of Loki Season 1 with Mobius not recognizing his new friend Loki.
In line with Loki's fear of Kang exemplified in that scene from the character's second season, Ant-Man himself might have a similar fear of the character going forward. Quantumania writer Jeff Loveness shared his thoughts on Ant-Man's mental place to close out the film. "Scott Lang starts out carefree. He feels like he's literally saved the universe," Loveness explained. "He's won, he's got his family back, and he goes through all that. He gets called upon to be a hero again and prove himself. He's willing to sacrifice himself to save the Multiverse, but his family saves him. So. he comes back through all that. But now he doesn't have that ease of mind. And now he does have that crippling doubt, that as much as he wants to just shut up, have a piece of sh-tty cake and make up for lost time with his daughter by giving her a random birthday, he knows that he can't quite shake that feeling. And I think it's interesting, without saying too much, is the guy who literally saved the universe in Endgame might accidentally be the guy who f-cks the multiverse in its next saga."
What did you think of the ending for Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania? Share your thoughts in the comment section or send them my way on Twitter. Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania is now playing in theaters.