Fans Revive Paul Rudd’s Conan Joke For Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania

Fans on Reddit have revived one of the great running gags in the history of late-night television, to celebrate the upcoming release of Ant-Man & the Wasp: Quantumania. For years, Ant-Man franchise star Paul Rudd used to go on shows hosted by Conan O’Brien — first on NBC, and later on TBS — and rather than sharing clips from his projects, he would tee up a clip from his project, only to reveal a short clip from the 1988 family sci-fi film Mac & Me. In the clip, a young boy in a wheelchair rolls out of control down a hill, falling into a creek and startling an alien.

“There’s something so tricky about ‘Oh, here I am. I’m going to sell my wares on TV. Like oh, here’s something from what I just filmed.’ It just seemed – and still does, to a large extent – kind of insincere,” Rudd explained in 2019. “And so, to me, this is like ‘People are watching this and it’s all just silly anyway. This entire business is silly.’ So that was one where I’ve seen the whole movie… I remember watching it, kind of stumbling across it on TV, and there’s a scene where it’s like the alien raids this kid’s house, kind of exactly like ET did, and then he goes out and he’s looking for this — I guess what he assumes is an alien or something that was in his house. And then the alien is up in the tree looking at him. And then this Peter Cetera-sounding song about best friends kicks in, and it’s totally unearned. They don’t even know each other. I remember being like ‘What?! This is the greatest thing I’ve ever seen.’ And so I think that when I started – and this was early in your show – [thinking] ‘I’m just going to show a clip from something else.’”

You can see the clip below.

Played by Jonathan Majors, Kang the Conqueror is set to be the next big threat to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and will square off with the Avengers in Avengers: The Kang Dynasty, due in theaters in May 2025. Originally teased in Loki, where Majors first appeared as a variant of the Kang persona, the villain turns up in the Quantum Realm in Quantumania, and seemingly has a devil’s bargain to offer Scott Lang.  

You can check out the official synopsis for Ant-Man & the Wasp: Quantumania below.

Super-Hero partners Scott Lang (Paul Rudd) and Hope van Dyne (Evangeline Lilly) return tocontinue their adventures as Ant-Man and the Wasp. Together, with Hope’s parents Janet van Dyne (Michelle Pfeiffer) and Hank Pym (Michael Douglas), and Scott’s daughter Cassie Lang (Kathryn Newton), the family finds themselves exploring the Quantum Realm, interacting with strange new creatures and embarking on an adventure that will push them beyond the limits of what they thought possible. Directed by Peyton Reed and produced by Kevin Feige and Stephen Broussard, Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania also stars Jonathan Majors as Kang, David Dastmalchian as Veb, Katy O’Brian as Jentorra, William Jackson Harper as Quaz and Bill Murray as Lord Krylar.

Ant-Man & the Wasp: Quantumania is set to hit theaters on February 17.