Ant-Man & The Wasp's Post-Credits Scenes Explained

Warning: Spoilers for Ant-Man and The Wasp.

Ant-Man and The Wasp is Marvel Studios' latest film in their cinematic universe, and like all of Marvel's movies, it has two post-credits scenes. Typically, a credit scene will be a quick tease of an upcoming film or a callback joke to the movie itself, but in the case of this sequel, both credit scenes are more closely tied to the events of Marvel's previous film, Avengers: Infinity War.

Infinity War drastically altered the landscape of the MCU, with every Marvel film to follow sure to be affected by those dramatic events. However, with Ant-Man and The Wasp, the fallout from Avengers: Infinity War isn't felt until after the film's main story concludes. This is because Ant-Man 2 is set before Avengers 3.

So when it comes to the film's credit scenes, it only makes sense that these are the moments which bring Scott Lang, Hope van Dyne, and Hank Pym up to the same point chronologically as where we last left off with the rest of The Avengers in Infinity War.

Avengers: Infinity War ends with Thanos collecting all six Infinity Stones and using the Infinity Gauntlet to indiscriminately kill half the universe's population with a snap of his fingers. It's a bleak ending, with the surviving Avengers (and audience) watching on in horror as one by one, characters disintegrate into dust and crumble away. The characters of Ant-Man and The Wasp are not immune to this cruel fate, and in the film's mid-credit scene, we learn exactly what happens to Scott, Hope, Hank, and the recently-rescued Janet van Dyne right after Thanos' now infamous finger snap.

The scene opens with Hope, Hank, and Janet getting everything set for Scott to travel back into the Quantum Realm and collect more of the quantum energy needed to continue healing Ava (AKA Ghost). They're on the top floor of a parking garage and the quantum tunnel is now shrunk to fit in the back of Luis' van. With all three of the Pym/Van Dyne family working the controls, visiting the Quantum Realm isn't as dangerous as it used to be, but the trip still has risks. Scott will need to signal when he's ready to be pulled back from the Quantum Realm, and to lighten the mood, Scott pretends he can't hear them once he's gone subatomic. No one finds his joke all that funny.

But then, when Scott does signal for them to pull him back out, he gets no response. Thinking that either Hope or Hank are getting him back by playing their own prank, Scott laughs it off and signals again, but still there's no response. The scene cuts back to that parking garage roof where we see the remains of three figures crumbling to dust: when Thanos snaps his fingers and enacts his genocide, Hope, Hank, and Janet are among the unlucky half of the universe who perish in an instant.

Scott survives the snap - possibly because he's not technically in our universe - but his fate isn't all that much better. With Hope, Hank, and Janet all gone, there's no one operating the controls to bring Scott back from of the Quantum Realm. Scott is essentially trapped and there's no one left alive who knows where he is or how to pull him out. In Ant-Man, Scott managed to grow from being subatomic to full-sized on his own with the help of his suit's regulator, but Ant-Man and The Wasp repeatedly illustrated his regulator hasn't been working properly, meaning it's no longer an option; Scott can't pull himself out of the Quantum Realm and there's no one left to do it for him. Being there may have saved Ant-Man from Thanos, but it's also left him in serious danger.

Ant-Man's fate likely won't be revealed until either Captain Marvel or the still-untitled Avengers 4. Both films are releasing in 2019 (one in March, the other in May) and, despite being set decades apart - Captain Marvel is set in the 1990s while Avengers 4 picks up events immediately following Infinity War - they will both set the stage for the future of the MCU. Captain Marvel is said to also involve the Quantum Realm, so it's possible she may be involved with rescuing Scott; perhaps even in one of Captain Marvel's credit scenes, filling in more of the timeline before the start of Avengers 4.

More probable, however, it may not be until Avengers 4 that Scott returns to the macro-universe. Per the leaked Avengers 4 art, Ant-Man is a key part of that team-up, so it would make sense for his escape to coincide with him remeeting Captain America and co. It may be that his time in there is even how the team discover time travel, believed to be a key part of Avengers 4's plot. However Scott comes back into the fray, he will eventually reunite with the Pyms; Evangeline Lilly, Michael Douglas and Michelle Pfeiffer are all also returning (although probably not until all the other deaths have also been reversed).

Whichever movie it occurs in, though, it's safe to say Scott isn't returning without someone's help.

Key Release Dates

Tags: ant-man 2

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