SPOILER ALERT: The following article contains rather big spoilers for Peyton Reed’s Ant-Man. If you haven’t seen the film yet, we recommend you click away to one of our other wonderful articles.
Over the course of Ant-Man’s runtime, Evangeline Lily’s Hope van Dyne is constantly urging her father, Dr. Hank Pym, to give her a shot wearing the titular superhero costume… and in the mid-credits sequence it’s revealed that he’s long been prepping a suit for her to wear. But does this mean that Hope will make her debut as Wasp in next year’s Captain America: Civil War? According to Marvel Studios President Kevin Feige, you shouldn’t get your hopes up.
While attending the Los Angeles press day for Ant-Man a few weeks ago, I had the chance to sit down one-on-one with the Marvel executive/producer, and it was while diving a bit into spoiler territory that I asked about Wasp’s possible future in the aforementioned 2016 blockbuster. Unfortunately, Feige delivered some sad news in response, first giving me a firm "No," and then explaining,
Civil War has a lot of things going on it, and it feels like with Ant-Man, we just saw all of his things. It’s going to be fun to see Hope for the first time, put that suit on and go out with Scott. We didn’t want it to become just a moment amongst moments. So whether we actually get to see it in a standalone Ant-Man film, or as a larger part of a future film, we’re still figuring that out.
There is an interesting twist that adds to this story as well, though. Shortly after speaking with Kevin Feige, I rushed over to interview Evangeline Lilly as well, and she had some very interesting things to add about her future as the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s Wasp. In addition to saying that she’s already been fitted for the suit (though she hasn’t gotten to wear it yet), the actress revealed that there originally were some different plans in place for the future of her superhero persona, but that those plans have been changed and are currently being reworked. Said Lilly,
There was an original plan and it got scrapped… I can’t tell you. And now we’re refabricating plans and they’re still up in the air. We still don’t know.
In Ant-Man’s mid-credit sequence, we see Hope van Dyne being led by Michael Douglas’ Dr. Hank Pym to his workstation. It is upon their arrival that Hank explains that he had been working on a new suit with his wife, Janet van Dyne, for a while, but had only recently come to the realization that the costume was really being built for Hope. This gets a simple but exciting four-word response from future superhero, who smiles and says, "It’s about damn time."
Discussing the suit and the opportunity to become Wasp in the MCU, Evangeline Lilly said that she is extremely hungry for her chance to wear her special costume, and has been particularly keeping her fingers crossed that Ant-Man will do well so that she will have the shot. From what Kevin Feige told me, it sounds like she will be suiting up in the future… we just don’t know when yet.
