(Spoilers ahead for the ending of both “Ant-Man and the Wasp” and “Avengers: Infinity War”)
“Ant-Man and the Wasp” got its digital home video release on Tuesday night, and if you’re like me the first thing you did was watch the movie’s audio commentary with director Peyton Reed in hopes that he might give some insight into how its ending, which intersects directly with that of “Avengers: Infinity War,” would lead into “Avengers 4” next year.
And while Reed’s commentary was certainly full of fascinating and interesting nuggets about the characters and behind-the-scenes goings-on on “Ant-Man and the Wasp,” it did seem to be missing any chatter about the future of the Marvel Cinematic Universe in general and Ant-Man specifically.
That is, until the very end of the film, when Ant-Man (Paul Rudd) is marooned in marooned inside the Quantum Realm because Hank Pym (Michael Douglas), Janet Van Dyne (Michelle Pfeiffer) and Hope Van Dyne (Evangeline Lilly) all fell victim to Thanos’ finger snap.
Finally, Reed starts to look forward a bit, but it’s all in service of lightly trolling the audience because of course he isn’t actually allowed to say anything about “Avengers 4.” So, yes, it was disappointing that we don’t get any substantial tease for what’s next from this commentary, but also this was pretty. Read Reed’s full comments below.
“What this means, in the larger sense — of course I’m not at liberty to say. You know that! Even if you’re sitting here listening to this, and you’ve been listening to me ramble on for two hours. And you’re hanging on the hope — oh man, is he gonna reveal something about ‘Avengers 4’ that I don’t know? Well guess what, you’re in luck. I have here the screenplay [shuffles papers] for ‘Avengers 4,’ which I am going to read to you right now.
“But before I actually get through the entire script I’m just going to read some of the salient plot points. Now, these are not only spoilers, I would say these are extreme spoilers. So I’m gonna go through them very, very carefully. So the first question is: is everyone dead, or who’s coming back?
“Well, here’s what I’ll say about — I can only speak about our characters in ‘Ant-Man and the Wasp.’ So Scott Lang is in the Quantum Realm, and he is seemingly trapped, and we don’t quite know how he’s gonna get out. We know in the first movie he had some grow discs with him that he used to get out. Dramatically, we can’t go to that well again. That would just be lazy. As filmmakers, we can’t do that again. So we made sure that he does not have any grow discs with him in the new suit. And, remember, it appears that it’s the malfunctioning suit. So how’s he gonna get out of that? Well, here’s how [crackling noise that he makes with his mouth, then silence for several seconds] …and he manages to do what I just said. So, umm, you guys got that, right? Cool.
“So, now let’s talk about our favorite Avengers. Let’s talk about Spider-Man. Let’s talk about Iron Man, Captain America, Black Panther, Hulk. What happens to these characters in ‘Avengers 4’? Well — hang on, someone’s coming. Yeah. You know what, I’m being told that I cannot actually tell you any of this stuff. I thought the street date of this disc would allow me to reveal some of the secrets, but I’m not gonna be able to reveal any of that. I apologize for that. Sorry to get your hopes up about that.
“I can talk to you about the next ‘Ant-Man’ movie. [pause] Actually, I’m not allowed to talk about that either. There’s really been no determination as to whether there is even going to be a next ‘Ant-Man’ movie, or ‘Wasp’ movie, or anything. We don’t know anything. And I’m not allowed to talk about that. So, umm, let’s talk about, umm, let’s talk about ‘Planet of the Apes.’ You guys like the ‘Apes’ movies?”
From there, Reed does proceed to talk about his love of the “Planet of the Apes” franchise, then “Star Wars,” then Altoids — he jokes that because of the prominent appearance of an Altoids tin in “Ant-Man and the Wasp” he now gets a lifetime supply of the mints.
Anyway, all that certainly wasn’t what we were looking for when we turned on the commentary, but it was pretty funny. In any case, only five more months or so until “Captain Marvel” comes out, and (sheesh) seven until “Avengers 4” gives us a resolution to all this. “Only” seven months.