Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania Writer Explains Why it Ended the Way it Did

Warning: The below contains full spoilers for Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania.

The first movie of the MCU’s Phase 5 is officially here with Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania. And while it follows Scott Lang (Paul Rudd) and his family as they get trapped in the Quantum Realm, it also spends quite a bit of time on Jonathan Majors’ Kang, who’ll clearly be a Thanos-level threat moving forward.

With that in mind, it was of course a no-brainer to make him “a force” or “a co-lead,” says Jeff Loveness, the screenwriter behind Quantumania. Having cut his teeth as a writer on Jimmy Kimmel Live! and then spending a few years in the writers’ room of Rick & Morty, Loveness isn’t done with the MCU quite yet; he’s also on board to write the upcoming Avengers: The Kang Dynasty, scheduled to be released on May 2, 2025.

He sat down with IGN for a quick chat about Kang, Quantumania’s ending, how much he thought about Kang Dynasty while writing this movie, and if Kang and Janet (Michelle Pfeiffer) got a little romantic. 

IGN: The movie is obviously so Kang-heavy. Was the plan to always give Kang his big feature intro in an Ant-Man movie?

Loveness: I can’t speak to the massive Marvel plan. But when I came in, he was on the table and I really jumped at that. And I thought, I just love the movies where the villains have equal table weight. I think an X-Men movie is made much better when Magneto has a compelling character arc in it. And Alfred Molina in Spider-Man 2 carries a lot of that movie. So I think it would’ve been a disservice not to make him this major table leg or just treat him as this background guy. So he was on the table, but I really did try to lean and make him a force and a co-lead in a way.

IGN: And you got Jonathan Majors, so that helps with enforcing this.

Loveness: Quite literally the best actor in the world. 

IGN: I don’t know if you saw this, but earlier this week, a child actor posted on Instagram that he had a role in the movie as Hope’s son. Was there a scene on the cutting room floor about all that?

Loveness: Oh, yeah. And it’s my fault. I think it just didn’t fit in the flow of what we were doing. There was more of that probability storm scene where Scott had all the multiplications and the Schrodinger’s cat thing. There was more of a psychological element to it too, in earlier scripts, which was really cool. But… it’s on me. I think it just seemed a little disjointed. 

There was more story of where Kang was going to explain what you’re walking into and what you’re seeing. But it’s on me. I feel bad for the kid. Sorry. I hope his agent wasn’t screaming at him that he really fucked his career. It was me. It’s my shoddy writing. 

IGN: And speaking of things that were left on the cutting room floor: I was really convinced that Scott and Hope were going to get stuck in the Quantum Realm. So was there any version of the movie where they were?

Loveness: We talked about it. Certainly, when you’re writing these things, you go through so many permutations and so many versions. I think I’m happy where we landed because I get the idea of being stranded, and it is powerful and it’s cool. But at the end of the day, we just couldn’t shake the feeling when we were pitching it out and gaming it and trying to make it when you’re just breaking story. 

At the end of the day on paper, it’s Scott Lang stuck in the Quantum Realm again. And it’s like, “Well, that’s literally what happens at the end of the last one.” And I think people are going to be a little tired of people getting stuck in the Quantum Realm and he’s gone from Cassie again. And it just felt a little too repetitive to me. And then the only way to go with it is like, well, he gets out of the quantum realm.

“The guy who literally saved the universe in Endgame is now potentially the guy who fucked the multiverse going forward.

That’s literally what happens in Endgame too. So it actually felt more revolutionary to have Scott win. But that victory comes with a cost of this guy who starts out so carefree and thinks his hero life is over. He’s willing to go to the mat and he’s willing to sacrifice himself, but his family saves him. 

And being in love with someone who’s got your back and having such a stable partner, she’s not letting go of him. She’s tired of losing people. And then the thing that Cassie was working on in the beginning, she gets a chance to save her dad. That thing that was haunting her for five years, she gets to actually utilize that. And the thing that got them into trouble is the thing that actually ends up saving them. 

It’s like a “Frodo going back to the Shire” thing. It’s like, “Oh, he’s back,” but he’s not the same guy anymore. And that carefree attitude is gone. And now he’s keeping secrets from his family. And now I think the fun potential – I don’t want to spoil anything – but it’s like, “oh, the guy who literally saved the universe in the last phase in Endgame is now potentially the guy who fucked the multiverse going forward.” He’s in a place of uncertainty, and he is trying to eat his feelings and bury it. Much like Janet coming back, it’s like, “I can’t think about it anymore. I just want to have a life right now. I just want to be with my daughter.” I think on second viewings and all that, those themes might cement a little more, but I like where we landed.

IGN: And speaking about Janet, I don’t think I was the only one to detect a little tension. Was there anything romantic between Kang and Janet in your mind with all those years in the Quantum Realm?

Loveness: Ohhhhhh. I mean, yeah you got Mr. Hunk over there all day, so mysterious. He’s got his little orb. I mean, I don’t know what’s in that orb. 

I intentionally left it a little vague, but clearly – let’s say they’re very good friends [laughs]. And I think sometimes we’re in kind of this YouTube reaction video world where everyone wants every little detail explained. And I don’t think I ascribe to that. I think there’s a magic in what is unsaid and what is not explicitly said. And sometimes the wicked witch of the west can melt because water melts her. That’s like, that’s all you got to know, man. There’s no setup. There’s no foreshadowing. It’s like, yeah, you know what? Throw some water on her. And she’s gone. No offense to 80% of IGN’s audience, of which I am one, but chill out guys.

I love Jane Austen novels or English novels [that] are very sexually repressed. I’m sexually repressed. But I think there’s a lot of strength in those types of relationships that could go either way. And maybe it did, maybe it didn’t. Maybe that’s a reason she didn’t want to tell her family about it. That’s part of it. And maybe she didn’t want to tell the family or the Avengers about it, because if they went down there, he would fuckin’ kill them. Or he would get their Pym Particles and get out. It’s something that, it’s like your grandpa talking about what happened to him in the Pacific Theater in 1944. Best not to bring it up. And because if you bring it up, it’s going to hurt a lot more people. 

But yeah, maybe they had sex. Who knows?

IGN: I also know that you’re writing Kang Dynasty. So how much were you thinking of that movie while writing this movie?

Loveness: Not at all. I mean, the [Kang Dynasty] job came after [Quantumania]. So obviously, because you’re writing Marvel, you kind of want to lay down a few train tracks where you think it should go. But I didn’t get the job until well after, and that was a long process of pitching and going in. But I think it helped me because I had a vision for where Kang should go and what should happen. And so I was able to just pick up those threads and lay out to [Kang Dynasty director Destin Daniel Cretton] and to Kevin [Feige] and to all those guys what I think [they] should do with the character. So no, I certainly didn’t, I could not have the job tomorrow. Let’s see what the internet thinks. But I did not have the job locked in or guaranteed. No, but I just took it a step at a time.

Alex Stedman is a Senior News Editor with IGN, overseeing entertainment reporting. When she’s not writing or editing, you can find her reading fantasy novels or playing Dungeons & Dragons.