The following contains spoilers for the motion picture Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania and its mid- and post-credits scenes.
Phase 5 of the MCU has officially launched with the theatrical release of Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, which yanked Scott Lang aka Ant-Man (played by Paul Rudd) & Co. back into the Quantum Realm. There, it was revealed that during Janet’s (Michelle Pfeiffer) decades in the Quantum Realm, she befriended Kang (Jonathan Majors) and helped try to repair his ship. But once the power core had been restored and Janet laid hands on the engine that is controlled by Kang’s mind, she saw his memories and realized that he was a ruthless conqueror of worlds. A conqueror who had been exiled to the Quantum Realm by “them,” with a sabotaged ship.
Janet acted fast and used Pym Particle Discs to super-duper-size the power core, making it useless and thus keeping Kang from visiting/vanquishing more worlds. Alas, when Janet was unexpectedly rescued from the Quantum Realm (in Ant-Man and the Wasp), it meant she left Kang behind to ride roughshod over the civilizations there. As such, when Janet, Hank, Hope, Scott and his daughter Cassie found themselves back in the Quantum Realm, they had to fend off irked natives, get a little TMI from Bill Murray, avoid Kang (and not help the tyrant shrink back down the power core), all while trying to find their way back home.
In the end, though Scott had been strong-armed into restoring the power core to its actual size, he and his family, along with the rebellious locals and a large army of bleeding-edge ants, defeated Kang’s empire. Kang himself, meanwhile, wound up getting shoved into the power core just as it was being made sub-sub-sub-subbbbb-atomic, leaving his fate a bit of a mystery that kinda sorta bothered Scott once he was back home and narrating one of his jovial walks through town.
THE MID-CREDITS SCENE revolved around alllllllllll of the other Kang variants gathering inside a massive arena upon learning that the one they exiled had been killed. They did not weep for him, but now are led to worry that too much has been learned about them and the multiverse which the conqueror had been navigating….
THE POST-CREDITS SCENE — BTW, wow a lot of digital artists worked on this movie! — tied in directly with the Disney+ series Loki, which of course is where Majors played his first Kang variant, He Who Remains. The scene was set in the late 1800s/early 1900s, at a small exhibition being led by one Victor Timely, a Kang variant. In the audience, we saw a wide-eyed, horrified Loki (played by MCU vet Tom Hiddleston) sitting next to TVA Agent Mobius (Owen Wilson). With a hushed voice, Loki assured Mobius that the scientist on stage was “him,” but Mobius couldn’t see how the folksy Victor Timely could be the powerful villain they’re apparently looking for.
WHAT DOES THE POST-CREDITS SCENE MEAN FOR LOKI SEASON 2, STREAMING THIS SUMMER?
As detailed for y’all as a handy reminder ahead of Quantumania‘s release, the Loki finale revolved around Loki and Sylvie meeting He Who Remains inside the Citadel at the End of Time. He Who Remains shared an origin story, for him and his variants, that aligns with what Kang said in Quantumania. Also like the movie’s Kang, He Who Remains warned that if he were to be killed, infinite variants of him would appear and a multiversal war would surely start. And we all what eventually happened: Sylvie up and killed the Kang variant, leaving Loki inside a TVA where now nobody, Mobius included, recognized him. And where a massive statue of Kang now overlooks the atrium.
Meaning that in that Quantumania post-credits scene, Loki is clearly on some sort of time-hopping mission to get Mobius reacquainted with him and to find variants of He Who Remains. Mobius, though skeptical of Victor Timely being any kind of Big Bad, seems willingly along for the ride. But when Loki Season 2 opens, will the estranged allies already be on this mission? Or will we rewind a bit and see Loki, now a stranger to Mobius, convince the TVA agent of what he and Sylvie learned from the Citadel?
Did the events of Quantumania make you even more excited for Loki Season 2, streaming sometime this summer?