Ant-Man doesn’t sweat the small stuff. Even when he’s trapped in a prison cell in the mysterious other world known as the Quantum Realm, staring down his purple-and-green-suited captor, Kang the Conqueror, the superhero remains undeterred.
“You’ve made a big mistake,” Ant-Man tells Kang, pausing for full effect. “I’m an Avenger.”
“Oh, an Avenger,” Kang responds, himself pausing, but not to register intimidation. “Have I killed you before?” he asks, the question barely disturbing his indifferent visage. “They all blend together after a while.”
Kang’s response is quite a blow to Ant-Man, who has worked hard to reach this unlikely point. When we first met Ant-Man in the 2015 movie bearing his name, he was just Scott Lang (Paul Rudd), an ex-con and divorced dad whose criminal record prevented him from even holding a job at Baskin-Robbins. Forced to turn back to his criminal ways, Lang inadvertently steals a suit that lets him shrink down to microscopic size, eventually helping the suit’s inventor, Hank Pym (Michael Douglas), prevent arms dealer Darren Cross (Corey Stoll) from using it for evil.