The Ant-Man franchise has always been a lot of fun, but Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania appears to be a rare misfire for Marvel Studios. Tied with Eternals as the MCU's lowest-rated movie on Rotten Tomatoes, it's been a bigger hit with fans, but still struggled to live up to expectations.
One common criticism revolves around the lack of time the threequel spends on Earth. After a brief opening (which includes a wordless cameo from one Ant-Man and The Wasp supporting character), the heroes are sent into the Quantum Realm, leaving no room for the likes of Luis and Kurt.
David Dastmalchian gets to play a newly created CG character called Zub, but Michael Peña and his memorable recaps of past events are nowhere to be found.
Talking to The Hollywood Reporter, Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania director Peyton Reed offered an explanation for the absence of Scott Lang's friends.
"There were no versions of this movie [with Luis]," the filmmaker confirms. "There are a lot of characters in the movie. We obviously have our Lang, van Dyne and Pym family, but then we also introduced Kang, MODOK and all of our Freedom Fighter characters."
"So we had to make decisions early on about what stories we could tell and what stories we couldn’t tell. I love those characters. They were really, really fun and part of the Lang family, but as we got further and further into [development] and knew we wanted to bring the family into the Quantum Realm pretty early in the movie, it just didn’t make sense [to include Luis and co.]."
Reed's explanation adds up, but it's still a shame to think there wasn't room for at least a scene or two with people who have previously been portrayed as an incredibly important part pf Scott's life. There may be more at play here - perhaps Peña didn't want to continue playing the character - but at least we know now not to expect deleted scenes with him and Kurt!
Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania is currently playing in theaters.
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