After debuting in Ant-Man, Evangeline Lilly's Hope van Dyne went on to co-headline both sequels, but the character arguably had a bigger role in the first movie than either of its follow-ups!
Hope's reduced presence was particularly noticeable in Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania. Despite being on-screen for most of the run-time, the Wasp wasn't given much of an arc, and only really made an impact in the final battle with Kang after being sidelined for most of the film.
THR interviewed Lilly just before Quantumania hit theaters, and the Lost alum's comments make a lot more sense now that we've seen the threequel for ourselves.
Lilly begins by admitting that her character went through so many changes in her previous MCU appearances that she felt "a bit lost and uncertain that I’m really clear on who she is."
"But she doesn’t change a lot in this film. She starts the film in such a grounded place, and she starts the film in a really good place that she’s been trying to get to for a long time, having healed her relationship with her father, reunited with her mother, fallen in love with Scott and now is stepmoming Cassie. And all of that is on top of saving the world with the Avengers and starting her own company and trying to save the actual world from its everyday problems. So she’s in a really good place. There wasn’t somewhere she needed to get to or go other than just to repair a little wound in her relationship with her mom. So this one had a less dramatic arc for her, which gave me a chance to catch my breath and get to know her a little bit."
We do know that Hope had an entire subplot that ended up being cut from the movie. Specific details haven't been disclosed, but set photos have led to speculation that we would have met a Wasp Variant who had children in an alternate timeline.
A fourth Ant-Man movie is already being discussed, and we're sure Lilly will reprise her role before then in Avengers: The Kang Dynasty. Hopefully, she'll be given something a bit more substantial to work with!
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