Ant-Man And The Wasp: After-Credits Scene Explained

Ant-Man & The Wasp is now in theaters, and of course it has two post-credits scenes (I guess we should lean into calling them stingers this time around, right?). That was never really up for debate. The real question on everybody’s mind has been whether the after-credits scenes connect Ant-Man and the Wasp with Avengers: Infinity War. The answer? Unfortunately, yes.

In the first scene we get a look at what Scott, Hope, Hank, and Jan have been up to in the time immediately after Jan’s return. They’ve taken their lab-sized bridge to the Quantum Realm and either totally rebuilt it or just conveniently shrunk it down with Pym Particles to fit in the back of a van, and now, Scott’s about to make the jump. This time, he’s not on a rescue mission, but after more „quantum particles,“ which he alludes to being part of Ghost’s „cure“ (the solution to her problem of phasing in and out of different quantum states uncontrollably).

It’s worth noting that with this new, smaller bridge, Scott isn’t using the submarine like vehicle that Hank used when he went to pull Jan out. He’s just going in with the Ant-Man suit and a plucky attitude. That matters because just seconds after Scott successfully makes the jump, he suddenly finds himself out of communication with the team back in the normal sized universe operating the device’s control panel. Unsurprisingly, we learn that all three of them were dissolved into dust care of Thanos’s Infinity War finger snap, right at the most inopportune time, leaving Scott presumably stranded in the Quantum Realm with no way to get out, no way to communicate with the outside world, and no one alive with the knowledge that he’s even there at all.

It’s a pretty bleak fate, given how obscure the Quantum Realm is to begin with, and with Hank, Jan, and Hope gone, the list of people smart enough to engineer a way to reach him–or even aware that the Quantum Realm exists–shrinks pretty dramatically.

The second post-credits scene takes place immediately after the first. We’re taken to the Lang house–eerily deserted, with the TV cut to an emergency broadcasting channel. Upstairs, the giant ant „stand in“ Hope programmed to mimic Scott’s routine keeps on keeping on, oblivious to the apocalypse, playing Scott’s drum set.

There’s basically an endless list of possibilities revolving around the Quantum Realm. Obviously, part of Avengers 4 is going to have to deal with Scott either getting out of or going further into the Quantum Realm. We learned in this movie that quantum particles can literally affect the nature of reality and can cause (or, significantly, reverse) the phasing of matter between parallel universes. We also learned that spending enough time in the Quantum Realm alters one physiology and can imbue a person with the ability to control–or at least manipulate–quantum particles in people’s bodies.

Granted, it’s pretty unlikely that Scott is going to stay trapped in the Quantum Realm for as long as Jan was, but we shouldn’t rule out the possibility that he’s going to come out the other side displaying similar energy manipulation abilities, at least temporarily.

With abilities like that, or with the quantum particles he harvested (and, maybe, can continue to harvest), there’s a whole new list of potential failsafes against the Infinity Stones. It’s probable–maybe even likely–that when the Stones destroy matter, they’re not actually vaporizing it, but instead forcing it to phase out of our reality into another–maybe even into a place that is touching or related to the Quantum Realm. Failing that, it’s certainly more than possible that the quantum particles are a way in which the Stones can be reliably counteracted; even if people were literally reduced to dust, if quantum particles can alter the fabric of reality, what’s to say they couldn’t reach into an alternate universe and pull a new version of a vaporized person back into our dimension?

It’s also worth considering that the Quantum Realm may have literally been out of reach of Thanos’s snap all together, and thus, in one way or another, immune to the Infinity Stones‘ powers. Of course, there’s the chance that Scott just got lucky enough to not be one of the people randomly chosen, but he’s atypical for the surviving group in that he wasn’t one of the original Avengers, which is one of the major commonalities between nearly all of the remaining heroes post-Infinity War. If the Quantum Realm is somehow safe from the Stones abilities, it may come into play in a totally different way come Avengers 4 next year.

Looking for more on Avengers 4 and Ant-Man and the Wasp? Read our full Ant-Man and the Wasp review, learn why it was released after Infinity War but set before it, discover the comics history of Ant-Man, and check out everything we know about Avengers 4 so far.

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