Film / Ant-Man and the Wasp

Due to sheer volume of spoilers, all spoilers are unmarked! You Have Been Warned!

Real heroes. Not actual size.^Cast Clockwise from top: The Wasp, Janet Van Dyne, Ant-Man, Ghost, Sonny Burch, Hank Pym, Bill Foster, Luis

Scott: You go low, I go high.
Hope: I have wings, why would I go low?!

Ant-Man and the Wasp is a 2018 film directed by Peyton Reed and written by Andrew Barrer, Gabriel Ferrari, Paul Rudd, and Adam McKay, based on the Marvel Comics characters of the same name. It is the twentieth film installment of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the eighth installment of Phase 3, and a sequel to 2015's Ant-Man.

The film once again follows Reformed Criminal and part-time Avengers ally, Scott Lang / the incredible shrinking Ant-Man (Rudd) — or at least he was, until he once again became a criminal for his decision to side with Captain America in Captain America: Civil War. Now, he's just hoping to not break probation and spend some time with his daughter.

However, Scott is soon pulled into an urgent new mission by his now fugitive mentor, Dr. Hank Pym (Michael Douglas) — the original Ant-Man — and Pym's daughter Hope (Evangeline Lilly), who's taken on the mantle of The Wasp, previously held by her mother Janet van Dyne (Michelle Pfeiffer), to save Janet from her decades-long entrapment in the beyond-microscopic Quantum Realm. But first, the group has to get through a black market tech dealer named Sonny Burch (Walton Goggins) and an intangible thief known as "the Ghost" (Hannah John-Kamen), who both want the pieces of tech our heroes need for their rescue for themselves.

Returning cast members include Michael Peña, David Dastmalchian, and Tip "T.I." Harris as the members of Scott's crew, Abby Ryder Fortson as Scott's daughter Cassie Lang, and Judy Greer as Scott's ex-wife Maggie, while new additions include Pfeiffer as Janet van Dyne, Randall Park as Agent Jimmy Woo, and Laurence Fishburne as Dr. Bill Foster.

Ant-Man and the Wasp is notable for being the first film produced by Marvel Studios to feature a leading woman character with her name in its title, after 2019's Captain Marvel was pushed back a year to accommodate this film's release date.

On November 1, 2019, a third film in the series was confirmed to be in development. Peyton Reed will return to write and direct. On December 11, 2020, the title of the third film was revealed to be Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, which will also introduce Jonathan Majors as Kang the Conqueror and Kathryn Newton as a re-cast Cassie Lang. The film is scheduled to release on February 17, 2023 and will be the first project in Phase 5.

Previews: Trailer 1, Trailer 2.

Not to be confused with the 2018 comic book also titled Ant-Man & The Wasp, which features Hope's mainstream Marvel Universe counterpart Nadia van Dyne instead of her.

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Ant-Man and the Wasp provides examples of:

Tropes # to C

• The '80s: There are several flashbacks to Hope's childhood set before and after Janet's disappearance in 1987.
• The '90s: The flashback to Ghost's Freak Lab Accident is set somewhere in the 1990s. (Her actress was born in 1989, plus Bill Foster's hairstyle in said flashback.)
• Aborted Arc:
  • Shortly after Ghost reveals Hank Pym's role in her father's death, Hank defends himself by claiming that Elihas was a traitor who deserved to be fired, for reasons he doesn't elaborate on. There is no followup or clarification on this later on — it never gets brought up again.
  • HYDRA agent Mitchell Carson got Pym particles in Ant-Man. If he ever used them has never been addressed.
• Acid-Trip Dimension: We finally get a good look at the Quantum Realm, and it is an incredibly trippy place full of neon colors, undulating solids, floating planetoids and constantly warping space.
  Hank: You never said it was so beautiful, Scott.
• Acronym Confusion: Invoked by Maggie in response to the FBI's suspicion of Scott Lang's whereabouts during his house arrest.
  Maggie: What does FBI even stand for? "Forever Bothering Individuals"?
• Action Girl: Hope now gets to fight multiple bad guys as the superhero Wasp along with Scott, whom she shares the title with.
• Adaptational Heroism: The Ghost isn't evil, just desperate — her powers are killing her and she just wants to survive. Likewise, her father, Elihas Starr, a.k.a. Egghead, is not a good person by any stretch in the comics, but his only scene in the film is dedicated to him trying to save his wife and daughter.
• Adaptational Superpower Change:
  • Ghost was a baseline human in the comics who got his powers from the suit. The MCU version is an enhanced human who got her powers from an accident; the suit helps her manage them.
  • Janet van Dyne is a complex example of the trope. In the comics she is a baseline human who later got additional abilities to shoot bio-energy blasts, but here is a baseline human who derives her powers from the suit. Initially, at least. Her time in the Quantum Realm has given her additional powers that she cited as being "evolution".
• Adaptational Villainy: Bill Foster is helping Ghost — or so it seems. While Ghost is willing to kill and kidnap, Bill acts as her Morality Pet, and he antagonizes Hank more out of a petty grudge than being outright evil. It's still a far cry from his comic-book counterpart.
• Affectionate Nickname: Scott still calls Cassie "Peanut", and Janet calls Hope "Jellybean".
• Ambiguous Situation: Bill Foster and Hank Pym give conflicting accounts of what Elihas Starr did that got Hank to expel him from S.H.I.E.L.D., so it's ultimately not clear what he did or how justified Hank's response was.
• Amicable Exes: Scott and Maggie are now fully back on good terms and working together to co-parent Cassie. Maggie, in fact, is second only to Cassie in angrily defending Scott against the FBI.
• Anachronic Order: The film is set two years after Captain America: Civil War but before Avengers: Infinity War, despite being released after the latter. At the very least the mid-credits scene overlaps with Infinity War.
• And I Must Scream: During the mid-credits scene, Scott is trapped inside the Quantum Realm without a way to return as the Pyms had been disintegrated by Thanos's finger snap. Oblivious of what has happened, Scott can only scream for the Pyms. Thankfully in Endgame, he escapes after only a five-hour stay... at least to him.
• And Starring: "With Michelle Pfeiffer, Laurence Fishburne, and Michael Douglas as Hank Pym"
• And the Adventure Continues: Left unclear. "Ant-Man and The Wasp will return?"
• Animal-Themed Superbeing: Ant-Man and the Wasp both have identities that reference insects.
• Anti-Villain:
  • Ghost only antagonizes the heroes because she needs Pym's Quantum Tunnel to heal her phasing. That said, she does treat the potential casualties — specifically, Janet — as acceptable collateral.
  • Bill Foster wants to save Ghost because he's her Parental Substitute. He objects to using Cassie to get to Scott and the Pyms, and takes an ethical stand against killing Janet (though the ability of an aging scientist to stop an Intangible Man on a practical level are somewhat negligible).
• Arbitrary Skepticism: Sonny and his goons live in a world where men in Powered Armor are flying around, a Super-Soldier from World War II was frozen in ice for nearly a century, gods exist as Sufficiently Advanced Aliens, and no less than three alien invasions have occurred. They also want to make money off of quantum technology, and witnessed two people with shrinking technology go toe-to-toe with a person with phase-shifting powers. Yet the drug expert insists that there is no such thing as a Truth Serum.
• Armed Females, Unarmed Males: When Scott sees Hope as the Wasp for the first time, he's surprised to see her suit comes with gauntlets that fire energy blasts. Hank could've added them to Scott's suit, but chose not to.
• Armor-Piercing Response: Hope's response to Scott's query about whether she would have joined him in Captain America: Civil War if he had asked is that they'll never know now, but if he had told her, she would at least have ensured he wouldn't have been caught.
• Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: When Sonny Burch and his gang are injected with the truth serum, they're spouting all the crimes they've committed of robberies and murder. Sonny then adds "also, there are truly horrible amount of health code violations at my restaurant."
• Artistic License – Law: Burch and his minions confess to their crimes when under the effect of the "truth serum." Those confessions will not hold up in any court of law. The courts already refuse to recognize statements or confessions given under duress, and any statements or confessions obtained through chemical means where a person could not even exercise their Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination, or their right to remain silent, aren't going to be upheld by any court. (That said, since the confessions at least will probably get the police to start investigating for proper evidence and testimony, Burch still isn't likely getting out of trouble.)
• Artistic License – Law Enforcement: Ankle monitors will set off a silent alarm if they're so much as jostled while undressing. Hank would never be able to take Scott's off and put it on an enlarged ant without at least a phone call from Jimmy Woo.
• Artistic License – Physics:
  • Ghost, when she was a child, is shown to be having trouble with being able to touch anything and keep her powers of passing through solid objects under control, and yet the bottom of her feet don't phase through the ground and have her fall towards the center of the Earth. Of course, if that happened at any point, the film would've been very different, so it can be chalked up to Anthropic Principle.
  • In the opening scene, Hank and Janet are standing at the opening of a missile silo as the missile launches, and they hop on in order to stop it. In reality, the expanding gases coming out of the silo from the launch would have blown them away like leaves, and they never would have been able to jump onto it.
• Artistic License – Prison: In the flashback scene where Scott and Luis are in prison, Scott is reading a thick stack of papers held together by a large metal clamp. The guards would have removed the clamp from the papers before it was given to Scott. It's a good-sized piece of metal that could be fashioned into a weapon. Scott wouldn't to it, of course, as he's a Nice Guy, but rules are rules.
• Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever: The building-sized Giant-Man makes a return. To be precise, Scott notes that his record height as Giant-Man is 65 feet, whereas Bill Foster was only able to reach 21 as Goliath. He reaches over 80 feet in the climax.
• Awesomeness by Analysis: Hank and Hope logically deduce the obstacles between them and escape from the FBI interrogation room; possible structural compromises from shrinking a load-bearing wall, potential number of officers between them and escape, potential number of officers in the building total... But thankfully, Scott is already on the case and smuggles Hope's Wasp suit out of lockup, and a uniform for Hank via ants.
• Bait-and-Switch: It's known through promotional material that this film overlaps a little with Avengers: Infinity War. In the first Stinger, Scott goes to the Quantum Realm while Hank, Janet, and Hope act as mission control. Hank asks for a mic check as Scott goes through the Quantum Tunnel, and after a moment of silence, Scott responds, prompting everyone to breathe a sigh of relief. Later, Scott asks to be sent back out and is met with silence. Cut to Hank, Janet, and Hope having been Reduced to Dust by Thanos's snap.
• Base on Wheels: Hank is now building the Quantum Tunnel in a lab which can be shrunken down and moved around like a suitcase (complete with telescoping handle and wheels), or carried by hand.
• Bathos:
  • A tense scene of Scott, Hope, and Hank being interrogated by Ava and Bill has any seriousness undercut by the duck quack ringtone from Scott's cell phone when Cassie calls him looking for her soccer shoes.
  • The second stinger shows the effect of Thanos's snap that wiped out half the universe... and then closes on the giant ant still playing the drums within the same scene.
• Battle Couple: Scott and Hope are both superhero partners and have a Relationship Revolving Door since the end of the first movie. The producers of the film even said Ant-Man and the Wasp could be considered a Romantic Comedy between the two.
• Berserk Button: Hank shows that he's still sensitive about the loss of his wife, when Bill Foster talks about how Janet paid the ultimate price for putting up with Hank.
• Big Bad Ensemble: There are two main villains in the movie: Ghost, who needs the Quantum Tunnel to heal her phasing (and the heroes can't outright share it with her as it might kill Janet), with Bill Foster as her Cast Herd; and Sonny Burch, a black market dealer who just wants the Quantum Tunnel for the money it could make him. There's a third antagonist with Jimmy Woo, an FBI agent out to arrest Scott, but the Ant-Man franchise has been scrupulous about depicting law enforcement as good people who just happen to antagonize the main character, and Woo fits that mold.
• Big Bad Wannabe: Sonny Burch. While his connections to the Black Market, and the FBI, make him a credible threat on his own, he's upstaged by Ghost, whose phase-shifting powers and desperation make her a greater threat.
• Big Damn Heroes: Kurt and Dave arrive just in time to save Luis from being killed by Sonny Burch and his goons.
• Big Little Man
  • Scott is stunned unconscious by Hope and wakes up in her car driving away from his house. He starts to panic that someone will see he's broken house arrest, then really panics when a Giant Eye of Doom looks through the car window. Turns out Hope's car has been shrunk to miniature size so no-one will see Scott leaving, and some curious pigeons are checking them out.
  • The same gag is repeated at the end of the movie when they're apparently at a drive-in theatre watching Them!. Then a giant moth lands on the movie screen and we get a Reveal Shot that shows they're in a shrunken car, with a bunch of other shrunken cars to create the drive-in feel, parked in front of a laptop that's playing the movie.
  • In-Universe when Scott is accidentally shrunk to half his size while in the school, so he puts on a child's hoodie as a disguise. A teacher sees him (from the back) and demands to know if he's got a hall pass, but Scott just runs off and the exasperated teacher doesn't bother chasing him.
• Big "NO!": Ghost when Scott shrinks the lab and Luis loads it into the car.
• Body Snatcher: While Scott, Hank and Hope are trying to calibrate Janet's position in the Quantum Realm, Scott's body is suddenly possessed by Janet as a result of their quantum entanglement. Hilarity Ensues as Janet interacts with Hope and Hank while still in Scott's body, and later when Scott regains control of his body.
• Book Ends: The film begins and ends with a superhero trapped in the Quantum Realm.
• Breather Episode: The film serves as a lighthearted break after the more serious-minded Black Panther and the devastating Avengers: Infinity War, even though it chronologically takes place shortly before or during the events of Infinity War. And then the devastating impact of Infinity War catches up.
• Brick Joke:
  • Luis razzes the guys for paying for the undercarriage wash when Burch and his thugs arrive and they talk about it briefly.^note It's only really necessary in states with snow, where roads are de-iced with salt and not cleaning it off the undercarriage will cause it to rust. Later on, when driving (shrunken) under another car, Luis comments that it is filthy.
  • The chemical mixture used by Burch's henchmen. They vehemently deny the wombats' claims that the mixture is a truth serum, then at the end, while they're laid out and waiting for the FBI to arrest them, one of them admits that it pretty much is a truth serum.
  • While waiting for the vehicle to recalibrate in the micro-universe, Hank watches and is nearly eaten by some tardigrades. During The Stinger, before Scott enters the Quantum Tunnel, Janet tells him to watch out for the tardigrades, who are cute but will try to eat him.
  • Scott complains about the Paper-Thin Disguise used to get into Bill Foster's college lecture, and yet Hank manages — with Scott's help — to use the exact same thing to walk right out of the FBI office later on.
• Bullet Time: The Creative Closing Credits have most scenes giving off the effect of an instant frozen in time by using toy playsets and action figures, and having the camera turn around them or zoom suddenly. Including some shots were broken glass or debris are flying around, unmoving.
• Butt-Monkey: Poor Scott just can't seem to go five minutes without having something humiliating happen to him.
• Call-Back: Events from previous Marvel films are discussed and serve as motivations for specific character actions in this film.
  • Scott and Hope discuss Scott's decision to team up with Captain America back in Captain America: Civil War and Hope's conspicuous absence.
  • Scott questions if he didn't get the wings and blasters in Hope's Wasp suit back in Ant-Man because they weren't available yet, only for Hank to readily admit that no, they were.
  • As with the previous movie, Scott cryptically suggests that the team should go to his buddies for help. Hank immediately knows who Scott is referring to and vehemently objects to it. Cue one Gilligan Cut and they are at X-Con talking to the three wombats. Hell, they're even offering the team tea right after the cut in a reversal from the last movie.
  • Scott mentions how hard it is for an ex-con to find honest work when defending his friends' fledgling security business, referring to when he got fired from Baskin-Robbins in his first outing and made the same point to Paxton.
• The Cameo:
  • Tim Heidecker as a ferry tour guide.
  • And, of course, Stan Lee as an elderly man whose car gets shrunken during the final chase in San Francisco.
• Chase Scene: In a series first, the final battle is not a straight fight scene between the heroes and the villains, but rather a car chase with a superhero bend. It's a Mêlée à Trois between the heroes, Ghost, and Sonny Burch, all of them fighting over the laboratory. As said, this being a superhero chase scene means this is done in a unique way, with size-shifting, intangibility, and super science mixed in with the chasing itself. That being said, the sequence does end with a more conventional fight against Ghost inside the laboratory.
• Chekhov's Gag: Woo is astonished by Scott's magic tricks and asks him how he did it. Later, we see Woo watching the videos Scott used to learn the tricks, and later still, he recognizes Scott's use of misdirection with the giant suit.
• Chekhov's Gun:
  • Scott's "World's Greatest Grandma" trophy turns out to be the hiding place for his previous Ant-Man armor.
  • Hank's Altoids tin is later revealed to be holding his ants, which are unleashed on Bill Foster and Ghost.
  • The Ant-Man suit being a prototype comes back to bite Scott in the ass when he goes giant and almost drowns in the San Francisco bay when he can't shift back to normal size.
  • Luis's Hello Kitty Pez dispenser gets used by Hope to stop Burch's men during the car chase.
• Chekhov's Skill: While under house arrest, Scott's picked up card tricks to pass the time. He uses the misdirection skills the tricks require to distract Ghost long enough to let Luis and Hope escape with the portable lab and later to fool the FBI into thinking that he has left his house in order for his team to get away with the lab.
• Cliffhanger: Ties into the ending of Avengers: Infinity War: Scott is stuck in the Quantum Realm during a collecting mission to heal Ghost, while Hank, Janet and Hope all dust out from Thanos's finger snap.
• Clothes Make the Superman: The powers of Ant-Man and the Wasps (both sets) come from the suits. After Ava phases in and out before Scott, he comments that he initially assumed her powers came from her suit.
• Collapsible Helmet: Scott and Hope's helmets collapse back into their collars, for greater convenience in using them. It also helps keep their faces visible to the camera.
• The Comically Serious: Jimmy Woo's comedy comes from reacting in FBI seriousness to the size-shifting silliness around him, but he's not nearly as unflappable as he'd like to think.
• Comic-Book Movies Don't Use Codenames:
  • Averted with Ghost, who gets that moniker from the heroes and is called that way almost exclusively.
  • Downplayed with Ant-Man, who gets called that way exactly once, by Cassie.
  • Averted altogether with his alternative codename when live news coverage of his appearance at Fisherman's Wharf dubs him Giant-Man.
  • Played straight with Wasp, who's referred exclusively as Hope except for the title and credits.
  • Bill Foster isn't called "Goliath", but says he was part of a "Project Goliath" in the past.
  • Also played straight with Elihas Starr, who is never referred to as "Egghead".
• Comically Missing the Point:
  • When Scott describes his dream of hiding in a wardrobe, Hope recalls playing hide and seek with her mother.
    Hope: That's where I hid every time we played.
    Scott: I don't think you get the gist of the game.
  • Lampshaded when Hope and Luis shrink the van during a chase and drive under the car of their pursuers:
    Luis: That undercarriage is filthy!
    Hope: They have bigger problems. [unshrinks the van]
• Continuity Nod:
  • One of the last things Scott is seen doing in Captain America: Civil War is patting on a stool like a bongo drum when in his cell. Clearly drum practice was the next logical step.
  • Luis chants, "I'm the boss, I'm the boss..." before going in to X-Con Security at the start of the movie, like Scott chanted to psych himself up in Civil War.
  • When Cassie sees the large ant hiding in Scott's bathroom, she instantly becomes enamored with it like she did with a similar ant she adopted as a pet in the first film.
  • Scott helps the Pyms break out of FBI custody (even providing Hope her suit and Hank an FBI uniform), a reversal of roles from the first movie when Hank breaks Scott out of police custody.
  • Luis gets to pull his sucker punch again, on Burch.
  • Luis's "disgusting-ass van" makes an appearance just after the climax, as well as The Stinger. "La Cucaracha" horn and everything.
  • Hank says he used to have his name on the sides of buildings. In the climax of the first movie, the heroes blew up the Pym Technologies building.
• Contrived Coincidence: The ending of Avengers: Infinity War coincides with Scott entering the Quantum Realm. When his allies attempt to get him back, all three of them are disintegrated by Thanos, leaving Scott stranded in the Quantum Realm again.
• Convenience Store Gift Shopping: Cassie got Scott a "World's Greatest Grandma" trophy because that was the only one available at the store. Scott still loves it because of how sincere Cassie's love for him is. It's also where Scott hid his original Ant-Man suit.
• Cool Car: Hank has a collection of cars shrunken and kept inside a Hot Wheels toy box. Each of these cars are equipped with Pym Particle technology, allowing them to grow and shrink. While Hank and Hope mostly use vans, Luis later uses a tuned Hyundai Veloster with a Hot Paint Job.
• Costume Evolution: Scott receives a new suit. Unlike previous suits, this one features a Collapsible Helmet and the activation buttons on the gloves were moved from the third knuckle to the second to be easier to reach. Hank also explains that he upgraded Scott's and Hope's suit regulators to remove their diffractors (Scott's regulator also moves back to his belt), although Scott's isn't fully tested yet and goes off at random intervals.
• Crazy-Prepared: Hank Pym, what haven't you done with Pym Particles?
  • He took a whole fleet of cars with him when he and Hope went on the run. He keeps them in a vintage Hot Wheels Super Rally case. They can even grow and shrink while they're being driven, hiding in plain sight then growing to swat other cars through the air.
  • You thought Pym might be slumming it in hotel rooms after Civil War? Nope! He has a ten-story building full of all the science toys he can possibly think of, equipped with a giant retractable handle disguised as part of the HVAC so he can shrink it down and haul it away like a suitcase. It even has wheels that pop up when the handle is extended. As he casually lugs it into a newly-grown Hot Wheels van, we get a good clear shot of the lot the building was standing on — actually an asphalt-paved parking lot, complete with (faded) painted parking spaces and entrance slopes on the sidewalks. It's not a shrinkable office building, it's a size-multiplied scale model of one! Hank built an N scale office building, dropped by one day with the "suitcase" and put the building there.
    BILLBOARD FOR LEASE 510.156.5819
  • Pym rigged an Altoids tin as to release a group of giant ants. He and Hope trick Ava and Foster into thinking it's heart medicine, which allows team Pym to escape.
• Creative Closing Credits: The first set of credits are played over key scenes from the film... as plastic toy playsets with characters replaced with action figures and cars with Hot Wheels toys. It's all very '80s toy craze, and one of the most ridiculously fun CCCs of the MCU to date.
• Creator Cameo:
  • Stan Lee once again appears, this time as the owner of a car that Hope accidentally shrunk during a car chase scene between the heroes, Burch, and Ghost.
    Stan Lee: Well, The '60s were fun, but now I'm paying for it.
  • The film's effects supervisor appears in front of a store when Wasp is driving a miniaturized car.
• Cruel Twist Ending: Or rather, cruel-twist-post-credits-scene. Scott enters the Quantum Realm for Quantum Particles for the sake of continuing Ava's treatment. However, Thanos's snap happens at that exact moment, with Hank, Janet, and Hope as casualties, leaving Scott stranded in the Quantum Realm.

Tropes D to H

• Death by Adaptation: Elihas Starr, known as Egghead in the comics, died prior to the events of this movie.
• Defrosting Ice Queen: Hope broke off their relationship after Scott's stunt in Germany, and cold-shoulders him at the start of the movie, but soon warms once they start working together again. Downplayed since, unlike the first movie, she is not cold in general but specifically angry at Scott.
• Demoted to Comic Relief: Kurt and Dave. In the last movie, their skills as a hacker and getaway driver respectively were important to the story. In this film they mostly just participate in Seinfeldian Conversation, only coming into the action at the very end of the climax.
• Derailed Train of Thought: It's practically weaponized when Luis is interrogated by Sonny Burch, and (being Luis) can't avoid veering off on screwy tangents even when under the influence of Truth Serum. In fact, the serum seems to make it worse by making him respond to every comment.
  Dave: You put a dime in him, you gotta let the whole song play out.
  Kurt: He like human jukebox.
  Luis: Oh, my abuelita had a jukebox in the restaurant! Yeah, only played Morrissey, and if anybody ever complained, she'd be like "Oh, ¿no te gusta Moz?" — you know, chicanos, we call him Moz....
• Deuteragonist: Unlike its predecessor, Ant-Man and the Wasp features Hope in a leading role alongside Scott, rather than being a supporting character in his film.
• Diabolus ex Machina: The Stinger reveals that the movie took place at or near the same time as the Infinity War and the Pym family turn to dust due to The Snap. Scott is trapped in the Quantum Realm as a result.
• Didn't Think This Through: Scott helping Captain America in Germany forces the Pyms to go on the run, because the authorities assumed they supplied him with the suit.
• Diegetic Switch: During the scene showing Scott's daily routine, he's karaoke-singing the song used for the montage.
• Digital De-Aging: Similar to the previous film, we get a CG de-aged Michael Douglas as Hank Pym. This film, we also get a de-aged Michelle Pfeiffer as Janet Van Dyne. However, the de-aged Bill Foster seen in flashback is actually played by Laurence Fishburne's son.
• Dirty Cop: Agent Stoltz is in cahoots with Sonny Burch, who gives him tips and thanks to a call from him, the FBI captures both Hank and Hope.
• Distressed Dude: After going giant, grabbing the lab, and dropping it on the dock, Scott faints in the water due to exhaustion. He is saved by Hope.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?: When Scott and Hope meet Bill Foster to discuss the Goliath project, Foster says his record height was 21 feet. Scott smugly says he reached 65 feet. Hope then asks if they're done comparing sizes.
• Double-Meaning Title: While the film title certainly refers to Scott and Hope, the film puts equal emphasis over Hank and Janet's relationship.
• Dude, Where's My Respect?: Scott continues to suffer from this, given his displeasure that Hank withheld blaster and wing tech from him, and being upset that he gets the dinkiest desk in the office because the others nabbed the good ones while he was under house arrest.
• Earn Your Happy Ending: Scott is released from house arrest and put on probation, the X-Con business gets the contract they need to stay in business, Ava gets a better handle on her condition, and the Pym family is reunited. Then the post-credits scenes happen.
• Eldritch Location: The Quantum Realm. A bizarre unexplored dimension where space and time "become irrelevant". The landscape itself (or whatever it is acting as solid ground) is constantly shifting and moving. And simply arriving can break one's mind. The only way in is by the most powerful magic or subatomic shrinking.
• Embarrassing Ringtone: While Bill Foster has the heroes tied up and is explaining his plan, his ever-so-serious speech keeps getting interrupted by the ludicrous quacking duck ringtone that Scott's phone plays as Cassie tries to call him.
• Emergency Broadcast: The post-credits scene shows that one is being played at least in San Francisco, and probably worldwide, as a result of The Snap.
• End of an Age: The movie was the last instalment of the MCU to be released in Stan Lee's lifetime. He died five months after the release and continued to make two more posthumous cameos in the films (the other one being Captain Marvel) until his final MCU appearance in Avengers: Endgame.
• Even Evil Has Standards: Downplayed Trope.
  • Bill Foster isn't exactly evil, but he objects to using Cassie to get to the Ant-Man team and even declares that he will leave Ghost to die if she goes through with hurting the little girl.
  • Towards the end, where everybody is chasing after the lab, Wasp gets outmaneuvered and bounces off the front of Burch's car (with Burch making a rather impressive split-second catch of the lab as it flies through the air). Burch and mooks, despite now having an explicit opportunity to run over the downed superhero and end her interference permanently, steer around her to make their getaway.

• Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: Sonny Burch cannot perceive the idea that the Pym's quantum research is for any motive other than financial profit, and tries to bully them into giving him a cut of the business. Even when he gets told that that they have no intention of trying to market the fruits of their research any time soon, he just thinks this is a lie to distract him while they sell it to someone else, and then spends the rest of the movie trying to steal their research.
• Evil Laugh: In certain advertisements, Scott laughs as he grows bigger, like he did in Captain America: Civil War.
• Exact Words: Even under the effects of (it's not a) Truth Serum, Luis confuses the subject about where Scott is, by telling the bad guys where he is emotionally, not physically or literally.
• Explain, Explain... Oh, Crap!: When Scott has Luis look for the trophy that Cassie gave him, Luis tells him that the trophy isn't there. When Scott is about to say that he put it up after his and Cassie's game, he realizes that Cassie had stolen it, even after he told her she could't it take to show and tell.
  Scott: I put it up there right after Cassie and I... [facepalms] Show and Tell.
• Extremely Short Timespan: The film takes place over about three days, which is when Scott's sentence ends, on the third day. The only exceptions are the opening and closing scenes.
• Expanding Thrown Weapon: During the fight in the restaurant, Janet throws a salt shaker, then hits it with Pym Particles to make it expand and block a doorway, preventing a mook from escaping.
• Failed Attempt at Drama:
  • Agent Woo's attempts at being intimidating and ominous are continually derailed by his general awkwardness and Scott's snarkiness.
  • When Bill Foster tries to explain his and Ava's plans to Scott, Hank, and Hope, he gets distracted by Cassie calling Scott's phone, asking him where her soccer shoes are because she left them at Scott's house.
  • Sonny Burch tries to intimidate Luis into telling him where Scott is, but Luis and co. are clearly not taking him seriously when they show more concern over that Luis withheld the fact that they're days away from going out of business, than being interrogated.
• Faking Another Person's Illness: Cassie's cover story for her (currently) absent father when Woo comes to check in on him is that he has a stomach bug and has just finished vomiting all over the bathroom; the latter detail is what disturbs Woo enough to make him hesitate to continue.
• Family Title: Technically, since the Ant-Man and Wasp legacies originally belong to the Pym/van Dyne family. Unlike the previous Ant-Man film, this one focuses on their family relationship compared to Scott's.
• Fate Worse than Death: Ava describes the quantum accident that killed her parents and left her in her entangled state by saying that she was the unlucky one. Bill Foster even says that her disintegration might not be a clean death.
• Favoritism Flip Flop: Bill scornfully mocks Hank's stunt in Berlin, thinking that Hank was wearing the Ant-Man suit. When Hank angrily reveals that it was Scott, Bill changes his tune, impressed by Scott's ability to grow to such a huge size.
• Finger Poke of Doom: Burch is ultimately defeated by a finger poke to the chest... from a guy 85 feet tall.
• Flanderization: The first movie establishes Scott as a brilliant (albeit not quite on the same level as the MCU's other resident geniuses) MIT-educated engineer. Those credentials are barely acknowledged here, while his Manchild aspects are played up. He even has a Calling Me a Logarithm moment regarding quantum entanglement, a phrase he should have at least encountered before.
  • Maggie Lang and Jim Paxton receive this treatment as well, due to them becoming secondary characters at best, and we only see them through their relationship with Scott and Cassie rather than as characters on their own. However, this works well, since it still shows that their Character Development is consistent, and their appearance establishes the Langs as a sweet and functional extended family.
• Flawed Prototype: Scott's new suit is a "work in progress," and progressively becomes harder for him to control.
• Foe Romance Subtext: Ava Starr/Ghost seems very... interested in Scott after she captures him, with her curiously staring at Scott until he wakes up (in contrast with Hope and Hank, both of whom Ava forcibly wakes up by kicking them in their backs) and creepily invading his personal space.
• Foregone Conclusion: The movie will naturally end with Scott surviving, as he's said to have a major role in Avengers: Endgame.
• Foreshadowing:
  • Luis's fits over the guys at the firm spending on everything from expensive donuts to the "deluxe undercarriage treatment" at a car wash seems to be just him being cheap. When under truth serum, he's forced to confess that the company is basically broke and just days away from shutting down and he's been trying to cut any costs, no matter how petty.
  • While infiltrating the lab, Scott is startled when he comes face-to-face with the Ghost, which turns out to be just her empty suit. Later, he uses his empty Ant-Man suit propped up against a building to distract the FBI.
  • Bill's college lecture is fundamentally an explanation of Ghost's condition and phasing. Small wonder that he's involved with her, as her Parental Substitute.
  • Bill Foster at one point tries to persuade Ava to bring Janet back instead of absorbing her quantum energy like they initially planned as Janet (being one of the greatest scientists in the quantum field) could be able to help treat Ava's condition. After Janet is rescued, she indeed helps Ava, by stabilizing her molecules and later by sending Scott to the Quantum Realm to gather some energy in treating her.
  • Scott is very protective of the little toy trophy because it's the present that Cassie gave him, so he doesn't really want her to bring it with her to school. This is also because Scott hid the old, miniaturized Ant-Man suit inside the trophy.
  • Scott learned close-up magic to kill time and entertain Cassie. He uses misdirection in the climax to distract Ghost for a few vital minutes.
  • Scott and Bill have a conversation about how growing in size is extremely tiring. This comes back in the Fisherman's Wharf scenes, where Scott over-exerts himself by growing, and collapses into the bay.
  • Scott worries aloud that Ghost will reach into his chest and crush his heart. She doesn't, but appears to use this method on the corrupt FBI agent later.
• Forgot About His Powers: A lot. The film justifies some of it with Scott's faulty suit, but it's still noticeable with the others as well.
  • Hank and Hope know that their enemies know where they are, yet Hope doesn't suit up before they leave the building.
  • The third act chase scene would be over quickly if Hope just kept the car shrunk down. This is particulary noticeable since she actively alters the car's size for a few seconds at a time.
• Four-Temperament Ensemble: Team Pym forms one by the end of the movie, with Hank (choleric), Hope (melancholic), Scott (sanguine) and Janet (phlegmatic).
• Freeze-Frame Bonus: A city can be seen nestled away in the background of the Quantum Realm, indicating that the Microverse exists within the MCU.
• "Friends" Rent Control: For an ex-con who had a difficult time getting a paying job, and had to be roommates with Luis and his crew in the last movie, Scott's house in this film is pretty large and upscale for San Francisco standards. Considering that he's unable to leave, seems to live alone for the most part, and is only just starting to get his business with the Wombats off the ground, one has to wonder where his income for rent is coming from.
• Frying Pan of Doom: During the fight against Sonny Burch's goons in the restaurant's kitchen, one of them tries to hit the Wasp with a frying pan, but she grabs his arm and knocks out another goon with it.
• Fugitive Arc: Hank and Hope are on the run from the FBI throughout the movie thanks to Scott's actions in Captain America: Civil War.
• Gender Flip: Ghost, a white male character in the comics, is turned into Ava, played by British-Nigerian actress Hannah John-Kamen.
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff: In-Universe, it's shown that Mexicans love British musician Morrissey due to how his soulful ballads connect with them, even a Latin bar having a jukebox that only plays Morrissey songs. Do note that this is 100% Truth in Television, as Morrissey's real-world popularity with Mexicans is to a point where he himself has stated that sometimes he wishes he was born as one.
• Gone Horribly Right: The Truth Serum used on Luis only makes him MORE of a Motor Mouth than he already is. No inhibitions also means it's easier for him to stray off topic, making getting useful information out of him excruciating.
• Gosh Dang It to Heck!: Agent Woo is the sort of person to unironically use the phrase "What in the dickens?", among others. It makes sense when one considers that he's a youth pastor in his off time.
• Greater-Scope Villain:
  • Whoever Sonny Burch's mysterious buyers are, they serve as the primary cause of conflict for the film after the Ghost herself.
  • Thanos manages to kill three of the main characters without even appearing on-screen. He overshadows everything despite being irrelevant to the central story.
• Gut Punch: After the movie ends on a high note, The Stinger has Ant-Man entering the Quantum Realm, only to be trapped because Thanos's snap from Avengers: Infinity War turns the Pym family to dust.
• Hand Blast: The Wasp suit has power blasters located in the wrists.
• Happy Ending Override: Both played straight and averted.
  • Played straight in that, at the beginning of the movie, Hank and Hope are not happy with Scott for stealing the Ant-Man suit to fight alongside Captain America and his allies in Germany, resulting in the Pyms being wanted by the FBI.
  • Averted in that, since Scott turned himself in and agreed to house arrest rather than remain a fugitive after Germany, he's still on good terms with Maggie and Paxton, who are very supportive of Scott and happily let him see Cassie.
  • Then played straight again with the stinger, leaving Scott trapped in the quantum realm after Hank, Janet, and Hope get dusted by Thanos.
• Held Gaze:
  • Scott and Hope in the car after the initial heist on Sonny Burch to get the tech they need. Hank is a Moment Killer and interrupts it.
  • Scott and Hope share another gaze in the custodian's closet at Cassie's school, which is interrupted when Scott's malfunctioning suit shrinks him to child size.
• Heroes Act, Villains Hinder: An inversion of the Villains Act, Heroes React common to the Marvel movies. The plot is driven by Hank and Hope wanting to rescue Janet from the Quantum Realm. Ghost and Burch interfere because they have their own plans for Janet and the technology involved.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: Dave and Kurt inject Sonny and his henchmen with their own Not Truth Serum, and they confess their crimes to the police, including "appalling" health code violations at Sonny's restaurant.
• Holding Hands: An unintentional and very awkward one between Hank and Scott after the latter is possessed by Janet.
• Hollywood Law: In-Universe, Maggie's understanding of Scott's legal situation leaves something to be desired, as pointed out by her cop husband, Paxton.
  Maggie: You people can't just show up here whenever you want and search the place!
  Paxton: Actually, they can.
  Maggie: You need a warrant!
  Paxton: Actually, they don't.
  Maggie: Really? Wow.
• Hope Spot: Played for dark laughs. Hank, Hope, and Janet may be dead. Scott may be trapped in the Quantum Realm. But at least Scott's ant survived!
• Hot Paint Job: Scott instructs Luis to enlarge and drive one of the cars in the Hot Wheels case. He picks a purple car with orange flames from the box.
• How the Mighty Have Fallen: Played for Laughs as Hank laments how this trope applies to him.
  Hank: I used to be a respected scientist, had my name on the sides of buildings. Now... [cut to the quantum tunnel in the back of Luis's van]
• Huge Guy, Tiny Girl:
  • Taken to the extreme: Scott has the power to grow in size, while Hope's suit can seemingly only shrink and make her as big as she originally was, though she possesses wings and blasters to compensate.
  • In an inversion of the trope, Scott's suit tech malfunctions while he is child-sized, leaving him a few feet shorter than Hope.
• Hypocritical Humor:
  • When Scott claims that he destroyed his suit, Hank is outraged. But when Scott later admits that he kept it, Hank is equally outraged.
  • Scott berates his friends for arguing over small things instead of focusing on helping the Pyms. He then notices his table and is upset over the fact it's smaller than theirs. Then Hope attempts to interject and he promptly declares that they need to focus.

Tropes I to M

• Iconic Sequel Character: Janet van Dyne, the original Wasp in the comics, makes her official MCU debut in this film. She previously appeared in Ant-Man, albeit masked in flashback. Here, she's portrayed by Michelle Pfeiffer.
• Idiot Ball: Burch's henchman Uzman seems to be holding one pretty tightly. Burch says he's a former intelligence operative who developed and perfected the truth serum, but after injecting Luis he just steps aside and lets Burch, who clearly doesn't know anything about interrogation, take over and ask all the questions. Realistically, Uzman would have to know that even after injecting someone, questioning has to be done slowly and carefully, in order to prevent exactly what Luis does, which is to take full advantage of Exact Words, Loophole Abuse, Obfuscating Stupidity, and You Never Asked in order to buy time and tell the truth, just not the information they're looking for.
• Improvised Weapon: With the aid of Pym Particles, enlarged salt shakers and even pez dispensers make for impromptu throwing weapons.
• Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain: Sonny Burch. All of his attempts to steal Pym's laboratory end up thwarted by Ghost without even trying, his mole at the FBI is killed, and after finally stealing Pym's lab by mere luck, he is knocked out by Scott pushing him with his finger. Ends up tazed and tied up off-screen for the police, by the Wombats of all people, and confesses all of his crimes under the effect of Truth Serum. Though he'd be more sympathetic if he weren't the most evil character in the film.
• In Name Only: The Ghost in this movie is an entirely different character compared to the one in the source material. In the comics, Ghost was an Iron Man villain, a male technician who got screwed over by the company he used to work with, and so with the intangible tech and suit he developed, he went on to destroy corporations he viewed as corrupt or oppressive. In this movie, the Ghost is a woman and an adversary to Scott and co., who got her powers from a quantum-related accident — the special suit she wears is merely to help control her phasing abilities instead of providing her with them — and her goal is to get Hank's tech in hopes that it can stop said phasing.
• Innocuously Important Episode: Advertised as a Breather Episode between the cataclysmic Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame, the Russo brothers revealed at the time that this movie is "the most connected" to the events of Endgame, implying there was more to it than meets the eye. As Endgame reveals, the Quantum Tunnel used to rescue Janet proves to be instrumental in retrieving the Infinity Stones from the past after Thanos destroys them. Because Scott was trapped in the Quantum Realm during the Snap, he was able to inform the Avengers of what he knew about it after escaping, including that time works differently there and that it could possibly be used for Time Travel. Tony Stark is able to build a larger version of the Quantum Tunnel which the Avengers use to collect the six Infinity Stones from various points throughout history, therefore reversing the Snap and bringing everybody back. The suit Hank Pym builds to travel to the Quantum Realm also serves as the basis for the team suits the Avengers use in Endgame for the same purpose. Without the events of this movie, then, the events of Endgame would have been impossible. Not bad for a movie that wasn't even part of the original plan for Phase Three!
• Insane Troll Logic: Luis's reasoning for why the phrase "land the bird" is correct.
  Luis: How am I going to land a fish, it can't walk. And if it swam up on shore and it battled a hawk, who's gonna win?
• In-Series Nickname: While reminiscing to Hope about the events of Captain America: Civil War, Scott calls Steve Rogers/Captain America "Cap". Hope looks skeptical that he's on such familiar terms with Captain America.
• Insistent Terminology: The Wombats keep referring to the chemical mixture Burch and his henchmen use on Luis as a "Truth Serum", despite the villains' protests.
• Intangibility: Ghost has the ability to phase through objects. Unfortunately she can barely control it and if she doesn't get it under rein soon, she'll die. In spite of that, she still provides a formidable challenge to the heroes and makes good use of her bad situation.
• Interesting Situation Duel: The final fight pits two size-shifting heroes versus one intangible villain, with everyone using their powers to dodge or phase through attacks, while everyone is driving through San Francisco and fighting over a small item.
• Interquel: Takes place between Civil War and Infinity War, despite being released after the latter.
• I Want My Beloved to Be Happy: Despite having his own axe to grind with Scott, Hank to his credit doesn't interfere when his daughter is seen to be warming up to Scott again, except by occasionally reminding them to focus on the task at hand instead of each other.
• Jump Scare: In-Universe when it's revealed Ghost was standing right there in the room when Burch was torturing the Wombats via truth serum as to the whereabouts of Scott and the Pyms. Luis reveals the woods and at the same time Ghost appears out of nowhere in all their faces and screams, "the woods?!" scaring them all half to death.
• Know When to Fold Them
  • When Hope returns in her Wasp suit and starts knocking his mooks around like ninepins, Burch is smart enough to hand the MacGuffin to a mook and get him to run off with it. He then sits down at a table and doesn't try to stop Hope leaving after she's taken down all his mooks.
  • When the Ghost shows up also looking for the lab, Burch knows he's out of his league and calls his FBI contact to raid the lab instead, figuring it's easier to steal from them using his inside man.
• Lampshade Hanging:
  • When trying to find Bill Foster on the university campus, Scott and the Pyms are wearing baseball caps and sunglasses, to which Scott deadpans "These aren't disguises. We look like ourselves at a baseball game." The disguise is pretty much known as a constant staple of previous MCU films where characters have attempted to use this to "blend in."
  • Scott uses classic action movie tropes like Laser Hallway (made of string) and Borrowed Biometric Bypass (a huge mock eye attached to a frisbee) in the game he plays with his daughter.
• Legacy Character: Hope becomes the second Wasp in the MCU's internal history, following in the footsteps of her late mother — or rather, her not-so late mother.
• Lies to Children: averted by Agent Woo's Establishing Character Moment.
  Cassie: Why can't you just leave my daddy alone?
  Woo: Oh, Cassie. This must all seem like a bunch of confusing grown-up stuff to you, huh? Well, think of this way. Your school has rules, right? Like, you can't draw on the walls. Well, your daddy went to Germany and drew on the walls with Captain America. And that was a violation of Article 16, Paragraph 3 of the Sokovia Accords. Now, as a part of his joint plea deal with Homeland Security and the German government, he was allowed to return to the US, provided he serve two years under house arrest followed by three years of probation. And avoid any unauthorized activities, technology or contact with former associates who were or are currently in violation of said Accords. Or any related statutes. Okay, sweetie?
• Lighter and Softer:
  • This film is this in comparison to its immediate predecessor and the first film, given lower stakes, less menacing villains, and more comedy in it. Avengers: Infinity War features Thanos who wants to destroy half the universe and throughout the movie kills or tries to kill those in the way of his goals. The first Ant-Man film was about preventing the shrinking technology from falling into HYDRA's hands who will use it for nefarious purposes, with the main antagonist being Darren Cross who is a dangerous, Ax-Crazy man who won't hesitate to kill people to achieve his plans. In Ant-Man and the Wasp, the stakes are more personal and not world-threatening. The heroes just want to rescue Janet who's trapped in the Quantum Realm, and the villains are just obstacles in their way who aren't actually real threats at all: Ghost wants to cure herself before she vanishes and Sonny Burch is way out of the heroes' league.
  • Excluding The Stinger where its timeline caught up with the ending minutes of Infinity War, the film rivals Spider-Man: Homecoming for being the lightest and softest of all the MCU feature films at the time of its release. Besides the comedy, the premise and stakes are merely personal that doesn't threaten any world, country or city, and there are no confirmed on-screen deaths with the obvious exception of Ghost's tragic backstory. Ghost is seen taking out a corrupt cop, but besides the statement "one man down", it is doubtful if it can be counted as an on-screen kill.
• Living Ghost: As a child, the Ghost was exposed to quantum energy while caught in an explosion that killed her parents. This granted her invisibility and intangibility. However, these powers came with a price; her molecular structure and equilibrium have become imbalanced and she requires a special suit to control her phasing ability.
• Lower-Deck Episode: While the Avengers are trying to stop Thanos's plan to wipe out half of all life in the universe, Scott and his friends are just trying to save Janet, while dealing with the machinations of Ghost, Burch, and the FBI.
• MacGuffin: The miniaturized Pym Lab building is sought after by both Sonny Burch and Ghost, and our heroes have to keep it out of their hands, but it's actually the technology and equipment inside the lab that's really important. This means that whoever gets a hold of the building will also need the remote that can return it back to normal size.
• MacGuffin Delivery Service: When Burch and Ghost learn the lab's location and Ghost gets a head start, Burch contacts his mole in the FBI to sic the Feds on the Pyms, on the grounds that he can just take the lab from FBI custody later. It works in that the FBI does get there first, but then Ghost just steals the lab from them with almost no effort.
• The Maiden Name Debate: Once she's rescued from the Quantum Realm, Scott greets Janet as "Ms. van Dyne" rather than "Mrs. Pym", thus implying this trope.
• Manly Tears: During the montage of Scott passing time while under house arrest, he can be seen getting all teary-eyed while reading The Fault in Our Stars.
• Meaningful Echo: The trailer starts with the line "I just have one question" used by Scott in the Ant-Man trailer/movie, just used in a different context.
• Mêlée à Trois: The climax involves three factions entangled in an extended Chase Scene, battling each other for the miniaturized Pym Lab and the technology inside it: The heroes, Sonny Burch and his men, and Ghost. The FBI also gets involved outside of the chase, trying to arrest Hank and Hope and bust Scott for breaking house arrest.
• Metaphorgotten: Jimmy Woo tries to couch Scott's house arrest to Cassie in familiar terms like if she broke the rules she has at school. Where it goes off the rails is when he describes in detail the specific violation of the Sokovia Accords that Scott perpetrated anyway, which is met with a confused look by her and unrecognized sarcasm from Scott.
• Metaphorically True: When Sonny Burch asks a Truth Serum-dosed Luis "Where is Scott Lang?", Luis goes on a tangent-laden explanation of where Scott is emotionally, explaining in detail Scott's divorce from Maggie and new Relationship Revolving Door with Hope.
• Monumental Damage: There's a car chase in San Francisco; of course it has to make a mess of Lombard Street. We also see Fisherman's Wharf, though the damage is caused to the wharf's parking lot instead of at the wharf itself.
• Mood Dissonance: The second post-credits scene depicting an empty house with screaming and emergency alerts blaring just outside, all while Scott's giant ant is merrily playing away on the drums.
• Mood Whiplash:
  • The first post-credits scene is surprisingly tense considering that the rest of the movie is so lighthearted. Scott is sent on a routine trip into the Quantum Realm while Hank, Janet, and Hope stay outside to monitor. Then "The Snap" happens and the family is turned to dust right before they can pull him out. The last we hear of Scott is his voice on the radio as he starts to panic.
  • This, in turn, is followed by the second post-credits scene. After Scott is left stranded in the Quantum Realm and the entire Pym family dies, the giant ant at Lang's house is still playing the drums, continuing his house arrest routines. All while an emergency broadcast tone plays throughout the whole scene and into the very end.
• Mr. Exposition
  • Luis once again takes up the role of explaining various things, mostly because his endlessly laid-back, tangent-laden explanations are quite entertaining.
    Luis: Dr. Pym, I actually heard what happened to you. You opened up the Quantum Realm! That's when this crazy, creepy ghost who walks through walls and stuff stole your tech! And now she wants to Take Over the World, or whatever.
  • Woo also gets a turn at it when, while giving a simple explanation of Scott's house arrest to Cassie, he completely derails himself into a very detailed description of basically everything that happened to Scott since Civil War, to fill in the gap for the audience. He also helpfully reveals Hank and Hope's fugitive status for us. One assumes the FBI never lets him do press conferences.
• Multi-Character Title: Thanks to the Legacy Character nature of the two names in the title, it could refer to Scott, Hank, Hope, and Janet.
• Mundane Utility: Scott and Hope use a regular-size laptop and a fleet of shrunken cars so they can take Cassie to a drive-in theater.
• Must Make Amends: Scott tries to do this towards his family during the movie. It is at the climax that, thanks to his daughter, he understands that he also needs to make up for all the mistakes that ended up endangering Hank and Hope.
• My God, What Have I Done?: Ghost has this horrified reaction in the climax, after Janet uses her quantum powers to stabilize her condition. Ghost immediately realizes that the woman she was planning to sacrifice just saved her life. Overcome with remorse, Ghost almost gives herself up to the authorities.
• Mythology Gag:
  • Hope's Wasp costume has bits of red on it along with the yellow/gold and black, unlike the contemporary Janet Van Dyne Wasp costume it was patterned after, as a reference to Janet's original red Silver Age Wasp costume and Hope's Red Queen costume in her initial 2000s Alternate Universe comic's appearances.
  • Ghost's costume is based on the character's modern design from Thunderbolts, but still incorporates the hood that was part of the original outfit back in The '80s.
  • Cassie states she wishes she could fight bad guys like her father, alluding to her comic counterpart's future role as Stature and Stinger.
  • The project Bill Foster worked on with Hank Pym was called "Project Goliath", in reference to Foster's comic book superhero identity.
  • Scott has started a security consultant firm alongside his fellow Reformed Criminals from the previous film. Scott's 2015 run saw him do the same thing with some D-list supercriminals, called "Ant-Man Security Solutions".
  • The metal suit that Hank wears when meeting Janet in the Quantum Realm resembles his comic counterpart's Goliath costume right down to the "Y"-shaped symbol on the chest.
  • Agent Jimmy Woo actually has a long history in the comics — the original character dates all the way back to The Yellow Claw in 1957, a short-lived series (only four issues) featuring a Fu Manchu Expy as the titular villain and, much more unusual for the time, a Chinese-American lead in FBI Agent Jimmy Woo... who would later return as a high-ranking S.H.I.E.L.D. agent and eventual team leader in the not-quite-as-short-lived Agents of Atlas.

Tropes N to R

• Name and Name: Ant-Man and the Wasp is the first MCU film to have a title with this structure.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero:
  • In hindsight from Captain America: Civil War. Scott went public as a superhero in a high-profile superhero conflict. This led to: a) the government catching wind of Pym's technology (thought of as a myth until then) and led Hank and Hope to go on the run from the FBI, and b) left Scott under house arrest.
  • Scott tries to help his friends at the security company with the plans for a project, and he unwittingly leads both the FBI and Ghost to Pym's laboratory.
• Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: Ghost's efforts to get Hank's lab accidentally keep the most dangerous tech on the planet (if you don't think Wakanda's Vibranium tech is more dangerous) away from Burch. And, by extension, out of the hands of the world's criminal underground and/or his mysterious client. She even kills Burch's pocket FBI Agent in the process, so Burch can't even use that connection for help, and she may have drawn attention to the Agent's cases, if the truth serum didn't.
• Nice, Mean, and In-Between:
  • Among the heroes: Scott is nice, as always, being friendly and eager to help whoever he can, Hank is mean, always looking like he's just barely tolerating everyone in the room, and Hope is in-between, still mad at Scott for going to Germany without thinking about how it would affect her and Hank, but friendly to everyone else and eventually letting go of her resentment of Scott. This is a reversal of the previous film in which Hope was the mean and Hank the in-between.
  • Among the antagonists: Jimmy Woo is nice, being friendly and professional even while trying to catch Scott committing a crime, Burch and his gang are mean, not caring who they hurt to make money, and Ghost and Foster are in-between, not actually wanting to hurt anyone, but willing to in order to cure her condition.
• Nothing Is Scarier: The second stinger implies that the Snap had a horrifying death toll in San Francisco; where the Big Applesauce was full of falling aircraft, crashing cars and screaming people, San Fran is a Ghost City with no sounds but the Emergency Alert siren and an ant playing the drumset.
• Not So Above It All:
  • Jimmy Woo attempts to project a serious persona at all times, but he is legitimately impressed by Scott's sleight-of-hand skills, and is later seen trying to learn the same trick. He eventually gets to show what's he's learned when he appears in WandaVision.
  • Hank can't resist getting in a few jokes at Scott's expense after his malfunctioning regulator leaves him temporarily stuck at child size.
  • Ghost's Jump Scare scene when Luis reveals Scott's location shows she was as exasperated with Luis's ramblings as Burch and his henchmen were.
• Not So Stoic:
  • Woo tries to tell Cassie that as an FBI agent, he's seen it all, before trying to ascertain exactly how much vomit she's claiming Scott's unleashed.
  • Sonny Burch tries to play it cool all the time, but he eventually loses his patience after Luis's tangent-laden story goes on too long.
• Offscreen Breakup: Scott's actions in Germany, particularly the fact that he went without asking permission to use the suit, soured his relationship with both Hope and Hank.
• Once per Episode: Once again, a family-friendly mascot gets thrown at the bad guy. This time, it's Hello Kitty.
• Out of Focus: Maggie and Jim are relegated to the role of Drop-In Character in this film, though they maintain the theme of being completely supportive of Scott (insofar as they know what he's up to).
• Overly Long Gag: During the climax, Scott's ants keep getting eaten by seagulls each time he calls one.
• Papa Wolf: Bill behaves this way toward Ava, having raised her since she was a small child after her parents died.
• Paper-Thin Disguise:
  • Hope kidnaps Scott and has a giant ant substitute for him by wearing his tracker and behaving like he does (nine hours in bed, etc.) to avoid suspicion. Of course, if anyone actually entered the house, they'd immediately see it is a giant ant. This doesn't stop Luis from questioning if it's Scott when he sees it, however.
  • When visiting Bill Foster, Scott, Hank and Hope just wear sunglasses and baseball caps (the go-to disguise in Marvel films such as Captain America: Civil War). Scott lampshades it, noting it doesn't actually hide their identities, it just makes them look like they're going to a baseball game.
  • This becomes a Brick Joke when Hank walks out of the FBI building dressed in an FBI raid jacket, baseball cap and sunglasses. No-one pays him any attention, despite Hank being noticeably older than the other agents.
• Pick a Card: During his house arrest, Scott's learned how to do card tricks to pass the time. He's actually quite good at them and impresses several characters.
• Pint-Sized Powerhouse: Both Ant-Man and Wasp are able to use Pym Particles to both shrink down to the size of insects and at the same time manipulate their mass and energy transfer properties in normally impossible ways to give themselves Super-Strength.
• Playing Sick:
  • While the main trio are being held captive by Ghost and Foster, Hank fakes a heart attack so Foster will open the tin with his "pills"... which turns out to be full of ants that grow to giant size, freeing the heroes and keeping Ghost and Foster busy long enough for them to escape.
  • After appearing as Giant-Man in public, Scott has to race home and pretend to have the flu to give himself an alibi and an excuse for why he wasn't answering his phone.
• Poor Communication Kills: The reason of Scott's fallback with the Pyms. Scott didn't tell them about his intention to help Captain America, and so the Pyms end up being considered accomplices and on the run without ever being involved. It's implied, although let ambiguous, that Hope would have actually agreed, had Scott asked her.
• Power Incontinence:
  • Scott's new suit hasn't been fully tested yet and the regulator malfunctions throughout the movie, causing him to grow and shrink even when he hasn't triggered the effect.
  • Ava/Ghost has to sleep in a specially-made chamber to keep her phasing powers in check, and her suit supposedly does the same. Still, neither is enough to prevent her from eventually disappearing from existence, hence her increasing desperation to find a cure.
• Prequel: The story is set before (or possibly during) the events of Avengers: Infinity War. "The Snap" happens during the first after-credits scenes, with the post-credits shortly afterward.
• Product Placement:
  • Let's talk about that enlarged Hello Kitty Pez dispenser...
  • The Pym laboratory is powered by a Duracell battery.
  • All of the computer equipment in the movie comes from Dell.
  • Hank Pym keeps a squad of ants for enlarging in an Altoids tin.
  • Hot Wheels gets a nod as Pym keeps his fleet of cars in a branded case. Lang even refers to it by name when directing Luis to it.
  • Hope drives Scott to the lab in a Hyundai, and Luis later enlarges a purple Hyundai with flames (from the aforementioned Hot Wheels case).
  • The FBI rather prominently uses Chevrolet vehicles.
  • The van that Hope and Hank use for most of the movie is a Mercedes-Benz.
• Psychic Link: Janet formed some kind of quantum-entanglement link between Scott and herself when he entered quantum space at the end of the first film. Here, she's able to send her memories to Scott as a sign that she is alive and even take control of his body while she's still in the Quantum Realm to speak with Hank and Hope.
• Punny Headlines: Scott, stuck giant-sized, goes after Sonny Burch, who's aboard a ferry in the San Francisco Bay. One headline on TV reads, "Giant-Man Resurfaces in San Francisco Bay".
• Punny Name:
  • The security firm founded by Scott, Luis, Dave, and Kurt is called "X-Con Security Consultants". Possibly suggesting that they're having a go at capitalizing on their ex-con status (in a field where they definitely have some expertise) instead of hiding it and waiting for it to blow up in their faces (like what happened to Scott when he tried to get a job at Baskin-Robbins in the first film).
  • Scott gives his ant steeds names like "Ulysses S. Gr-ant" and "Ant-onio Banderas".
• Put on a Prison Bus: Sunny Burch and his associates are last seen being arrested by the FBI.
• Quantum Mechanics Can Do Anything: Phasing through solid matter, travel to other dimensions, repairing cellular anomalies, possibly even traveling through time... quantum physics can do everything in this movie. Lampshaded by Scott after hearing about the Quantum Realm and quantum entanglement:
  Scott: Do you guys just put the word "quantum" in front of everything?
• Race Against the Clock: Janet tells the group that they have two hours to follow the specific coordinates to her location, as afterwards, quantum physics will shift the position around, rendering her inaccessible for a century. After dealing with Ava and Bill, Burch and his men, and a Woo-led FBI team, Hank only has 15 minutes to work with.
• Race Lift:
  • Ghost is a white male in the comics. In the movie, Ava is portrayed by British-Norwegian-Nigerian actress Hannah John-Kamen, and it's implied that she is Argentinian.
  • Jimmy Woo is changed from Chinese-American to Korean-American.
• Rapid-Fire "No!": Hank's response to going to the Wombats for help. Again.
• Reasonable Authority Figure: Agent Woo is convinced that Scott will reoffend and determined to be the one to catch him when he does, but he doesn't think Scott is evil and is actually quite personable when he's not making amusingly unintimidating threats. He even mistakes a comment of Scott's for an overture of friendship (or maybe more).
• Red Skies Crossover: There is nothing in the movie that links it to Avengers: Infinity War, until the end credits scenes where we see the aftermath of The Snap as the Pyms disappear with the faint trail of some ashes on a rooftop, and later, Scott's empty house with an emergency broadcast signal, but there is no mention of Thanos, the invasion, or anything else. However, it was mentioned in Infinity War that Scott was under house arrest at the time, and this film shows him serving his sentence up until it's over.
• Reduced to Dust: In the mid-credits stinger, Hank, Janet, and Hope are turned to ash by Thanos's snap.
• Reformed Criminal: Scott's partners in crime, Luis, Dave and Kurt have started a security firm and went straight in the two years between Captain America: Civil War and Ant-Man and the Wasp.
  Luis: Who would have believed in your hour of need that you would turn to us?
  Hank: Not me.
  Luis: 'Cause we robbed you! Do you remember? That's us.
• Related in the Adaptation: Elihas Starr/Egghead is Ghost's father in this universe.
• Rescue Arc: The entire film is about rescuing Janet from the Quantum Realm.
• Rogues' Gallery Transplant: Ghost is an Iron Man villain in the comics, as is Sonny Burch.
• Rule of Three: Woo and the FBI burst into Scott's house three times hoping to catch him violating house arrest.
• Running Gag: Maggie asking if the FBI has the right to do something, and her cop husband quietly pointing out that they do have that right.

Tropes S to Y

• Save the Villain: After Janet is brought back from the Quantum Realm, she uses the quantum healing abilities she attained while trapped to stabilise Ava from phasing into nothingness.
• Seinfeldian Conversation: The Wombats argue about the food budget and why they aren't eating the oatmeal Luis provided for them in their first scene.
• Series Continuity Error: When Scott is shown going to the Quantum Realm and surviving the snap, it's bright and sunny out, despite the fact that, due to the film taking place in San Francisco, which is in a different time zone than both Wakanda and New York^note although both of those places are in different time zones as well, afternoon in Wakanda would line up with morning in New York — unless the Snap's effects were somehow delayed by a few hours for Hank, Janet, and Hope, it should be the crack of dawn at the latest.
• Shades of Conflict: Scott and partners are dealt in conflicts of both White-and-Grey Morality (with Woo, who's just doing his job as a law enforcer, and Ghost, who's a bit ruthless but only wants to get out of her potentially fatal condition) and Black-and-White Morality (Sonny Burch, a slimy gangster with no sympathetic motives, just a desire to make money out of their tech).
• "Shaggy Dog" Story: Thanks to The Stinger tying in with Thanos's Badass Fingersnap event in Infinity War, everything Hank, Hope, and Scott do to bring Janet back from the Quantum Realm ends up meaningless when the entire Pym family gets vaporized. The only positive thing is that they managed to learn more about Quantum Realm and send Scott in there again to make use of it just before all hell breaks loose.
• Shirtless Scene: Before Scott settles into the tub, there's a shot of him taking off his shirt.
• Shout-Out: Collected in the Marvel Cinematic Universe Shout-Outs page.
• Show-and-Tell Antics: Downplayed. Scott's daughter Cassie secretly brings his "World's Greatest Grandma" trophy to show-and-tell, which unbeknownst to her has his Ant Man suit in a hidden compartment. This requires Scott and Hope to sneak into the school and retrieve the suit.
• Shown Their Work: The creature that almost eats Scott as he's entering the Quantum Realm is a real microscopic animal called a tardigrade, also known as a water bear. Also, the weird shifting landscape in the Quantum Realm looks a lot like theoretical depictions of what matter looks like at distances smaller than the Planck length, a distance so small that physics begins to completely break down.
• Simultaneous Arcs: As it turns out, this film does take place during the events of Infinity War. Scott was under house arrest during the events of Infinity War, and this film shows him approaching the end of his sentence, and then catches up right to the end of Infinity War.
• Sizeshifter: The titular Ant-Man and Wasp both possess the ability to shrink, and in the case of Ant-Man, grow.
• Smuggling with Dolls: In a variant, Scott's daughter Cassie buys him a "World's Best Grandma" trophy as a symbol of innocence and love. Scott genuinely loves it, but decides to hide the original Ant-Man shrinking suit inside the base to prevent it from being found by the feds while he's under house arrest. However, the need to recover the suit comes up when Cassie takes the trophy to school for show and tell day.
• So Last Season: Scott's initial powerset is definitely inferior and less fancy than Hope's wings and blasters, that she possesses in addition to Scott's shrinking powers, although she never displays the ability to control ants. Then again, he can grow giant by now, so it all evens out.
• Something Only They Would Say: Hope and Hank are busy trying to pinpoint Janet's location from within the Quantum Realm, when Janet temporarily possesses Scott to communicate with them. The two are confused by Scott's ensuing behavior, but Hope immediately gels on to the situation when Scott calls her Jellybean, Janet's pet name for her.
• Space "X": Quantum Realm, quantum linking, quantum tunnel, quantum entanglement, quantum space...
  Scott: Do you guys just put the word "quantum" in front of everything?
• Spanner in the Works: Sonny Burch's main purpose in the film is to continually butt his way into Hank Pym's business in an attempt to see if his current project is marketable, repeatedly complicating matters for the protagonists in the process.
• Spectacular Spinning: When the Quantum Tunnel stops spinning, something has gone wrong or something significant has happened. However at the end of the movie they've built a portable version that can fit in a van, without spinning.
• Spiritual Antithesis: Could be considered one to Spider-Man: Homecoming, being the anti-registration perspective in the wake of the events of Captain America: Civil War compared to Spidey's pro-registration P.O.V. Much like the earlier film it features The Everyman Animal Themed Super Being (both creepy-crawlie variants, to be exact) hero as its protagonist struggling to figure out where they belong in a post-Sokovia Accords world. Unlike Peter Parker though, Scott is forced to evade the law and use out-of-date or untested tech when the former was being supplied state-of-the-art gear by Sokovia Accords poster boy Tony Stark. Both films end with the hero suiting up in their original gear for the final battle, but Peter is stuck battling the Big Bad Vulture with no backup in the sky while Scott has the assistance of Hope and Luis in a race to protect the shrunken Pym Technologies from the Big Bad Ensemble of Ghost and Sonny Burch. Even the villains are strikingly similar with a key difference. Both Adrian Toomes and Ava Starr are extremely sympathetic villains who turn to crime in desperate times, but the Vulture is a normal human who uses a suit to give him super powers while Ghost is a metahuman who uses a suit to limit her debilitating abilities. Both films end with the villains having begrudging respect for the hero after they show them mercy in the final battle.
• Square-Cube Law: Comes into play during the San Francisco chase scene when Scott becomes giant. His movements are slow and lumbering and with his increased size, his air reserves don't last long, causing him to pass out in the bay. According to Scott, the few minutes he spent as a giant during the airport battle in Captain America: Civil War exhausted him so much that he slept for three days afterwards.
• Stalker Shot: Near the start of the movie, Hank shrinks his lab and gets in the van with Hope and Scott. As they drive away, Ghost materializes, clearly watching to see where they're going.
• Stealth Prequel: The post-credits scene make this movie (and Scott Lang himself) massively important to the plot of Avengers: Endgame.
• Stealth Pun: The first trailer is set to an instrumental version of the song "Ant Invasion" by Adam and the Ants.
• The Stinger: The film has two, both of which are tied to Avengers: Infinity War (which already happened) and Avengers: Endgame.
  • Mid-credits stinger: Scott returns to the Quantum Realm to find healing particles to keep Ava's condition stable. He attempts to return, but Janet, Hank, and Hope, who were serving as his mission control, have all been atomized by Thanos's finger snap at the end of Infinity War, leaving Scott stranded.
  • Post-credits stinger: The ant serving as Scott's decoy is the only inhabitant in the Lang household, busy jamming on his drum set. The screen goes black and a caption follows, stating "Ant-Man and The Wasp will return." The period then changes into a question mark.
• Sudden Downer Ending: The first post-credits scene. Scott gets stranded in the Quantum Realm after Hank, Janet, and Hope are all dusted by the Infinity Gauntlet. See you when Avengers: Endgame comes out!
• Superhero Movie Villains Die: Averted in full. Ava's condition steadily worsens, but Janet returns to proper size in time to transfer healing particles from the Quantum Realm to her, while Burch and his men are only arrested rather than killed. Hard to say though, if any of them got wiped by Thanos. Even if they did, it didn't stick.
• Superhero Speciation: Between the two heroes, they each share the ability to shrink in size, but both have two unique abilities of their own to make sure they're each distinct — Ant-Man with his ability to grow larger in size while also being able to control ants, and the Wasp with her built-in wings and blasters.
• Surrounded by Idiots: Clearly, Hank and Hope's reactions when at Luis's office and hearing the bickering of him and his crew on various issues. Hank, in particular, seems to be wondering "What became of my life?"
• Synchronized Swarming: As a way of tracking the lab during the car chase, Pym has flying ants form an arrow pointing to it.
• A Taste of Their Own Medicine: In the end, Sonny Burch and his followers get a taste of the "truth serum" themselves.
• Taunting the Transformed: When a suit malfunction causes Scott to shrink to the size of a four-year-old child, Hank and Hope playfully tease him about his predicament, much to his annoyance.
  Dr. Hank Pym: Hiya, champ! How was school today?
  Scott Lang: Aw, ha ha ha! Alright, get your jokes out now, can you fix the suit?
  Hope van Dyne: So cranky.
  Dr. Hank Pym: You want a juice box and some string cheese?
  Scott Lang: ...do you really have those?
• Technobabble: To an art form. Scott even lampshades how the other characters seem to be putting "quantum" before every other word.
• Thematic Sequel Logo Change: Unlike the pure red first movie logo, the sequel's logo is half red to represent Ant-Man and half yellow to represent The Wasp and her involvement in the plot.
• This Is Reality: Sonny Burch's henchman Uzman berates Luis for thinking that his chemical solution is a "truth serum", saying that that only exists in movies. Of course, by the end of this movie, Uzman realizes that it functionally is a truth serum.
• This Is Something He's Got to Do Himself: Justified; although Hank has his own Survivor Guilt issues, his daughter is the one going into the Quantum Realm, as Hank's hero days are long gone. However when the Ghost turns up they realise that both Ant-Man and Wasp are required to defeat her, so it's then Hank decides to pilot the rescue mission himself.
• Together in Death: The entire Pym/Van Dyne family are vaporized by Thanos's Badass Fingersnap together.
• Touch of Death: One of Ghost's abilities is that she can phase her hand into a person's chest and stop their heart. Stoltz is killed this way.
• Tracking Device:
  • Scott has one placed around his leg while under house arrest. Hope attaches it to an enlarged ant that has been "programmed" with Scott's daily routine, so that he can leave the house without drawing suspicion.
  • Hank added a tracking device to his lab. Ghost deactivated it. Then he got a second one, so a swarm of ants provided directions by forming arrows in the air.
• Tragic Intangibility: Ghost got her intangibility powers as a young girl from the quantum energy accident that killed her parents. This means that when a firefighter tried to comfort her with a hug, his arms passed right through her. Bill Foster hands her a teddy bear and she phases right through it.
• Trailers Always Spoil:
  • Not a trailer, but the concept art for Avengers: Endgame, where Wasp shines for her absence. Indeed, Hope, along with her parents, gets erased in The Stinger of this film.
  • The trailers also showed a number of scenes from the climax, including Scott going to even bigger heights as Giant-Man at the end of the Chase Scene. The trailers even slightly spoil the final shot of the The Stinger: the giant ant playing the drums.
• Trapped in Another World: Hope's primary motivation is to free her mother from the microscopic Acid-Trip Dimension known as the Quantum Realm, where she’s been stuck for over thirty years. Then during the mid-credits scene, Scott finds himself in this same predicament. He's on a mission in the Quantum Realm, and just before Hope, Hank, and Janet can bring him back to the normal world, the three of them find themselves underneath the proverbial bridge courtesy of Thanos.
• Truth Serum: Played with. Henchman Uzman's specialty is a chemical cocktail that loosens inhibitions and makes one very open to suggestion... Which everyone points out is so close to a truth serum, it may as well be called that. Uzman vehemently denies that's what it is, even though it behaves exactly like you'd expect. Towards the end, Burch and his goons get injected with Uzman's own chemical. Under the influence, Uzman admits it's exactly like truth serum.
• Tuckerization: Cassie's teacher is named after one of Peyton Reed's own.
• Uncommon Time: Continuing the trend set by the previous film, the standout main themes in this film are in irregular time, namely 7/4 and 5/4.
• Underestimating Badassery: Sonny Burch could probably be a decent antagonist in a mundane setting thanks to his connections to the FBI, money and power as a black market trader. Unfortunately, he chooses to antagonize Pym's company, and for the rest of the movie it's clear that he is handling way too much and ends up becoming comic relief.
• The Unfavorite: Scott is not pleased to learn that Hank could have given him wings and blasters, but opted to save those for Hope.
• Un-Paused: After Janet has taken over Scott's mind, he has no recollection of it. At first he reacts as if no time went by, and then he gets confused about how they left the control room and why Hank Pym is holding his hand.
• Unreliable Expositor: Bill Foster claims that Hank fired Elihas Starr because the latter disagreed with Hank over something. However, Hank claims that he did it because Elihas tried to steal Hank's technology and that he was a "traitor" (and given Hank worked for S.H.I.E.L.D. at the time, he might be using the term in a legal sense). Because of their conflict, as well as Hank's known bitterness for other people co-opting his technology, it is not known whose side of the story is the real one (or if Both Sides Have a Point).
• The Unreveal: The movie never really delves into the identity of Burch's employer. Or whether Ava's dad really was a disgraced spy or not. It's entirely possible he was working for HYDRA and lied to her.
• Unusually Uninteresting Sight: As Giant-Man, Scott attempts to stop a truck, finding no success as the truck's accelerator has been weighted down. The people on the street and eating in a restaurant don't even look at him.
• Villain-by-Proxy Fallacy: Hank and Hope are on the run because Scott used their technology to violate the Sokovia Accords, even though he did it without their knowledge or permission.
• Villain Has a Point: Ghost believes that extracting energy from the Quantum Realm will stabilize her body, which is growing more and more out of phase with reality. It ultimately turns out that she's right — the only morally objectionable thing about her goal is her indifference to what doing so while Janet is trapped in there could do to someone Ava has never met. Once the heroes get Janet out, they even volunteer to gather quantum energy to help treat Ava.
• Voices Are Not Mental: When Janet uses Quantum Linking to temporarily take control of Scott's body, she still speaks in Scott's voice.
• We Used to Be Friends: Scott starts the film understandably and justifiably estranged from the Pyms thanks to his actions during Civil War and the repercussions it's had on their lives and quest to find Janet. Recounciling with them is one of the key arcs of the film.
• We Will Meet Again: At the end of the movie Agent Woo accepts that Scott has gotten away with it, but gives this trope in Inspector Javert style. They then get sidetracked by Scott Comically Missing the Point by assuming that Woo wants to meet later for dinner. Which Woo apparently wouldn't mind.
• Wham Line: Scott goes up to the console to correct the algorithm that Hope and Hank are using. Naturally, one would assume that he doesn't know anything about the advanced science until he says that after "thirty years," he should know, revealing that Janet's acting through him.
• Wham Shot: Most of the movie is a lighthearted, self-contained affair until after the credits start rolling. While Scott is in the Quantum Realm in The Stinger, the communication line between the Pym family and him is abruptly cut off. Cut to the ashes of a freshly-disintegrated Hank, Hope, and Janet floating in the air.
• What Could Have Been: In-Universe, Scott asks Hope whether or not she'd have come with him to help Captain America in Civil War. Hope grudgingly admits she really doesn't know, but she's still annoyed Scott didn't ask; it sent her and Hank on the run, and...
  Hope: ...if you had, you'd have never been caught.
• What Happened to the Mouse?:
  • Ava and Bill are last seen running from the cops, and it's not shown if they got away or not. A passing line in The Stinger suggests they got away.
  • Much like Infinity War, there's numerous characters whose fates we don't find out yet, from Thanos's finger snap.
  • In a non-spoiler way, Mitchell Carson from the previous movie was able to get away with some of the Pym Particles for HYDRA, but his fate is never discussed.
  • The giant ant Cassie adopted at the end of the first film is not mentioned at all here. It's possible it may have died between films considering how long worker ants typically live for, but its absence is left unexplained.
• What the Hell, Hero?:
  • Scott regularly gets this throughout the movie from Hope and Hank. Aside for the Sokovia Accords, he is also chastised for destroying the Ant-Man suit that he took with him to aide Captain America, when he revealed that he lied about destroying said suit and sent it to Luis via mail, and then making the mistake of informing Luis of his whereabouts which led the FBI to arrest the Pyms.
  • Hank himself gets this from both Bill and Ava due to his habit of driving away colleagues, including getting Ava's father fired and discredited.
• What Were You Thinking?: Wasp's attitude towards Scott's very public outing as a superhero in the Avengers' Civil War is regular scolding for its stupidity.
• When Things Spin, Science Happens: The end of the Quantum Tunnel that sends people to the Quantum Realm is surrounded by a large spinning machinery with telescopic parts. The first hint there is a malfunction is that the machine stops spinning.
• While Rome Burns
  • Back in Infinity War, Thanos slaughters the surviving Asgardians, Loki and Heimdall in his quest for the Infinity Stones, and all of Earth's heroes fight desperate battles against him and his mooks. And Scott Lang... plays the drum at his house.
  • Thanos makes his snap and wins: half of all life in the universe has been turned into ashes. This includes Hank, Hope and Janet, and without them to manipulate the controls, Scott gets trapped into the Quantum Realm. And back in his house... the replacement enlarged ant is playing the drum.
• White-and-Grey Morality: None of the villains are truly malicious. Ghost is desperately trying to survive and is only trying to steal the technology to cure her condition, whereas Bill Foster, though something of an antagonist, is trying to support Ava in curing her problem and prohibits her from committing any malicious acts. Both of them side with the heroes at the very end once the protagonists actually agree to help Ava with her problem. The only character that comes close to villainous is Sonny Burch, but he's a borderline Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain and is too pathetic to be considered evil.
• "Will Return" Caption: Played with. Starts off in classic Marvel movie fashion, but this time, there's a twist: the period at the end of "Ant-Man and The Wasp will return." fades into a question-mark.
• Wolverine Publicity:
  • The first trailer opens with scenes from Captain America: Civil War that Scott happened to be in — although the focus is a bit more on some of the characters he ran into, like Captain America.
  • The later TV spots jokingly play on the film's status as a Breather Episode after Avengers: Infinity War, complete with footage of the more popular heroes like Iron Man, Captain America, Black Panther and Thor.
• Worf Had the Flu: Scott's regulator keeps malfunctioning, allowing Ava and Burch to catch a few lucky breaks.
• World of Snark: Unless the character is a Cloudcuckoolander type, everyone is pretty much endowed with a sarcastic streak.
• Would Hurt a Child: Ghost is more than willing to hunt down Cassie and use her as leverage to get Scott to track down Janet, but that's one level of low Bill refuses to stoop to.
• Wrestler in All of Us: Ghost (German) suplexes Hope into a table at one point.
• Yank the Dog's Chain: The film ends on an incredibly delightful note, with Scott and Hope spending time with Cassie, Luis and his buddies receiving a tremendous business opportunity, and Hank and Janet planning a happy life together in a house by the beach, all set to the tune of "Come On, Get Happy". Then The Stinger shows Hope, Hank, and Janet being snapped out of existence by Thanos while Scott finds himself trapped in the Quantum Realm.

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"Hello? Ha ha, very funny. Hank, quit screwing around, you told me yourself not to screw around. ...Hank? Hope? Janet? Guys? Guys! Okay, seriously, don't joke around, bring me up, let's go! GUYS!"

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