Headscratchers / Ant-Man and the Wasp

Scott Helping Cap & Hope's Reaction

• When Scott shows up in Civil War, he wakes up in the back of Falcon's van, seemingly confused as to how he got there. Even if he agreed to help Captain America and the Avengers, it doesn't seem like he was fully aware of the situation, and was sort of thrust into the airport battle by Sam and Steve. So why do Hope and Hank act as if Scott willingly abandoned them, when, at very worst, he was suckered into helping Cap and went along with what he was told without asking questions?
  • Scott is a known liar and thief and the fact that he didn't contact Hank or Hope in more or less 2 years. He took Hank's suit without asking, so that counts as stealing. He also lied about destroying the suit and who knows about what else. Seeing how badly his reckless actions have screwed them over, why would they even trust him to start with? The fact that they start to trust him again when he only breaks them out of arrest is astonishing, to be honest.
  • My impression is that Scott was sleeping off jet lag when Falcon opened the van door. Cap even gives Scott an out since he would be aiding an internationally wanted criminal. Scott still goes with it, saying he's been a criminal before. As others have suggested, their anger may be more to do with Scott not considering that they would be connected to him as accomplices.

Post-Credits Scene Lack of Knowledge

• We know the first post-credits scene is obviously set at the time of the snap, an unspecified amount of time after the film. Why does nobody hear about the events of IW that occur outside of Wakanda? Vision and Wanda are alerted to Tony going missing almost immediately after the fight with the Children of Thanos so I find it hard to believe that Hank, Janet, Hope, *and* Scott all don't watch TV, listen to the radio, use the internet, or have any other way to find out about the attack on Earth.
  • Two possibilities:
    1. Tony Stark disappearing was considered as GOOD news by Hank, so the family just ignored all of it. Besides, they wouldn't be checking the news 24/7, so word of the Battle Of Wakanda might not have gotten out to the rest of the world before Thanos snapped.
    2. Just like the general movie-going audience, the Pym-Van Dynes and Scott assumed that the Avengers would have it covered, considering they have stopped an alien invasion before. Boy, were they wrong, if that was the case.
  • What could they do even if they heard about it on the news? They weren't just sending Scott to the Quantum Realm for fun, they had a mission, a time-sensitive one if Ghost's condition deteriorates, and it's unlikely they would delay it because of news coming out of New York. Besides, the Pyms are still wanted fugitives, and Scott is not supposed to associate with them under threat of arrest, so they couldn't exactly approach the authorities to offer assistance. The best the team could do was sit tight and wait for Cap's Avengers to call for help again, and carry on with their personal plans in the meantime.
  • Janet likely was able to delay Ava's deterioration with her Quantum healing, which would have extended her countdown. By the time they were on the rooftop, the quantum tunnel device had been shrunken, and they'd completed a fair amount of research as well as earlier trips into the Quantum realm to retrieve energy. The time required to do that could have covered the events of Infinity War, with the bulk of Ant-Man/Wasp taking place before IW even started.
  • Moreover, the Pyms are back together as a family for the first time in 30 years, and have three decades of history - some of it very impactful, i.e. 19 other movies' worth of events - to bring Janet up to speed on. It's quite possible that Hank unpacked their old house and re-grew it on an isolated beach specifically so they could spend some quality time together as a family and not overwhelm her with current news stories.
  • There's three portions of Infinity War that happen on Earth: The attack on New York, which is a hefty but short brawl in New York that is seemingly resolved by the end of it, a low-key fight in Edinburgh and, maybe 12 hours later, the Battle of Wakanda, which lasts maybe an hour or two IRL? The Infinity War movie takes place in probably less than 24 hours overall, easy for people to either miss or just assume the Avengers got it covered.
  • To put it another way, all but the very few involved in those fights had any idea of the scale of the danger they were facing until it was too late. To most of the world the only thing they would know about was the brief attack in New York and Stark going missing (the attack in Edinburgh happened at night and only involved a few people), neither of which Scott and the Pyms would have any particular opportunity to get involved in unless someone else came to them.
  • They probably simply saw "Two aliens attack New York, Ironman drives them off." as the only info available that day, shrugged and figured it was business as usual that that point, and went about their day, not checking the news or anything else as they worked on their experiment. Cap wasn't going to bother Scott for help when he knew he wanted to be with his family, and Wakanda likely kept them cooperating with the fugitive Avengers under wraps, meaning nobody out on the outside other than probably the militaries seeing a bunch of ships land in Wakanda on satellite, will even know about Thanos until the survivors return back and explain what happened.

Houses need no plumbing?

• Both the Pyms' lab building and the house Janet and Hank later set in are miniaturized and then regrown to full size at random spots, where they clearly aren't connected to the electric grid, internet cables, plumbing, etc. Even if the Pyms have somehow come up with a self-sufficient energy source and need no outside electricity, surely they still have to use the toilet?
  • The portable buildings' bathrooms are probably set up like the ones you'd find on a plane, bus or train. There's an internal septic receptacle which collects all the sewage, which (knowing the Pyms) is most likely shrunken down automatically each day. Then some pre-programmed ants can haul the waste off to the nearest sewer grating or compost heap.
  • To answer the electricity question, one of the scenes showed an enlarged Duracell battery in the lab, so that might be the energy source.
  • Merely enlarging a battery wouldn't magically increase its charge though, so that doesn't really explain it.
    • At this point, we have to use MST3K Mantra. "He's invented something that powers the building." Alternately? "He's fallen victim to Falsely Advertised Accuracy."
    • He has invented something that powers the building: Pym Particles. It's mentioned in the first movie that it's useful as a power source.
    • Or Hank lied to Scott about the full details of how the suite works and in fact it does somehow increase the amount of relative energy that can be output. We're told mass is conserved yet Hank was carrying a full sized tank around with him as a keychain which shouldn't work... unless he lied about how exactly Pym particles effect matter and mass.

Why doesn't the lab take any damage?

• The Pyms' lab is shown to have lots of sensitive equipment that can be easily damaged by a bunch of ants. But when the building is miniaturized, it gets thrown around like a football, yet somehow the lab remains in pristine condition despite suffering from the equivalent of a gigantic earthquake. How is that possible?
  • Maybe he had really tiny staples for all the furniture and equipment?
  • Anything he and Hope value will be affixed securely in place or stored in cushioned cabinets when not in use. The rest of the building did show a lot of cracks and drywall damage, probably from the very disturbances mentioned.
• There's a similar problem with the cars in the Hot Wheels case. Real cars will be damaged if stored on their sides or upside-down.
  • Since each of the cars in the case has been modified with shrinking gear, it seems probable they were modified at the same time to make them more storable in this way too.

The origin of Ghost's powers

• Why did Ava's father let her anywhere near that experiment? It's not exactly a child-friendly environment.
  • He was a fugitive (if Hank is honest about him stealing) and either way he is working in a random warehouse in Argentina. It isn't exactly like he had the option to put them up is a fancy hotel.

Ava's Survival

• Why did the explosion kill Ava's parents but just give her abilities? There's nothing explicitly stated that explains it.
  • Maybe it also gave them powers, they were just too dead to use them.
  • Alternately, she could have been a latent mutan... err enhanced which is why she got powers instead of dying.
  • It could also have been blind luck, she was in exactly the right spot to get hit with the right amount of quantum energy in the right way to get powers instead of killed. Or maybe the fact that she was a child (and thus still growing) saved her due to the quantum energy interacting differently with her body.
  • I assumed it was because her parents shielded her from the explosion. They died before they could be shifted out of tune with reality, but she was protected long enough for the quantum shift to happen. Then the explosion that would have killed her passed right through her.

Janet's reappearance

• How did Janet survive on the quantum level for all that time? Wouldn't she have starved to death? What did she eat or drink?
  • She says being there for so long changed her, almost on an evolutionary scale. So it may be a side effect.
  • She does have what looks like a spear on her back, and mentions something that tried to eat her in the stinger, so maybe there are quantum animals. In the comics the quantum world was just that, a subatomic universe with living creatures (and in some cases even human like beings).
  • The thing seems to be one of her suit's wings. However, given that the other wings are missing, she may have used one of them as a makeshift spear.
  • She refers to tardigrades, which are real animals. They won't go to the quantum realm anymore than cows.

Janet and maintaining her beauty regimen

• A nitpick thing I noticed about Janet was how does she still have a full face of makeup? And where did she get the cloth she put over her head?
  • Because Hollyowood never shows women without makeup, see Beauty Is Never Tarnished, Wakeup Makeup and Dirt Forcefield.
  • If she can find food and water and clothes, she can probably find something to use as makeup.
  • Even so, since she's been living in the quantum realm for decades and she's the only human there, why would she even bother to put on makeup?
    • Because she sent a message to her husband and daughter, and knows one of them is on the way to save her within the next few hours.

Ghost's phasing and the floor

• Why doesn't Ghost never just fall through the floor and the Earth?
  • Subconscious control. Or maybe when she is phased she is not affected by gravity, but some type of quantum entanglement keeps her from getting spun off into space.
  • The "echoes" and some of the technobabble gave me the impression that she wasn't technically phasing, but rather randomly slipping into alternate realities where things are positioned differently. So phasing through a punch is easy, because in most realities no one is punching her. Phasing through a door likewise isn't hard, because there are plenty of realities where the door is open. But the floor is pretty constant across most realities, so it's harder to phase through. And of course she does have some control over the ability, so she'd be specifically trying not to phase through the floor.

Why are Hank and Hope on the run at the start?

• At the start of the film, Hope and Hank are both on the run... but why? It's stated to be a result of Scott helping Cap during Civil War, but all they did was give Scott a suit. A suit they gave him well before the Sokovia Accords were signed. The tech is entirely terrestrial too, at least as far as has been stated. What exactly did they do wrong?
  • This was already explained in the movie, during the 1st time the FBI checks up on Scott (due to his ankle monitor going through the wooden fence and triggering a perimeter alert). If I recall correctly, it boils down to Scott's tech coming from Hank Pym. Agent Woo recites some part of the Accords that means Hank and Hope need to come in (either to register themselves as creators/associates of Ant Man, or to be arrested due to their involvement in technology that resulted in the destruction of a Germany airport).
  • I'm aware of that scene, but the impression given is that Hank and Hope are expected to be arrested... and I can't see any real justification for that. It just seems to be a plot-device to put Scott on the outs with the Pyms so that they have a story arc in the film about him getting back on their good side.
  • To the above, in addition to some in the government perhaps wanting the tech for themselves, there is the justification that they don't want the Pyms out there with dangerous technology that is not being supervised or controlled by any authorities. They have ample reason to seriously doubt private citizens should have it, much as Pym has serious doubts that the government should have it or that he should work with them. Given what the ant man technology can do, to the government its the equivalent of the Pyms running around with a weapon of mass destruction, with no one but themselves to say what they can or can't do with it. Course at the same time the authorities may just be going through the motions for the sake of keeping up appearances, given the police at least obviously know Scott and the Pyms are not bad people and aren't all that upset when they end up not keeping any of them in custody.
  • Same rationale as, if someone shoots someone else with an illegally-purchased firearm, you arrest the shooter for murder and the guy who sold him the gun for illegally selling firearms. Scott may have been using superpowers in violation of the Sokovia Accords, but he wouldn't have had superpowers to use if Hank and Hope hadn't supplied him with them.

Scott hiding the suit

• How could Scott hide the suit in Cassie's trophy? I would have assumed when he was arrested in Civil War, the suit would have been confiscated by the authorities. So, how'd he get it back?
  • Two possibilities: Either he undressed before he was arrested and........ hid the suit on his person (ew, but it can go really small) or, more likely, the suit was stored at the Raft and, as part of Cap's rescue mission, Scott recovered it. Same as how Sam Wilson got his Falcon gear back for Infinity War.
  • It's addressed in the movie. After the fight scene but before he got arrested he shrank the suit and mailed it to Luis. After he got released Luis returned the suit and Scott hid it in the trophy.
  • He definitely wouldn't have time to do that when he was arrested on the tarmac, so I'm guessing "arrested" meant the second time when he and Hawkeye turned themselves in to cut a deal. Probably the first time it was stored in the Raft and he took it back when Cap broke them all out, then mailed it to Luis before he turned himself back in, and told the FBI he destroyed it so nobody else could use it. Then again he also claims he was asleep for days after his Giant Man use even though in Civil War he's winded but still awake enough to make a quip, and is later on his feet and perfectly fine when Stark visits the Raft which couldn't have been any later than the next day. So maybe there was some retconning here.
  • Having watched the movie again, he says before he turned himself in. So he and Cap's team probably took it back along with Falcon's pack and other things taken and then he mailed it to Luis after that.

Scott's house arrest

• When playing with Cassie, Scott leaves the house through the back porch and his foot accidentally goes through the fence. Those few centimeters passed the perimeter of his property are what set off his ankle bracelet tracking device. Later in the film, when Maggie and Jim pick Cassie up, Scott is exceedingly careful not to leave the house itself, going so far as to lean all the way out so that *just* his ankles and feet remain in the house. Why was that necessary if the trigger of the tracking device is leaving the yard, but going outside the house is acceptable?
  • His anklet is most likely GPS based and 'pings' at regular intervals, there is an invisible 'line' drawn around Scott's house that includes the backyard but for some reason not the front yard by whatever program they are using to monitor Scott. His ankle goes across that line for longer than a minute or so it gets set off.
  • The simplest answer is that "leaning out of his porch" bit was probably exactly that, a bit, with Scott exaggerating for effect. After all, a house arrest that allows you to go into the backyard would probably let you go down the front steps to pick up deliveries, and Scott is enough of a clown to joke around like that. Alternately, you see that the ankle monitor sets off a sensor mounted on the wall of the house, so it's not GPS. Therefore, the boundaries of Scott's house arrest, and the shape they're drawn in, are defined by where the sensors are installed, and you'd need to ask the FBI why they decided to allow him full access to the yard, but not the front of the house.
  • Could be that Scott's ankle monitor has two settings, one to alert his FBI minders if he leaves the house and the other to alert them if he leaves the property. The former signal doesn't mean he's subject to arrest, but it does signal them to keep a close eye on the ankle monitor's feed, in case he keeps on going after stepping out the door.

Why didn't Scott just use the old suit once he gets it back?

• During the first half of the film, Scott is forced to use Hank's new prototype armor that is very unstable and causes him to shrink or enlarge randomly during the sneak-in at Cassie's school to get the old armor back. After that, why didn't Scott reuse the old armor in the final battle so he won't have to deal with his body changing erratically?
  • They had to disassemble part of it to recover a crucial bit of tech, and the thing had been sitting around for two years, untouched and unmaintained. The new suit might be a bit finicky, but the old one probably would need some work to make sure it was good to go.

Rising sea levels in San Francisco

• If Scott is submerged underwater wouldn't that flood fisherman's wharf and more of San Francisco?
  • Scott falling in the water did cause a fair-sized wave, but actually raising the sea level would require something far, far larger than him entering the water. Its not like getting in a bathtub, Scott even at max size was still incredibly tiny compared to the volume of water around him. Its like asking why the sea level doesn't rise over time as a newborn blue whale grows to adulthood.

How many possible empty lots are there to blow up a miniature lab and how can no one notice

• It seems that they should always shrink inside it rather than blow it up
  • Once Hank has found Janet, you see that they can't exit the Quantum Realm because the lab is still shrunken. Even if the machinery still worked (the portable Quantum Tunnel in the stinger looks miniaturized rather than built), it's implied that you need very specific circumstances to shrink into, or grow out of, the Quantum Realm, and that you can only do it from a full-size starting position.

Why didn't Scott just guide them from home, more strongly suggest they move the lab to their home, or just wait a day or two?

• I know this is the most obvious question, but I didn't buy this.
• Also, the lab probably IS their home. Hence why they couldn't go to their home to regroup and plan how to get the lab back. And they didn't know how long the newly opened quantum entanglement Scott had with Janet wold last, they only know it probably occurred because of their temporary opening of the portal, and couldn't take the chance. (And as it so happens the entanglement would last only the two days before Janet's position in the quantum real would start to destabilize) But most importantly, Scott's phone call is the breakthrough they needed; they'd probably been trying to get Janet back all the way from the time they realized one can return from the quantum realm.
  • And how exactly is he supposed to guide them from home anyway? He didn't get an address from Janet, or any kind of directions. They had him around so that he could feel Janet like a dowsing rod.
• This one isn't answered at all. They didn't need Scott to go visit Bill Foster or to track down the lab. Even when he wanted to volunteer, they originally didn't want him, so why didn't Scott wisely not risk throwing his whole life away in prison and wait until they got the lab back from Ghost before rejoining them?
  • Whether he's with Hank and Hope or not being out of the house violates his parole. Scott being in the action no more risks his future freedom then waiting in the can while also ensuring he doesn't miss anything and dropping him off repeatedly at his house is impractical. Not to mention the Pyms effectively conscripted him into this without giving him any other option.

Non-super criminals versus Hope, Scott, and Hank

• Is Sonny Burch suicidal? He's threatening Hank and Hope, two people who can shrink him to the size of a germ. There is also a ghost-like woman who wants the lab building. What makes this ordinary guy think he can take on a bunch of supers, and succeed in stealing the lab from them? He and his henchmen have no powers.
  • They may have superior technology but bullets do still work on Hank, Scott and Hope. Regardless, Sonny isn't really looking to fight them and win, he wants to steal from them and run away, something he nearly succeeds at repeatedly. He also notably tried to avoid having to confront Ghost directly.
  • Pretty sure he admits he's already cut deals with some very dangerous people to acquire the lab and its tech. He may not have felt he had a choice but to keep up his pursuit of the Pyms' technology. Also, however powerful their abilities, none of them have much of a verified history of actually killing people, aside from Hank in his (classified) secret-agent days. (Note that Yellowjacket's death was justified by Scott defending his daughter's life, plus Cross's body shrank down to a cinder and was never found.) Sonny has an FBI contact and presumably knows none of the opposing supers have any murder charges on their record.

Scott's situation after the Stinger

• In the stinger Scott is trapped in the Quantum Realm when the Pyms are snapped to dust. But why?
  • Why wouldn't they build some kind of return switch into the suit just as a back up in case something went wrong on the outside so that kind of thing wouldn't happen?
    • Either they didn't think they'd need one, or the tech wasn't possible to implement into the suit the way it was implemented into the pod that Hank takes.
    • Alternatively, there might be a fail safe mechanism that returns him to normal space if no Retrieval signal is sent. Even if you calculate it'd take 5 seconds to do the critical thing, if you had a fail safe you'd set it to trigger after a minute or two, to prevent the fail safe from interfering with the actual test, in case of moderate-but-non-critical levels of failure.
  • Didn't Scott escape the Quantum Realm on his own already?
    • Yes, but the suit appears to have had its regulator redesigned since then.
    • Additionally from all appearances Scott's last escape was down more to luck then anything else. He managed to get one of the growth disks in place to replace his regulator, grew back to macroscopic size without being crushed to death or lost, and wasn't horribly deformed in the process. He metaphorically won the lottery after using Pyms tech in ways it was never planned to be used.
    • Surely they would be redesigned to better facilitate exiting the Quantum Realm? Especially since Scott escaped the first time in a suit that wasn't designed to do that.
    • The Stinger cuts out for dramatic effect with him calling them, but there's no confirmation that he's still stuck in the realm in Avengers 4 as far as I am aware. For all we know he does indeed just alter the regulator and escape within the next hour. In fact given that nobody else knows he's there or that the Quantum Realm is even a thing, and I think it's probably a given Scott will get himself out somehow.
    • We now have confirmation from Avengers: Endgame that (drumroll please!) the abandoned car from the rooftop is impounded for five years, until a stray rat runs across the controls and activates the tunnel, spitting out a very confused Scott Lang. Scott slaps at his suit as he lands in a pile of trash bags and sets off a bunch of sparks, possibly implying that any regulator tech in his suit was fried.

Helmets on people!

• I know the meta reason is so that the actors can get more face time, but in-universe why do Scott and Hope keep constantly retracting the helmets all the time? Unless they're either shrunken or enlarged both keep retracting their helmets every time they return to normal size. Normally I'd just let something like this pass if it weren't for the fact that this tendency bit them in the butt when they got to Ghost's lair and got knocked out by her as a direct result of not having their helmets on.
  • Presumably to not waste the oxygen supply the suits carry, however that brings us to another problem. Originally the way the suits worked was the wearer couldn't breathe when shrunken or enlarged because their lungs would be a different size than the oxygen molecules they were designed to breathe, hence the suits had their own supply filtered to a size they can breath. This is only mentioned in side material, however it's consistent with both Ant-Man and Civil War that Scott always has his mask closed whenever he's shrunk or giant. This movie however throws that out, because Scott and Hope, as well as Hank Luis and Cassie are shrunk without the suits at all thanks to the Pym Particle cars, and nobody shows any trouble breathing. They even shrink Cassie purely for her own amusement, rather than anything serious.
    • Hope mentions to Scott that they can't open the car doors while they are shrunk inside the shrunken car (both have their helmets off at this time), implying that the car is airtight and equipped with its own supply of the appropriately-sized oxygen molecules. Basically the vehicle serves the same purpose as the breathing helmet at such times.
    • As a side note, for the same reason, seeing things would be problematic too considering photons and eyes interaction.

Miniature cars

• Sonny’s henchmen are somehow able to keep track of the shrunken cars. How can they see the tiny Hot Wheels driving directly in front of them? Couldn’t the good guys just drive under a parked car or on the pavement? No way Sonny’s men can follow them there.

All the miniature cars

• Gee, Hank's Hot Wheels Rally case is awesome! Look at all those cars; reinforced van, wood-panel station wagon, pickup truck, Volkswagen camper-bus, long-forked motorcycle, several Jeeps, loads of sports cars, that silver one looks kind of like an Aston-Martin, there's even a boat... Wait a second. Why the hell does he have dump trucks? And a cement mixer!
  • He has them in case he needs them for some reason.
  • In addition to just being prepared for anything, the construction vehicles could also be more specialized equipment that's just disguised as something that people wouldn't pay very much attention to.
  • If you're asking "how did he get them?", I assume he's just wealthy enough to buy them himself with company money.

How are the miniature cars so damned fast?

• Seriously, they're 1:64 scale Hot Wheels cars that secretly shoot around San Fran as if scale was no object. Correct me if I'm wrong; City driving is roughly thirty miles per hour, but doesn't simple multiplication mean that for Hope to haul Scott to the lab in that zippy Hyundai she has to be doing the equivalent of something like two thousand MPH — almost Mach three? And in the endgame, they're re-enacting Bullitt's signature car chase — which at times reached speeds of over 110 miles per hour — so when Luis jumps his miniaturized flame-decaled hot rod over those hills, he's effectively going over seven thousand miles per hour AKA MACH NINE!?!
  • No, it doesn't, and don't be so dramatic. The cars are not doing Mach anything. They're going as fast as you see them going. There are RC cars that reach 100 MPH.
  • With living things inside of them? At that scale it should be like getting shot out of a gun and doing hundred-story dives onto the concrete. Pym Particle Quantum Bullshit.
  • Yes. They're big enough that you could put, say, a mouse or something in there and I'm pretty sure they won't explode by just moving highway speeds. Quite simply, the things you're worried about are just plain not a reasonable concern.
  • One concern that is an issue is that a miniaturized car engine would have to work much faster to get the tiny wheels turning fast enough to get up to regular car speeds. They probably couldn't get up to highway speeds, for instance, because if they are 1:64 scale then the engines would have to work 64 times faster to get the same speed. On the other hand, Pym could have had all of his cars modified when he installed the shrinking gear to let them get up to much higher scale speeds than they would normally be capable of.
  • As mentioned on other headacratchees the way Hank has describes Pym particles working and the reality we see in the movies doesn't really match up. Mass is preserved but weight is not such that Ant-Man can punch like a full sized adult while shrunk but Hank can carry around a tank as a keychain without apparent issue. Either Hank is lying about the way the particles work or he's simplifying for Scott's sake in a way that gets things mostly right. Now that being the case given weight is not preserved it would take proportionally less energy to move the car at speed, but because mass is preserved the engine is putting out the same amount of torque regardless of size. As a result despite the RP Ms being higher at small size the engine isn't any harder to produce the force to turn thr wheels.

Sokovia Accords

• So we are repeatedly told that the reason Scott Lang is under house arrest is for violating the Sokovia Accords, and in turn that the Pyms are on the run for also violating them as they gave their technology to Scott. But the Accords had yet to be signed when the airport fight happened and Scott was arrested, given that Zemo's bombing of the UN interrupted the signing ceremony (and furthermore it is legally dubious that any kind of Accords would come into effect IMMEDIATELY after being signed into law- there is almost always a grace period to adjust to these sort of things), and beyond that the Accords were about controlling the Avengers rather than managing every single person with advanced technology or the people associated with them, so what gives?
  • Per Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., the Sokovia Accords does govern powered people. And yes, they were signed before that fight happened — the UN meeting that Zemo blows up was when they were signing it. Honestly, it doesn't make any sense for 100 countries to sign a treaty that only involves six people on the planet.
  • Even if the Sokovia Accords weren't in effect, Scott was involved in a massive fight which destroyed property and may have endangered human lives, so he still committed a crime. And most likely he was still on probation after his time in jail, so all things considered a house arrest is fairly lenient punishment for him.

Ghost, SHIELD, and the Avengers

• SHIELD had a secret assassin who not only seemed to be as stealthy and good at killing people as Black Widow and Hawkeye, but who also had some very useful phasing powers. Why wasn't Ghost one of Nick Fury's candidates for the Avengers? Depending on where her allegiances were, why wasn't she sent to hunt down Cap and Natasha in Captain America: The Winter Soldier? How is it Coulson and his team never ran into her at any point when not dealing with any given season's Big Bad?
  • For the first question, it seems likely Fury didn't know about her and it was actually HYDRA who was using her (or her mental and physical instability made her a poor candidate for the Avengers). As for the second question, given how her condition was steadily getting worse, Ava may have no longer been capable of going on actual missions any more by the time all those things were happening (i.e. not able to stay away from the chamber long enough to travel far). And as for the last question, Bill states he took Ava away when Shield fell (i.e. midway through the first season of Agents of Shield), and after that they laid low while searching for a way to cure her. There wasn't really any reason for Coulson and company to run into her.
  • And if Foster is aware that the SHIELD Ava was actually working for was HYDRA, he'd have even more reason to keep as far away as possible from anything even remotely having to do with SHIELD or any successor organization.

Ava's behavior toward Scott when he's tied up

• What was up with that? Why was she being a creeper? Does she like him? If she does, why isn't it brought up anywhere else?
  • She's acting awkwardly for a number of reasons. Her condition leaves her in constant pain, at that moment she's using a lot of self-control just to keep herself in a solid state, and she's been socially isolated her entire life so she's not good around new people. As that's happening, Scott is masking his fear with humor and she's reacting positively to that. Also, Ava is reaching out to touch Scott because she rarely has the chance to simply touch another person outside of a violent situation. The reason why none of this is ever brought up again is because outside of that brief moment, she's one hundred percent focused on finding a cure for her condition.
  • It’s also that, unlike Hope and Hank, Ava doesn’t have a vendetta against Scott or blame him for what happened. She might even see him as a victim of the Pyms like her, seeing as he is under house arrest due to their technology. A type of kindred. With him being his normal friendly sort, and not the source of her pain, she responded in a way that’s unusual for her until the conflict with the Pyms took over.

Endless Daily Routine

• Why the hell is that giant ant still following Scott's daily routine as San Francisco and the rest of the universe is going to shit? Shouldn't someone have relieved it from its duties after Scott's house arrest ended?
  • The only part of the routine we see the ant doing is the drumming. Maybe the ant simply likes playing drums, and Scott let it continue doing that even after the house arrest ended?
    • Even if that idea does work out, why risk the exposure? If anyone else other than the Pyms and/or Scott's family and friends decided to go into the place, they'd probably bring about a media circus, intentional or otherwise. Plus, letting an oversized ant roam around the house doesn't seem to be worth the hassle in the long run.
    • I'm trying to think of who Scott knows well enough for them to enter his house when he's not there who also doesn't know about the Ant-Man suit. His prison friends know, his ex-wife and daughter know, his ex-wife's new husband even knows, the Pyms obviously know, the police and FBI both know...
  • It's also likely that Scott and the Pyms intended to get Ava another batch of quantum realm particles, then head over to Scott's apartment to take care of that matter before the snap blew those plans all to hell. After all, most would agree that saving a woman from fading out of existence is a good bit more important than getting an ant to stop playing the drums.

Lies

• After making their first escape from the baddies, Hank claims that the backstory relayed to Ava by Bill Foster is a lie - her father was actually a traitor who had stolen Hank's designs. This led me to think that Foster was using Ava to get his hands on the technology for himself or something, but it never comes up again. For the rest of the movie, he seems completely invested in her welfare, refuses to abandon her in the end, and even keeps her from crossing the line by kidnapping Scott's daughter and from saving herself at the expense of Hank's wife. (Or at least he tried, in the latter case.) So how does the statement of him lying to her fit the narrative, when he seems pretty genuine at all other times we see him?
  • Foster may not know the true story, or perhaps Hank is exaggerating a bit. Foster does obviously actually care for Ava, so maybe he didn't want to speak ill of her father when it didn't matter anymore, and hid the true story from her.
  • Plus, Hank himself may not know the whole story. Given the ever-expanding history of HYDRA's existence within S.H.I.E.L.D., it’s possible they staged the “theft” of technology for the benefit of Pym and Stark and whatever other S.H.I.E.L.D. higher-ups were around so they could pursue the research themself. They could have told Ava’s father that Pym was the one who wanted him out, and so both sides think poorly of the other and never follow up on the story.

Scott's new house

• Given how expensive even the smallest of houses in San Francisco are, how is it that an ex-con like Scott is now able to live in such a nice house in this film, when he was limited to rooming in a small, dirty apartment with the Wombats previously? Given that he isn't currently holding a job, and that he's living completely alone minus the occasional visits from the Wombats and his family, there's no way Scott has enough money to afford for renting the place...so is the government just giving him leeway on this issue or something?
  • Scott is currently holding a job. He's one of the heads of X-Con Security, which he does remotely. Remember, he's designing the security system that Luis is trying to pitch throughout the film.
  • Until he took the suit to go to Germany, Scott was working with Hank — who's super rich — and starting a relationship with Hope — who's also super rich.
  • Hank's bargaining chip for Scott to become Ant Man in the first film was that he would help him spend time with Cassie. The implication is that Hank legally hired Scott for some fictional role (perhaps an Engineering Consultant?) and Scott used the large amount of money Hank paid him to purchase the house and help Luis set up X-CON Security as a means of support. Remember, as far as the government knows, the first illegal use of the Pym Particle technology was in Germany (not the San Francisco heist), so Scott had probably been legally employed by Hank until then.
  • It's also entirely possible that Scott found a way to short the stock of Pym Technologies, which would have gone into free-fall after the destruction of all their research in the first film.
  • Falcon also probably transferred him some money to come to Germany in Civil War, as a way of sweetening the pot, probably from some Avengers expense account that Tony would have almost certainly set up.

Some Quantum Realm confusion

• In Avengers: Endgame, it’s said that time works differently in the quantum realm with people experiencing a type of Year Outside, Hour Inside Time Dilation. What was 5 years for everyone in the outside world was only 5 hours for Scott. If that was the case why did Janet feel the full brunt of three decades; wouldn’t she have also experienced the same effect as Scott? Assuming one hour down there equals a year outside, she would’ve been stuck there for only 1.25 days and not age 31 years. Did she perhaps not go deep enough or reach a specific layer to feel it? Does the QR simply not work the same for everybody?
  • "Time works differently" does not in any way mean "it works the same for everyone who goes into the Quantum Realm."
  • There was also mention of "time vortexes" within the QR, maybe that had something to do with it.
• Also, did Janet stop shrinking once she reached a certain spot in the QR? In Ant-Man, Hank said you continually shrink for all eternity, but upon seeing Hank reunite with her in Ant-Man and the Wasp, it seemed like she was able to stay a certain scale. Did she fix her regulator? Did she possibly find a way to stop as she adapted with the environment? Or, maybe, she WAS still shrinking (along with Hank and the pod he rode), just very slowly.
  • Scott also appeared to stop shrinking. It's possible that there is, in fact, a limit to how small you can get.
  • Plus you have to remember Hank had no idea how the Quantum Realm worked at the time. If he did he’d at least made a lot more progress towards finding his wife than he had (or even just designed the suit to shrink further than the size of an ant outright). It was just his best guess what happens when you go subatomic, all he knew is he didn’t have a method to pull out of it once you did and designed the regulator to halt shrinking at a point where it could still be reversed.

Back up power

• During the congregation ceremony, Ant-Man and the ants destroyed the devices of Darren’s security systems to steal the Yellowjacket. It bought them 15 seconds of time before the back up power will be powered on, according to Hank. Why didn’t they destroy the back up power too?

Super-speed knife thrower

• During the kitchen fight, we see a henchman grab a knife and throw it at Hope. She then shrinks down and dodges the blade before pivoting and dodging another blade that’s only a few inches behind the first one. We only see the guy throw one knife, and for her to have dodged two so close together would require the henchman to throw two basically at the same time or be absurdly fast

Why not give him?

• Hank's comment that he could have given Scott's suit the extra features Hope received, but didn't, is funny, but doesn't really make sense. He recruited Scott for a mission that was not just important, but important to him. Why wouldn't he give Scott every advantage? Maybe he was just being funny.
  • It most likely required focus to operate the wings on command, much like it does to manipulate the ants.

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