"Gone forever. Telling you that she wasn't coming home... was the hardest thing that I ever had to do."
- The intro that shows the last time Janet saw Hope as a child before she went subatomic is tragic because the audience knows what's going to happen. Hank then has to tell her that her mom isn't coming back. Both of them are devastated.
- Unlike the first film, the audience actually hears Janet's last words before she went subatomic:Janet: Tell Hope I love her.
- Unlike the first film, the audience actually hears Janet's last words before she went subatomic:
- At the start of the film, Scott has to deal with the fact that Hank and Hope became fugitives because of something he did, and they resent him for it. While Cassie insisting that Hope and Hank hate Scott is seemingly Played for Laughs, you can tell from Scott's voice during the scene in which he leaves the phone message that he clearly regrets causing trouble for them and is sad about their being on bad terms.
- Luis mentions in passing that Scott's wife filed for divorce shortly after Scott was incarcerated. In the flashback, you can clearly see Scott in possibly the lowest point in his life.
- Bill Foster talks about how during his time at S.H.I.E.L.D., Hank drove everyone away with his Jerkass behavior. He also talks about how Janet was the only one who could put up with Hank, and when he says that she paid the ultimate price for it, it causes Hank to to fly into a rage, forcing Hope to calm him down.
- Ghost's whole situation is tragic. Her father, Elihas Starr, was a former partner of Hank Pym's at S.H.I.E.L.D. who was fired in disgrace over a disagreement with Hank Pym, and who struggled desperately to complete his own experiments with quantum energy to try and regain his good name. When his quantum tunnel exploded, he and Ghost's mother Catherine were killed, and Ghost was affected by the quantum energy waves, which caused her molecular structure to begin unraveling and re-raveling itself on the quantum level. This gave her the power to phase through objects or become invisible, but also forced her into a life of constant, debilitating pain. S.H.I.E.L.D. took her in and experimented on her, ostensibly planning to cure her, but in reality just exploiting her as a covert agent, forcing her to commit acts of espionage, sabotage and assassination (with Ava describing this as selling her soul for the prospect of being saved). Worse still, her condition is worsening; she only has weeks left to live before she simply fades away into nothingness, and she's desperate to try and fix herself before that happens.
- In the flashback, it's shown that Elihas told Catherine to take Ava and run away. They would have escaped, had Ava not pulled away from her mother and run back to her father. The reason why? She did not want her father to die alone.
- Making matters worse? After hearing Ghost's backstory, Hank Pym tells Scott and Hope that Ghost's father was actually fired because he was a spy who tried to steal Hank's research.
- The scene immediately after the accident shows a group of firefighters finding little Ava among the wreckage with the bodies of her parents. One of the men in the group kneels down and tries to give her a comforting hug... only for his arms to pass right through her, denying the poor kid even a small bit of human comfort. The look on the fireman's face is a combination of fear and sorrow.
- Ghost angrily slapping Bill aside when he's questioning their design to harvest Janet's energy at the end. Whether you sympathize more with either one of them at that moment, it still hurts.
- Ghost may be very difficult to watch for anyone who has either dealt with chronic pain personally or seen in a friend or family member. Hannah John-Kamen deserves a lot of credit for the performance. Notice the slight grimaces and mildly discomforted expressions she has on her face; you can tell that Ava has essentially been forced to adjust to living with a constant degree of varying pain and it's heartbreaking to watch. In the end, despite feeling guilty for nearly killing Janet, all she can say in front of her:
- Ava: It hurts. It hurts all the time.
- The simple look of desperate fear Ghost has when she's defeated, and is passing more heavily at the end. before Janet steps up to help her.
- Just seeing how angry Hope and Hank are (in a restrained fashion) and how guilty Scott is after his call to Luis has the authorities about to catch them, while he has to race home instead of staying with them. Their refusal to give Scott a rendezvous to meet them again really sells it. Woo's Oblivious Guilt Slinging when he tells Scott about how they've been arrested, but says that Scott himself is a good man further emphasizes this.
- Hank and Hope being kept in jail, being told that it will be an hour before they can even talk to anyone, an hour which will use up the last of their window to save Janet and keep her from being lost for good, while their escape options look grim. However, they are determined to try anyway for Janet's sake. Fortunately, Scott picks that time to show up and redeem himself in their eyes.
- There can be something kind of sad about Woo's sense of disappointment when he realizes that Scott is indeed going back to costumed crimefighting after he'd thought some trust had developed between them.
- The Stinger: After all that Hank and Hope went through to bring Janet back, all three of them get wiped out by Thanos. Keep in mind that before the credits roll, we see that the Pyms are set for a beautiful new life together, with Hank and Janet setting up a nice house by the beach so they could live in peaceful solitude. This all gets erased instantly with just one finger snap.
- At the very least, all three go together as a family. Plus, it doesn't stick.
- Scott is now trapped in the Quantum Realm, just as Janet was. And, if preliminary info on Avengers: Endgame is anything to go by, he might be there for several years. There's every chance Cassie will face her teenage years without her father, assuming she's even still alive.
- And he was in there gathering more of the energy that helps Ghost. Which means that unless he can find a way out, Ava is going to suffer just like she was during the course of the film and might even die too, assuming she didn't get wiped by the snap in the first place.
- Even worse, when he does get out of there, he may end up having to sacrifice the Quantum Particles he collected as preparation for the final battle against Thanos, which means he may not be able to cure Ava after all. They do look like they could be of use to the Avengers and too much is at stake for Scott not to use them.
- Thanos' snap essentially turns the entire film into a "Shaggy Dog" Story, just like Thor: Ragnarok. At least, for awhile.
