‘Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania’: Welcome to the Quantum Realm

The Marvel Cinematic Universe is going somewhere it has actually gone before (but not for a very long time, unless you’re Scott Lang and it only feels like five minutes): The Quantum Realm.

It's right there in the title — Marvel Studios’ Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania is heading back to this unexplored location as Marvel’s tiniest heroes launch Phase 5 in a big, bold way. As previously seen in both Ant-Man, Ant-Man and The Wasp, and also Avengers: Endgame, the Quantum Realm plays a big role in the history of the MCU. And now, after getting accidentally trapped down there, Scott, along with his daughter Cassie, Hope Van Dyne and her parents Hank and Janet, are all going to have to conquer this unknown world together.

But what is it? What is it like down there? Who lives down there? Those are all questions that’ll be answered when the movie arrives in theaters, but for now, just know that the Quantum Realm is the latest uncharted location in the MCU.

“The Quantum Realm is just as big an idea as any of the things in any of the other worlds we’ve explored in the MCU to date,” Producer Stephen Broussard explains. “It’s a world unto itself not unlike Asgard or Wakanda or the world of the mystic arts in Doctor Strange. Getting the chance to establish something that big, and that big in part three of a film has been really, really fun

Writer Jeff Loveness echoes the same sentiment, adding that while it’s certainly been referenced and seen before in the movies, it’s still a vastly “unexplored place.”

“We really wanted to build it from the ground up and we thought how do we make this different from just outer space, how do we make this different from underwater like Namor’s kingdom Talokan?” Loveness explains. “We came up with [the idea] that basically it’s like the basement of the Multiverse. It’s this connected limbo outside of space and time.”

And while it’s certainly a known and discussed location in the MCU, when it came time to actually bring it to life for more than just a few minutes, the creative team began building an entire new universe from scratch. It very much needed to look, feel, and function like any other destination an Avenger might travel — just quantum sized.

Broussard continues, “At every angle we’ve asked ourselves what’s the Quantum Realm version of this? What’s the Quantum Realm version of aliens? What does technology look like down here? What does society look like down here, what does religion and politics?” This meant turning to production designer Will Htay to literally bring the Quantum Realm to life so viewers could see all these things and experience them right alongside the Ant-Fam.

“When [director] Peyton Reed came to me we started talking about the Quantum Realm being this vast epic, world within worlds,  he wanted it to feel like it was huge,” Htay explains. “What we didn’t want it to be was macro photography, we didn’t want it to be too CG heavy. Even though we knew we’d be relying on VFX and CGI ultimately but what we wanted to do is try and make it as real and tangible in places as possible. So that when we go down there with our protagonist we can feel it and touch it and smell it and that we want it to feel like it is this real place that’s hidden beneath the Multiverse.”

So it’s big, it’s expansive, it’s a real functioning place where creatures live, and now Scott, Hope, Hank, Janet, and Cassie are stuck down there. If you’re looking for a tiny little taste of what to expect, star Evangline Lily teases such things like, “Vicious suns that can eat you, blobs that can morph, broccolis that can fight in battles, buildings that are part of a freedom fighter brigade.”

“You look across the landscape and [don’t] see anything you would expect to see on planet Earth,” she continues. “Things like gravity functions differently so you have water dripping upward instead of downward, and you have clouds that don’t move in any way that resembles our reality. It’s going to be as silly and fun as it will be sweeping and epic and beautiful. It's going to be very elegant and very graceful.”

Get ready to go quantum! Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania arrives in theaters on February 17, 2023.