Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantamania may be an official third entry in the series but its director has promised "a hard left turn" from what fans are used to.
Speaking to Entertainment Weekly, Peyton Reed said that, while the third Ant-Man film continues the story of its main characters Scott Lang and Hope Van Dyne, the introduction of one of Marvel's big bads majorly changes the dynamic.
"We were thrilled to get to do a third Ant-Man movie and do a trilogy, and we knew if we were going to do that we wanted to do some things differently," Reed said. "We really wanted to take a hard left turn and make a movie that was even more epic, but still progress the story of these family dynamics and everything that's going on between Scott and Hope and Cassie."
He continued: "We also knew that we wanted to put our heroes up against a very, very formidable opponent. I grew up reading the comics and I knew the character of Kang the Conqueror, who's one of the big, big bad characters in the comics, so to be able to put up our heroes against Kang the Conqueror was a huge thing for us. We went big and we also went small."
Kang the Conqueror is likely the next Thanos-level villain that the Marvel Cinematic Universe's heroes will come up against throughout the newly announced Multiverse Saga, which closes with Avengers: The Kang Dynasty and Avengers: Secret Wars.
We've already (sort of) seen the character played by Jonathan Majors' as He Who Remains in Loki, but there are multiple versions of Kang throughout time and space so this isn't the same Kang that will be in Ant-Man and, interestingly, it's not necessarily the Kang we'll see in the Multiverse Saga's conclusion.
The "also going small" referred to by Reed pertains to the more intimate family dynamic that Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantamania will also explore. "Cassie is now 18 years old and maybe Scott doesn't quite know how to relate to her as an adult because he lost those five years because of the events of Endgame," he said.
Cassie's actress Kathryn Newton added to this, saying: "Cassie is different. We've seen her five years later. She hasn't seen her dad in a while. She's a little more grown-up. He's kind of just a mess. She doesn't know much. She's just like me. She's messing up all the time. She loves her dad. She does, she doesn't admit it but she does, and I think that's at the heart of it and I hope people can feel that."
Alongside a plethora of other Marvel announcements made during San Diego Comic-Con, the company revealed a new poster for the third film, showing titular characters Ant-Man and The Wasp alongside Kang in the background and Cassie as new hero Stature.
Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelancer. He'll talk about The Witcher all day.