Evangeline Lilly on the original ending to Ant-Man and The Wasp

Last Updated on August 2, 2021

MAJOR SPOILERS for both ANT-MAN AND THE WASP as well as AVENGERS: INFINITY WAR, so consider yourself warned. As with most movies in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, ANT-MAN AND THE WASP contains several post-credit scenes, the first of which connects to the dramatic events of AVENGERS: INFINITY WAR.

As we know, Thanos (Josh Brolin) emerged victorious in AVENGERS: INFINITY WAR and disintegrated half of all life across the universe with a single snap of his fingers, and although the ANT-MAN AND THE WASP cast weren't involved in those events, they did find themselves on the receiving end. After entering the Quantum Realm to harvest much-needed quantum energy, Scott Lang (Paul Rudd) is ready to return, but before Hank (Michael Douglas), Janet (Michelle Pfeiffer), and Hope (Evangeline Lilly) can do so, they're turned to dust as a result of Thanos' snap, leaving Scott trapped. All we see of Hank, Janet, and Hope is dust slowly floating to the ground, but Lilly told CBR that the original scene initially showed much more.

At the time, we still didn’t really entirely know what exactly that [the Snappening] was, and it’s because we hadn’t seen or been a part of shooting Infinity War. We really didn’t know what it was supposed to look like, either! And so we were in this sort of awkward position of shooting something that — we knew, like, the basic idea. We knew that Thanos had snapped his fingers and people disappeared, but we didn’t know… I hadn’t seen Tom Holland crying out and begging Iron Man to “Please, please, I don’t want to go, I don’t want to go” and we hadn’t seen the emotion or the drama or the sort of angst and maybe pain surrounding the ashing or the Snappening when we were shooting it. I don’t think [director] Peyton [Reed] really even knew what that was supposed to look like or be, because none of us had been a part of Avengers: Infinity War.

For her part, Evangeline Lilly is glad that the finished film cut away their reactions. "So I kind of got a giggle when I saw the final product, because they basically just cut our reactions out completely and cut to ash, which is, of course, much more dramatic and worked very well for the scene, but also is probably a result of the fact that we totally blew it," Lilly laughed. "None of knew what we were doing! I think we made it look a little bit more like an ascension to heaven than any sort of negative and scary happening."

Our own Editor-in-Chief Paul Shirey recently chatted with ANT-MAN AND THE WASP director Peyton Reed (you can check that interview out right here), who spoke about ending the film on such a cliffhanger.

And obviously I had seen early, early cuts of Infinity War and knew how that movie ended and knew that it was something we couldn’t ignore in our movie, so then the task was on us to sort of figure out how we-if we do or don’t-and then if we decide to, how we weave that into the narrative of our movie without it overtaking our movie. It’s a really unique, creative position to be in as a director. I’ve done a bunch of studio movies before the Marvel movies; this is a very different thing. You’re teeing off of other movies while still trying to make your movie an absolute standalone enjoyable experience. I found it really fun and also really challenging.

ANT-MAN AND THE WASP is now available on DVD/Blu-ray/4K Ultra HD.