With Ant-Man & The Wasp: Quantumania, the Quantum Realm is about the completely change the MCU. Again. That escalation of the strangest realm of the Marvel Cinematic Universe will finally deliver on Kevin Feige's 2015 claim: “It won’t be apparent for years, but the whole notion of the Quantum Realm and the whole notion of going to places that are so out there, they are almost mind-bendingly hard to fathom. It all plays into Phase Three.” (via The Hollywood Reporter.)
Having already proved the key to defeat Thanos in Avengers: Endgame by unlocking the MCU's time travel, the Quantum Realm is the temporary home - or prison - of Jonathan Majors' Kang The Conqueror. Despite power levels that allowed him to kill Avengers, the formidable villain finds his match in the "basement of the MCU multiverse." With Scott Lang's very specific set of skills roped in to help, the Quantum Realm becomes the door to Kang's conquest of the MCU's main universe. And as we follow Ant-Man down the rabbit hole again, there are still some significant questions to answer...
14 How Did Scott Lang Escape The Quantum Realm In Ant-Man?
At the end of Ant-Man, after his climactic battle with Yellowjacket, Paul Rudd's Scott Lang finds himself stranded in the Quantum Realm. With Hank Pym's warning that escape is impossible, his fate seems sealed and his days numbered, but Lang escapes, against the odds.
Lang manages to escape through a combination of sheer force of will (and the love of his daughter) and altering his own suit mid-shrink, switching out the shrinking device for an enlarging device, allowing him to return to his own universe. This experience would later help to further Pym’s understanding of the Quantum Realm, leading him closer to saving his wife in Ant-Man & The Wasp.
13 How Did Scott Escape The Quantum Realm In Endgame?
When Avengers: Endgame was released, fans saw a number of surprising revelations about the characters, post-Infinity War: Shuri was confirmed to be dead, Tony Stark was preparing to die alone in outer space, and Thanos was living a peaceful life as a farmer. But perhaps the biggest revelation was that Scott Lang had once again escaped the Quantum Realm.
In a rare turn of luck, Scott was released from the Quantum Realm purely by accident when a rat happened to scurry across the right button five years after his disappearance. This pulled Scott back into his own universe, where he found himself in a storage facility, dazed and confused, 5 years later.
12 Can Captain Marvel Enter The Quantum Realm?
Anyone who saw Captain Marvel would be forgiven for thinking she could do pretty much anything, such is her power level. Her range of superpowers is one of the most impressive of the MCU's cast of characters and she is able to absorb the energy from the powers she doesn’t have. But can she enter the Quantum Realm?
Dr. Spiros Michalakis, the quantum physicist who devised the realm for Marvel, seems to have hinted at it: “This is exciting for the future. There are different ways that some of these ideas appear on-screen in a few years. Not just for Ant-Man, but also for Captain Marvel and all of the Marvel Cinematic Universe." How Brie Larson's hero manages such a feat is yet to be revealed, but her powers have yet to be fully explored in the MCU.
11 What Is Ghost’s Relationship With The Quantum Realm?
One of Ant-Man and the Wasp’s villains was Ava Starr, better known as Ghost, who skipped in and out of Earthly existence to trick her foes. When she was a little girl, her father’s attempt at a Quantum Tunnel exploded and she was imbued with quantum energy that gave her the power of “Quantum Phasing.”
While it appears as though Ghost does harness power from the Quantum Realm to phase in and out of reality, she does not seem capable of physically going sub-atomic for extended periods of time. However, as the character is fleshed out in future titles, including Thunderbolts, she may find that she is more powerful than she originally thought, perhaps even managing to travel between realms.
10 Who Lives In The Quantum Realm?
The debut of the first trailer for Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania finally revealed the details surrounding Kang the Conqueror's appearance in the film. The trailer confirmed many fan theories regarding the character, including the fact that he appears to reside, and may even be trapped, in the Quantum Realm.
Kang is already set to be a major threat for the Avengers in the Multiverse Saga, with his involvement in Avengers: The Kang Dynasty and possibly Avengers: Secret Wars confirming as much. And he's far from the only resident of the Realm, with whole factions of rebels confirmed by Ant-Man & The Wasp: Quantumania footage, Bill Murray's mysterious tech savant Krylar, and a roster of strange and wonderful characters, including sentient broccoli, according to Wasp herself, Evangeline Lily.
9 What Are Time Vortexes?
In Ant-Man and the Wasp, before Scott Lang enters the Quantum Realm, Janet Van Dyne tells him, “Don’t get sucked into a time vortex – we won’t be able to save you.” This caught many fans off-guard, as Janet nonchalantly confirmed the existence of time travel in the MCU.
Time vortexes are swirling masses of time (as in, the concept of time) that can suck someone in and spit them out somewhere else in the timeline. The reason why people who get sucked into time vortexes can’t be saved is that their rescuers wouldn’t know where or when to start looking for them – they could’ve been catapulted into the distant past or the distant future for all they know. Scott and the Avengers would later utilize these vortexes during their Time Heist in Avengers: Endgame.
8 Does Time Pass In The Quantum Realm?
The surreal nature of physics in the Quantum Realm has led many fans to wonder about the dimension's true nature, including its relationship to the passing of time. If the Quantum Realm is truly the key to ideas like time travel, does that imply that it is therefore immune to the passage of time?
Janet van Dyne's return seems to imply that time does indeed pass in the Quantum Realm, as she emerged decades after her disappearance having aged proportionately to the real world. However, Scott was trapped in the Quantum Realm for five years, yet only aged by minutes, contradicting Janet's own experiences. While fans cannot yet know for certain how this works, it may be that the passage of time depends on how deeply one has traversed into the Quantum Realm.
7 Can The Quantum Realm Be Used For Multiversal Travel?
Much like the Multiverse, the Quantum Realm is a concept about which people understand frighteningly little. It has already been proven to be the key to time travel in the MCU, but the presence of the multiversal villain Kang the Conqueror suggests that the Quantum Realm could also be used to travel to different realities in the Multiverse.
The "realms" of the MCU, such as the Ancestral Plane, the Noor Dimension, and the Quantum Realm itself seem to be on a different plane of existence from the alternate realities of the Multiverse, perhaps instead acting as "buffers" between different branches of the MCU. If this is indeed the case, it would explain how Kang can traverse the Multiverse, and how he was initially trapped in the Quantum Realm by whoever did it.
6 Can Doctor Strange Enter The Quantum Realm?
In Doctor Strange, the Ancient One tells the Sorcerer Supreme, “You think that this material universe is all there is? What is real? What mysteries lie beyond the reach of your senses? At the root of existence, mind and matter meet. Thoughts shape reality. This universe is only one of an infinite number. Worlds without end. Some benevolent and life-giving, others filled with malice and hunger. Dark places, where powers older than time lie. Ravenous, and waiting.”
Thereafter, the Ancient One sends Strange to several different dimensions and realms, one of which is the Quantum Realm, according to Scott Derrickson’s DVD commentary: “This image here is obviously a nod to Ant-Man and the Quantum Realm, acknowledging that as one of the mysterious realms of existence.” Impressively, it appears Strange's magic means he can travel anywhere he's able to physically exist.
5 Is The Quantum Realm The Fountain Of Youth?
While the Avengers are trying to crack the key to time travel in Endgame, they accidentally "push" time through Scott rather than the other way around, turning him into several different versions of himself, including a baby, a young child, and an old man, before eventually returning him to his usual self.
This scene thas been used to theorize that the Avengers have technically cured aging using the Quantum Realm. This naturally opens the door to many new possibilities, the most exciting of which being that none of the Avengers would ever grow old and die. Even the now elderly Steve Rogers could potentially become a young man again if so inclined.
4 Is The Quantum Realm In The Comics?
The Quantum Realm does appear in the comics, but it’s not called the Quantum Realm. Rather, it is called the Microverse. It’s the exact same thing – a tiny dimension packed between every alternate reality that can only be accessed by mystical teleportation or subatomic shrinking – but it just goes by a different name in the comics.
The reason for this is that Marvel Studios doesn’t own the rights to the word “Microverse.” Paramount Pictures and Hasbro own the rights to the Micronauts franchise including the Microverse terminology, so Marvel had to make up a new name for it and they chose “the Quantum Realm.”
3 How Do You Enter The Quantum Realm?
While the Quantum Realm is very real in the MCU, it’s pretty difficult to get into. There are two ways to enter the realm. One can get in via magical teleportation if they happen to have a Sling Ring like Doctor Strange, or they can get in by shrinking down so small that they become smaller than atoms themselves.
The latter of these methods can only be achieved using Hank Pym’s Pym Particles technology, which is how Janet Van Dyne got stranded in there and how Scott Lang gets in and out of it in Ant-Man and the Wasp.
2 Is The Quantum Realm A Prison?
Ant-Man & The Wasp: Quantumania is set to explain many of the mysteries of the Quantum Realm, including what exactly Kang the Conqueror is doing there. It seems unlikely that a multiversal tyrant like Kang would be content remaining in his walled city for an extended period of time, begging the question of whether or not he is trapped there.
Before his death, He Who Remains could well have been the one to have trapped Kang in the Quantum Realm, though that would change the previously assumed timeline of Loki's season 1 ending to come after the events of Ant-Man 3. This would also explain why Kang needs Scott's help in the upcoming film.
1 Who Trapped Kang In The Quantum Realm?
All evidence points towards Kang being a prisoner in the Quantum Realm in Ant-Man & The Wasp: Quantumania and requiring Pym technology to make his way out. Given his supreme power level, the idea of him being overcome and trapped against his will suggests an even more powerful foe out there somewhere - or an equally powerful potential ally to the Avengers. In Loki season 1, He Who Remains established that Kang The Conqueror was the at least one of the "worst" variants, and his conquest of the timeline would appear to confirm his supremacy, so that counts doubly.
For Kang to be trapped in the Quantum Realm despite this apparently successful conquest suggests that some force defeated him. The Avengers alone (from a different timeline) may not be strong enough - especially as he brags about their deaths in early footage - so the question of who managed it is as exciting as it is confusing.
Key Release Dates
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Ant-Man & the Wasp: Quantumania
Release Date:2023-02-17 -
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3
Release Date:2023-05-05 -
The Marvels
Release Date:2023-11-10 -
Captain America: Brave New World
Release Date:2024-07-26 -
Marvel's Thunderbolts
Release Date:2024-12-20 -
Blade (2025)
Release Date:2025-02-14 -
Deadpool 3
Release Date:2024-05-03 -
Marvel's Fantastic Four
Release Date:2025-05-02 -
Avengers: The Kang Dynasty
Release Date:2026-05-01 -
Avengers: Secret Wars
Release Date:2027-05-01
