Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania: Post-credit scenes explained

There was a lot squeezed into Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania’s credits scenes. Allow us to unpack them.

An entry into the Marvel Cinematic Universe wouldn’t be right without a mid- and/or post-credits scene. Or two. Or five in the case of Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2. Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania doesn’t buck the trend, offering fans two juicy credits stingers to sink their teeth into.

Sometimes, a mid- or post-credits scene exists just for fun but other times it’s there to offer a tantalising insight into what comes next, setting up the next adventure down the MCU’s road and getting us all very excited indeed for a continuation of the story. This is how they getcha!

Read more: The best Ant-Man 3 Easter eggs

So, let’s take a dive into Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania’s mid-credits and post-credits scenes and explain what’s going on.

Here’s your spoiler warning: spoilers for Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania coming up.

You have been warned.

What happens in Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania’s mid-credits scene?

The mid-credits scene begins with a shot of three tall statues of Kang – a reference to The Council of Kangs from the comics. In the comics, the Council of Kangs was formed by Kang alongside two other Kang Variants of similar appearance. As we shall learn, not all Kangs look alike. Together, they worked to wipe out all the other divergent Kangs, thinking them “ignorant” and “incompetent”.

Eventually, a future Kang Variant known as Immortus revealed that he had been the architect behind the Council all along. His motivation? To ensure all Kang Variants were eliminated so that Kang’s path to Immortus was unencumbered, giving himself supremacy.

Read more: What is the multiverse?

However, the three Kang Variants we meet in the mid-credits sequence are not the three original Council members of the comics, but Immortus, Pharoah Rama-Tut — signposted clearly by their costumes — and another version of Kang who could be Scarlet Centurion, a Kang Variant inspired by Doctor Doom. He doesn’t align visually immediately with a comic-book counterpart so could equally be a version of Iron Lad, Kid Immortus, or another of the many.

In the scene, the trio is heading up an assembly of countless Kang Variants, all brought together in an amphitheatre for an unspecified purpose. We know that one of the trio is concerned about losing everything they’ve built because the Avengers and associated heroes are “beginning to touch the Multiverse”.

Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania introduces us to a Kang who has already attempted to kill his copies. In the film, he says as much, aghast at the chaos they caused. But in doing so, as Janet points out, he wiped out entire universes. Not cool in her book.

He’s seen the end, he says, and it isn’t good. Kang’s reason for wanting to escape the Quantum Realm where he has been exiled is actually to exact revenge against those who trapped him in the only place that could hold him – this location outside space and time. Kang is clearly inferring that these guys in the mid-credits scene are the culprits.

Knowing the exiled one is dead seems to expedite the trio’s plan. Alongside Scott’s realisation at the end of the film that he might have done the wrong thing in stopping Kang (we see Scott recalling Kang’s warning to him about the many versions of him that are coming), this sequence suggests that the new Kang triumvirate is about to unleash a maelstrom of Conquerors on the Multiverse.

Are we seeing the Council of Kangs in MCU form, or something else?

Well, there’s also the matter of the Council of Cross-Time Kangs, made up of beings who take on Kang’s appearance in order to battle the robot Kang substitutes placed throughout the Multiverse and controlled by Kang. The post-credits sequence hints at one of these in its reveal – but more on that shortly.

Read more: The biggest talking points from the Loki finale

Also in the comics, it’s worth noting that the Council of Kangs became a part of the Kang Collective – a regular gathering of Kangs from across the various realities. That we see both human and alien versions of Kang in this stinger suggests what we’ve got here could be the MCU version of this.

Wait, you mentioned a Pharaoh: who is Rama-Tut?

Pharaoh Rama-Tut is a Variant of Kang. But how was he created?

For various reasons, one of which was boredom (another was Apocalypse but that’s another story), OG Kang Nathaniel Richards, possible 30th century descendant of either Reed Richards or Doctor Doom, travelled back in time to Egypt. He had discovered a time machine following an encounter with his future self in the guise of Kang who told him about his destiny. In Egypt, Richards adopted the identity of Pharaoh Rama-Tut.

As the despotic Rama-Tut, Kang easily took control with his future tech. The people were made to worship him, build statues of him, and reject the old gods. This made Khonshu angry, for one thing – interesting to know because he’s the same Khonshu we’ve met in Moon Knight. At some point, the Fantastic Four headed back and tried to oust Rama-Tut, resulting in the Pharaoh attempting to flee back to his own time.

Ultimately, Rama-Tut overshot his own time after getting caught up in a timestorm, resulting in him landing in the wartorn 40th century. It’s here that he took on the identity of Kang the Conqueror.

And what about the other guy you mentioned; who is Immortus?

Immortus, meanwhile, is a future Variant of Kang. In the comics, Immortus was responsible for bringing Iron Man back to life. If he could pull off the same in the MCU, fans would go wild.

Immortus is also the Guardian of Time, having formed an alliance with the Time-Keepers (referenced in Loki), as well as the Variant who tricked Kang into eliminating all of the Multiverse’s Kang Variants via the Council of Kangs.

Given that Immortus inspired He Who Remains, the Timeline protector in Loki, it’s possible that the Immortus introduced in the mid-credits sequence has another role to play in the MCU. On that note, if you cast your mind back to Loki, you’ll remember that He Who Remains warned that killing him would break the Sacred Timeline and let loose a ton of Kang Variants hellbent on starting a new Multiversal war. Which looks like what we’re at the beginning of here.

Other notable incarnations of Kang include Scarlet Centurion — a persona inspired by a meeting with Doctor Doom — and Mister Gryphon. As Mister Gryphon, he bought the Stark Tower as CEO of Qeng Enterprises: a name we see on the very same tower in Loki. There’s also Iron Lad, a persona Richards took on after first meeting his future self in an attempt to evade his destiny and flee Kang. He was a member of the Young Avengers, alongside Cassie Lang. The two even shared a kiss. Things could get very interesting should the MCU go down this route.

One final thing to note is that among the assembled Kangs, it looks like there’s a Skrull present, which could be a way of tying the film to Secret Invasion. The Disney+ series is scheduled to premiere soon and follows the shapeshifters’ infiltration of life on Earth.

What specifically is next in line for Kang and his Variants is up for debate, but we do know that a Multiversal war is coming and that the Avengers will once again team up to save the day in Phase 6’s Avengers: The Kang Dynasty, slated for 2025.

What happens in the Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania’s post-credits scene?

Given that Kang – or at least the idea of him – first arrived in the MCU in Loki, alongside the idea of Variants, it makes sense that Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania as the first film of the MCU to delve deeper into Kang’s complex story weaves that series into its narrative.

We see Loki and Mobius in a post-credits sequence that looks to set up Season 2 of Loki.

Read more: What happened in Loki S1?

The sequence begins with another – moustachioed – Kang Variant on a stage, giving a speech, and Loki and Mobius are watching from the audience. The sign on stage signals exactly which Variant this is – it’s Victor Timely.

Who is Victor Timely?

As per the comics, after conquering many worlds, and coming up against the Fantastic Four and more during the course of his conquests, Kang is eventually forced to flee by the Avengers.

In search of a new base of operations, he heads to 1901 Wisconsin and adopts a new identity: Victor Timely, a genius level inventor and industrialist. Here, he founds the technologically advanced town of Timely and becomes its mayor.

Behind the moustache, of course, he’s still secretly Kang, contriving to continue his Multiversal domination. He establishes a secret portal in the town allowing him access to Chronopolis, a stronghold built by him existing out of step with time as we know it. It is consequently unaffected by the passage – and divergences – of time. It’s essentially Kang’s gateway to time travel.

While Kang was in Chronopolis overseeing his conquests and recruiting for his army, called the Anachronauts, a robot would double for him as Timely’s mayor – and nobody suspected a thing.

But Loki and Mobius are onto him. Watch this space...

Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania is out now on Disney+. Watch a trailer below.