Evangeline Lilly Drops Some Avengers 4 Hints Ahead of Ant-Man and The Wasp
Dancing around the plot of Avengers 4 is tricky for anyone involved in the Marvel cinematic universe, because its specifics need to be kept tightly under wraps, but it’s also a topic that needs discussion for multiple reasons. Eventually, there’s going to have to be a marketing push for it, and before we even get to that point, there are still a few Marvel movies to come, which are inextricably connected.
There’s really no good course of action for anyone who has to talk about it, as we’ve already seen with the creative team behind it and Infinity War saying that the deaths in the first movie “are real,” when we’re pretty sure some of them are going to be undone. (What else are they supposed to say?) The actual deaths, sure, but half the universe being turned to ash? Our favorite heroes aside, it’s pretty difficult to imagine permanently living in a Marvel universe where that happened, not to mention that the original Avengers team, the ones who we’ve all been expecting to finally move on, are mostly the ones left at this point. (Or that it would seem awfully weird to have Nick Fury actually go out on a Samuel L. Jackson “motherf-” joke.)
But that doesn’t mean that there aren’t massive changes in store for the MCU, some of which we may not be expecting quite as much. That’s what Evangeline Lilly hinted at in an interview in NDTV, comparing the next two-part movie event to a specific season of Lost: “When I heard about Infinity War [and Avengers 4] and the direction that they’re heading, I did have this moment of realizing, oh, wow, there’s a bit of a déjà vu for me with the Lost franchise. We are hitting that [Lost] season 4 space, where everything’s about to shift, and you’re about to lose the solid ground underneath you.”
There have been rumors of time travel in Avengers 4, stoked by info gleaned from set photos and certain additions to the cast, and Lost certainly has experience with that, although in a much smaller way in season 4 than the bigger time travel shenanigans later in the series. Like Infinity War, Lost’s third season ended on a world-shattering cliffhanger: Season 3’s flashbacks had actually been flashforwards, and we’d been watching many of the main cast members after they got off the island throughout the season. From that point on, the show was in completely uncharted territory, with season 4 necessarily going a totally different direction from the “get off the island” plot that had existed up to that event.
It’s hard to say what the comparison means, but it would be interesting if A4 at least spent some time on how the world is changed by half the people in it disappearing, which we only caught a glimpse of in the Infinity War post-credits scene.
What direction will it go from there? That’s where Lilly’s most interesting tease comes in: “[Ant-Man and the Wasp], of course, will play a part in that.” We know Ant-Man and The Wasp will deal with the Quantum Realm, with Michelle Pfeiffer’s Janet van Dyne (the original Wasp) making an appearance after the character disappeared into that realm in the first movie. It certainly seems possible that the Quantum realm, also featured in Doctor Strange’s dimension hopping, could introduce the MCU to alternate universes—a longtime staple of comics—that are basically alternate timelines, let alone just traveling along one.
I mean, it’d at least open up the possibility to rectify leaving The Wasp out of the founding of the MCU’s Avengers … Maybe we’ll have some more light shed on this when Ant-Man and The Wasp arrives in theaters on July 5.
(via ComicBookMovie.com, image: Marvel Entertainment)
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