It wasn’t until a decade after the Marvel Cinematic Universe began that they started producing films and shows based around female characters, starting with “Captain Marvel” back in 2019.
Then the fourth phase began to embrace them with “Black Widow,” “WandaVision,” “Ms. Marvel,” “She-Hulk: Attorney at Law” and “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever” all releasing.
The person who was the first to get her hero moniker up in the title though was Evangeline Lilly’s Wasp, an honor she had to share with her co-star Paul Rudd for 2018’s “Ant-Man and the Wasp”.
Lilly has played Hope Van Dyne since 2015’s “Ant-Man”. She returned for the sequel and this year’s third film, and made a brief appearance in “Avengers: Endgame”. Otherwise, she’s been largely separate from the rest of the MCU.
Appearing at the “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania” premiere on Monday, she tells Variety she hopes its time for her character to get a solo film: “I’m going to make a pitch that I think it might be time for a Wasp standalone film. Do we agree?”
She added the next day she wants to explore Hope’s darker side: “At the very, very beginning, you have this sense that like there was a darkness in her that could have gone the wrong way.” She then touched upon a scene in the first film where she uses her father’s ear-piece to have ants swarm a house and darken the room:
“I really want to know more about that. Everything else since then has been really about her competence and her integrity. But there’s more to her than just competence and integrity. What are the things that are dangerous for her? What are her vices? What are the places where if you poke her, she might fall apart or she might turn to the dark side? That’s where I would want to go.”
Asked how much longer she thinks she’ll play the character, she says:
“Gosh, that’s a hard question. These are a commitment. They take a lot to do, and I have two kids at home. Every time that call comes in, I take a deep breath and go, ‘Whoa, am I ready for this? Am I willing to do it again?’ But every time I do. I do it again.”
‘Quantumania’ opens this coming Friday and kicks off the fifth phase of Marvel which has a strong mix of female-centred projects on the way including the team-up film “The Marvels,” and the series “Ironheart,” “Echo” and “Agatha: Coven of Chaos”.
