Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania is far and away the biggest movie in the series in terms of scale. Most of the story takes place inside the Quantum Realm, and follows the title characters and their allies as they help the miniature universe’s indigenous people reclaim their home from Kang the Conqueror. But finding room for all the new Quantum Realm characters and Kang meant leaving out some of Ant-Man’s most beloved supporting characters.

In fact, Quantumania pretty much ignores every single member of the Ant-Man cast who isn’t a superhero. And probably the character who audiences are missing the most is Luis, played by Michael Peña, who was Scott Lang’s fast-talking best friend in the first two films. He doesn’t even get to show up in the opening or closing scenes; he and the rest of Scott’s X-Con buddies are just completely forgotten.

So what happened to Luis, who was one of the highlights of Ant-Man and Ant-Man and the Wasp. Franchise director Peyton Reed told The Hollywood Reporter that “there were no versions of this movie [with Luis].” Essentially, he was a casualty of a movie that too many characters without him...

We obviously have our Lang, van Dyne and Pym family, but then we also introduced Kang, MODOK and all of our Freedom Fighter characters. So we had to make decisions early on about what stories we could tell and what stories we couldn’t tell. I love those characters. They were really, really fun and part of the Lang family, but as we got further and further into [development] and knew we wanted to bring the family into the Quantum Realm pretty early in the movie, it just didn’t make sense [to include Luis and co.].

Michael Pena Ant-Man
Marvel
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While I gave Quantumania a mild positive review, the lack of Luis — and really any sort of grounded human characters — was my main complaint. “Since Quantumania rarely leaves the Quantum Realm, it loses a lot of the humanity and relatability that made the earlier films so charming,” I wrote. “Quantumania sorely misses Luis (Michael Peña) and the rest of Scott’s crew at the security company where he worked when he wasn’t off avenging crimes.”

Oh well. Maybe Luis will make a comeback in Ant-Man and the Wasp 4: Significant Shrinkage. Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania is in theaters now.

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