This post contains potential spoilers for Avengers: Doomsday.
As Kang the Conquerer knows well, one overlooks Ant-Man at their own peril. Still, viewers would be forgiven for not paying much attention to Scott Lang in the first trailer for Avengers: Doomsday. The first full look at the upcoming event film is jam-packed with heroes across the multiverse, including two sets of Avengers, the X-Men, and the Fantastic Four, to say nothing of Robert Downey Jr. as Doctor Victor Von Doom in all his power.
Yet, anyone who slows down and spends time with the trailer will notice a quick shot of Paul Rudd as Scott Lang, hugging his daughter Cassie a.k.a. Stature, played by Kathryn Newton. Obviously, with such high stakes, people are going to hug their loved ones—we see Johnny Storm embrace his sister Sue in another shot. And Cassie has been a motivating factor for Scott since the first Ant-Man movie in 2015. However, for comic book readers, seeing Scott share a tender moment with Cassie in a Doctor Doom story raises some alarms.
Cassie Lang has been a part of Scott’s life ever since he’s been Ant-Man. She made her first appearance as a young girl in 1979’s Marvel Premiere #47, by David Michelinie and John Byrne, the issue that saw Lang first don the Ant-Man moniker. In addition to his criminal background, Lang’s status as a father helped distinguish him from his predecessor Hank Pym, an oft-disturbed genius.
For most of her history, Cassie served little purpose beyond being Scott’s lil’ moppet at home. That changed in 2005, with the release of Young Avengers #6 by Allan Heinberg and Jim Cheung. In that issue, founding member Iron Lad, who was actually a younger version of Kang the Conquerer who formed the team to repel an attack by his older self, leaves to return to his timeline. With a gap in the lineup, Cassie reveals that she has access to her father’s tech, and begins her tenure as the giant girl Stature.
That tenure ended with the 2010 miniseries Avengers: The Children’s Crusade, by Heinberg and Cheung. That story finds the Avengers being paternalistic to other heroes again (see also: Avengers vs X-Men two years later) and putting Wiccan under supervision. Turns out, that’s bad timing, as Wiccan and the Young Avengers discover his mother Scarlet Witch with her memory gone and engaged to be married to Doctor Doom. Further complicating things is the fact that Scarlet Witch lost her memory as a direct result of her going mad a few years earlier, a madness that claimed the life of many Avengers, including Scott Lang.
The multilayered conflict had its own share of casualties, most notably Cassie herself. While the adventure brings Scott back to life, he shrinks down to attack Doom alongside his teammates, and seemingly dies again in the process. Infuriated by the prospect of losing her father again, Stature attacks Doom, and her anger and youth leave her vulnerable to the Latverian monarch. His patience spent and his power increased, Doom strikes back, killing Cassie.
By our timeline, Cassie only stays dead for four years. When a moral shift causes many of Marvel‘s supervillains to become good, Doom seeks to atone for his wrongs by resurrecting Cassie, and she’s been with us ever since.
However, the Cassie of the MCU has no such guarantees. It appears that Doomsday and its follow-up Avengers: Secret Wars will follow the model of Infinity War and Endgame. Scott’s relationship with Cassie drove the first part of Endgame, providing the event movie with some much-needed emotional stakes. While it would certainly dark for Doom, a villain who the casual viewer doesn’t know well yet, to just kill a character we’ve watched grow up on screen, it would also prove to the viewer that he’s a threat worth taking seriously.
It is, after all, Doomsday. We expect nothing less than devastation.
Avengers: Doomsday comes to theaters on December 18, 2026.
