The odds are not looking good for Scott Lang going into Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania. Ask any Marvel fan, and they’ll likely tell you that they are fearing for the astonishing shrinking hero’s safety as he heads towards what could be a fateful showdown with Jonathan Majors’s Kang the Conqueror, potentially the most dangerous villain the Avengers have ever faced. There’s a high a chance this could be Paul Rudd’s final hurrah in the MCU, then. But, luckily for him, James Gunn is starting up his own superhero universe over at DC that might be in need of his services.
Gunn has made clear that he fully intends to find jobs for his old Guardians of the Galaxy gang in the rebooted DCU somewhere, and that could easily extend to other stars from the Marvel side of things. Although Gunn and Rudd have never worked together, if Scott is shot down in Quantumania then the filmmaker has the perfect opportunity to recast Rudd as DC’s own answer to Ant-Man. It would be a hilariously meta move, and we all know how much that’s up Gunn’s street.
For those unaware, DC’s answer to Ant-Man is the Atom. Although he actually debuted in Oct. 1961, several months before Hank Pym’s premiere in Jan. 1962, Ray Palmer has sadly always had to ride Ant-Man’s coattails as the lesser-known of the comic book world’s size-shifting superheroes. Superman Returns star Brandon Routh did make him a fan-favorite of TV viewers through his role in The CW’s Arrowverse, but the Atom still deserves his time to shine in the DCU, too.
Obviously, Rudd would likely not want to star in another superhero flick as such a similarly themed character, but he could always cameo as Palmer in an Atom movie about the second hero to take on that mantle, Ryan Choi. Having the Hong Kong-born Choi take the lead in a DC project would be a major win and step forward for the studio, and getting Rudd on board to somewhat send up his Ant-Man role would only sweeten the deal. Especially if Marvel is about to kill him off come Feb. 17.
