Among the Avengers, Ant-Man is the hero who has spent the longest time inside the Quantum Realm. But still, he stands second to the amount of time that Janet Van Dyne spent in the life giving dimension. She was in there for 30 years (1988 – 2018). Some people usually end up getting confused as to how long Ant-Man was inside the Quantum Realm. People presume that he was stuck in there for 5 years. This led to the follow up question of why exactly did Scott not age if he was in the Quantum Realm for 5 years. Well, let me answer this question for you.
We know that Janet Van Dyne aged just like a normal human being would on Earth. Maybe, just maybe the Quantum Realm might have slowed down her aging marginally, but that’s not the point of discussion right now. The point is that why did she age 30 years if Scott didn’t 5 years. The answer is that Scott wasn’t stuck in there for 5 years. He was in there only for about 5 hours, so he aged only as a normal human would in 5 hours.
In Avengers: Endgame, he clearly stated that it felt like he was in there only for 5 hours. And that’s true. When he entered the Quantum Realm in 2018, Hank, Janet & Hope were supposed to pull him out in a few seconds. Janet warned him to not get sucked into a time vortex, or else they won’t be able to save him. Just as Scott went in there & collected the Quantum Particles for Ghost, Thanos snapped his fingers and wiped Janet, Hope & Hank Pym out of existence. None of them could pull him out and he got sucked into a Time Vortex.
What is a Time Vortex? Just like an Einstein–Rosen bridge is able to transport something from 1 place to the other in space, a time vortex in the MCU is able to transport something or someone from one point in time to another. So basically, a Time Vortex is like the Einstein–Rosen bridge of a timeline. In fact, Avengers: Endgame proved that vortexes also allow you to access different timelines if you could navigate through them. With this analogy, we know that Scott Lang only spent around 5 hours floating in the Quantum Realm before a time vortex transported him from 2018 to 2023. This is why Scott did not age at all.
Janet on the other hand never got sucked into the time vortex. She was in there for literally 3 decades and she even found civilizations in there. By now, we’ve figured out quite a lot about the Quantum Realm, but it still seems like we’ve only scratched the surface. There is so much left to be explored, and Ant-Man and the Wasp 3 will totally be digging even deeper in the Quantum Realm .
Just recently, we got a report from Yahoo Entertainment that Marvel is still planning to release Ant-Man and the Wasp 3 in 2022. Marvel has an October 7, 2022 release date vacant but since Sony’s Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse 2 is arriving on that date, we don’t think that the Ant-Man and the Wasp sequel will be competing against it. Instead, Marvel might release it on February 17, 2023.
Until we get a confirmation on that, here’s the rest of the updated Phase 4 movie schedule of MCU – Black Widow on November 6, 2020, The Eternals on February 12, 2021, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings on May 7, 2021, Marvel’s Spider-Man 3 on December 17, 2021, Thor: Love and Thunder on February 11, 2022, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness on March 25, 2022, Black Panther II on May 6, 2022, and Captain Marvel 2 on July 8, 2022. As far as the TV shows are concerned, The Falcon and the Winter Soldier & WandaVision are supposed to hit Disney+ later this year, Loki, What if…? & Hawkeye will arrive next year, and Ms. Marvel, Moon Knight & She-Hulk will possibly arrive in 2022.
