Anytime you bring dozens of superheroes together for one climactic event, details are going to slip by the wayside. It happens. This is especially true for the Marvel Cinematic Universe when it comes to major movies like Avengers: Endgame. After all, hundreds of actors have to be coordinated, secrets must be maintained (looking at you, Tom Holland), and dozens of plots need to be neatly tied together. So we understand how mistakes can happen, but this one moment from Avengers: Endgame still makes us laugh, and probably always will. On the bright side, we’re not going to complain about this fact, as everyone probably needed a good laugh after the prices paid to win this war.
The ending of Avengers: Endgame was unlike anything we had ever seen before, with pretty much every named MCU character getting pulled into one massive battlefield. It was more than a fight for Earth; it was a battle for half the universe, and the heroes of Earth committed. Naturally, this means there was a lot going on everywhere we looked, including a magic trick: Ant-Man managed to be in two places at once.
Avengers: Endgame & The Tale of Two Ant-Men
Image courtesy of Marvel Studios
The battle at the end of Avengers: Endgame was essentially the biggest battle for a Maguffin ever seen. Everyone either wanted to get their hands on the completed Infinity Gauntlet or otherwise keep Thanos from laying hands on it. Enter Ant-Man and Wasp, who devise a plan to get the Infinity Gauntlet permanently away from Thanos.
In this scene, Hank Pym (Paul Rudd) and Hope van Dyne (Evangeline Lilly) agree that the best course of action is to find Luis’ beat-up van, and more importantly, the Quantum Tunnel hidden inside. Using this, they can send the Infinity Gauntlet someplace that Thanos should theoretically never be able to follow. Solid plan, right? Naturally, our two heroes shrink down to their tiny size and flit through the battle in quest of the missing van.
However, that makes what happens next a bit more confusing. Moments later, viewers watch as Black Panther (Chadwick Boseman) rushes through the battle protecting the infamous Gauntlet. That in itself is impressive and daring, but it’s something happening in the background that is, well, strange. That’s because Giant-Man can be seen just a few moments later, battling it out with a Leviathan.
Does anybody else spot a problem with this? Ant-Man is in two places at once, questing for a van and fighting a monster. More importantly, there are two drastic differences in size here. The Ant-Man searching for the van shrank down, so it’s pretty unlikely that he accidentally got caught up in the heat of the battle.
Paul Rudd’s Take on Endgame’s Mistake
Image courtesy of Marvel Studios
Realistically, we all know that this was probably a simple mistake. There were dozens of different teams working to make this battle seem as crowded and high-stakes as possible, so a tiny detail like Ant-Man’s whereabouts would be easy to lose track of.
Funnily enough, this scene either amused or bugged enough people to bring it to the attention of the man himself, Ant-Man (aka Paul Rudd). Thanks to Ali Plumb of BBC Radio 1 for that, because it allowed Rudd to have a take on what happened. Rudd has a theory that this is actually not a mistake, but an Easter Egg regarding the events of Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania.
If we follow this logic, it means that there very well could have been two Ant-Men running around during the major battle of Avengers: Endgame. If Ant-Man were to use Kang’s reality-bending abilities to follow through on a heist, it could happen. Why Ant-Man would need to be on that particular battlefield is a different question. We’d also like to know why he was battling a Leviathan, but perhaps that is all part of this grand heist plan.
Regardless of how or why, there is something pretty funny about the thought of multiple Ant-Man variants running through a single battlefield. It would certainly give the enemies a pause, had they noticed what was going on. Moments like this help add a little levity, which is greatly needed, given everything that has happened during Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame. So, at the end of the day, we don’t care if it was a glitch or an intentionally cheeky Easter egg; it made us smile, and that’s all that matters.
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Avengers: Endgame is available to stream on Disney+