It’s about time, Disney! After weeks and weeks of wondering, the Mouse House platform has finally announced when we can catch Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania on streaming. And yet while it’s good news that a release date has at last been confirmed, that date is still far enough away to make its Disney Plus arrival an insulting afterthought for the film that was once hyped up beyond belief as the grand opening chapter of the MCU’s Phase Five.
For starters, at 87 days after its cinematic premiere, Quantumania is officially the record-holder for the longest time taken for a Marvel movie to make its streaming debut, beating Black Panther: Wakanda Forever by five days. In that case, however, there was a clear reason behind the lengthy wait, with Ryan Coogler’s sequel held back to celebrate February’s Black History Month. Quantumania has no such explanation, outside of Marvel perhaps getting cold feet about dropping it on D+ amid the Jonathan Majors scandal.
Still, the really insulting thing about Quantumania‘s belated streaming release is that it’s coming a full 12 days after Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 hits theaters. This makes it the first MCU flick since Disney Plus began to fail to stream on the site before the following film in the franchise emerges. Until now, fans could rest assured that they could either catch the prior movie for the first time or rewatch it to refresh their memories before watching the newest entry. But not this time.
Obviously, as James Gunn has made abundantly clear, Guardians 3 is a self-contained story that stands apart from the wider Multiverse Saga. So, in some ways, it’s not the greatest crime that Quantumania is failing to get to D+ before Vol. 3 drops theatrically. However, throwing Ant-Man 3 at streaming slap bang in the middle of what will be the MCU fandom’s Guardians era just smacks of the studio being embarrassed to have the film as part of Phase Five.
With a Jonathan Majors recasting not all that unlikely, there’s a real chance that Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania will prove to be entirely irrelevant to Marvel’s future. And our first concrete sign of that may be in Disney Plus’ disastrous handling of its streaming release.