Evangeline Lilly finally "gets" Hope Van Dyne thanks to Ant-Man And The Wasp: Quantumania
It's her fourth Marvel movie, but Evangeline Lilly finally thinks she understands her character
Female characters are often underserved in Marvel movies, serving as supporting characters who don’t always get to grow or have arcs like the male characters do even as their intelligence or general competence helps save the day in a way that the male characters couldn’t have done on their own. That’s one of the many reasons why Gwyneth Paltrow is completely justified in having no memory of being in Spider-Man: Homecoming, since it’s not like she gets to do anything in most Marvel movies other than “be right about something” and “politely smile at Tony Stark when he finally realizes she was right about something.”
Similarly, despite being in the middle of filming the fourth movie of her Marvel career, Evangeline Lilly says she’s just now getting a handle on what the deal with her character is. That comes from an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, during which Lilly excitedly noted that, after reading the script for Ant-Man And The Wasp: Quantumania, she had a “eureka moment” and told director Peyton Reed, “Oh my god, I think I finally get her.” (The “her” being Hope Van Dyne, a.k.a. The Wasp).
Lilly says that she’s hoping she’ll see “the difference” when filming is done and she can watch the finished film, but she adds that she doesn’t think anyone else will notice any change in her performance from one movie to another. “I think I’m a good bluffer,” she says, implying that she was just pretending to “get it” in the other two Ant-Man movies and that she at least know she “had a better handle on [Hope] in this one.”
It’s an interesting thing for her to bring up, since it’s sort of a running thread in the Ant-Man movies that Hope is much more well-suited (so to speak) to be a superhero than Paul Rudd’s Scott Lang. He gets to have an arc where he learns how to fight and become a better role model for his daughter, but she doesn’t get to do nearly as much stuff.
The second movie tried to rectify that, which is why it’s Ant-Man And The Wasp and not Ant-Man 2, and it sounds like she finally found something to latch on to while making this third movie.