One of the most essential components of the Marvel Cinematic Universe is consistency. Not just consistency in quality, but consistency in tone (action/jokes), consistency in casting (handsome white guys), and consistency in storytelling (villains who are a dark reflection of the heroes). There’s also a lot of consistency behind the scenes, which is why every MCU movie so far has either gotten a sequel or is a sequel. Unsurprisingly, this trend will continue with Ant-Man (a joke/action-filled movie starring a handsome white guy fighting a villain who was like him but evil), which Variety says will be getting a sequel in theaters on July 6, 2018.
The most interesting thing about the Ant-Man sequel, though, isn’t simply that it exists (which is only mildly interesting). It’s that the film’s title will be Ant-Man And The Wasp, clearly a reference to Evangeline Lilly’s character from the first movie, who was presented with her own superhero costume in the post-credits stinger. Ant-Man And The Wasp’s release date is bumping the Black Panther and Captain Marvel movies back a bit (to February 16, 2018 and March 8, 2019, respectively), so Variety notes that this will be “the first Marvel movie named after a heroine.” Granted, she’s still only getting second billing, but that’ll hopefully be good enough to prevent her from being cut out of her own toy line like Black Widow was.
Anyway, Marvel has more up its gargantuan sleeve than this Ant-Man sequel, as that same Variety article says that the studio also announced three untitled movies that will be released on May 1, July 10, and November 6 of 2020. Now, we have no evidence to back this up, but if we had to guess what these movies will be, we’d say Doctor Strange 2, Ant-Man 3, and Ant-Man 3: Part 2. In fact, we’re so confident in this prediction that we will eat one ant if it doesn’t come true. (Make sure to save a copy of this article somewhere for the next five years, or else you won’t be able to prove that we ever said that.)