Editor’s Note: The following article contains spoilers forAnt-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania.
When you’re a Mechanized Organism Designed Only for Killing, it makes sense that that killing is the particular mandate you stick to. However inAnt-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, MODOK — aka Darren Cross (Corey Stoll) — finds himself having an eleventh hour change of heart when chasing down Cassie Lang (Kathryn Newton) and trying to kill her, a pursuit which only ends when Cassie knocks the giant, floating head to the ground and implores him to “stop being a dick,” something the baddie takes to heart almost immediately.
This sort of flipped-switch reaction is not one that could have been caused by anyone, according to Stoll. In a 1-on-1 interview with Collider’s ownPerri Nemiroff, the actor explains that Darren and Cassie’s history — him threatening to kill her when she was only 6-years-old — makes him truly reflect on his actions in the present day.
As Stoll explains when asked if Cassie was the only one who could make MODOK snap out of his murderous rampage:
“Yeah, I think so. There’s something sort of disarming about Cassie because Cassie, more than anybody, has the right to really hate him and to want to just seek revenge, and the fact that she doesn’t, the fact that she holds her punch, and the fact that he still thinks of her as this little girl, I think it sort of wakes him out of his slumber because that was definitely — he was about to commit his greatest crime when he was threatening to kill her at the end of the first movie and so I think she was the one to snap him out a little.”
RELATED:Cassie Lang Is the Young Superhero We Need Right Now
Why Does Cassie Hate MODOK?
At the end of the firstAnt-Man, Darren Cross — dressed in the Yellowjacket suit — goes looking for Scott Lang (Paul Rudd) and decides to draw him out by threatening the life of his daughter Cassie (Abby Ryder Fortson). Though he obviously failed to harm her, or kill either of them, even years later the event has stated with the older Cassie, who refers to Darren as “the bee guy” a few times throughout the film.
While her dad Scott, Hope Van Dyne (Evangeline Lily), Hank Pym (Michael Douglas) and Janet Van Dyne (Michelle Pfeiffer) deal with the much more serious threat that Kang the Conqueror (Jonathan Majors) presents, Cassie faces down MODOK, using her moment of victory not for revenge, but just to implore him to be better.
Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumaniais in theaters now. Check out the trailer below:
