Ever since an “Ant-Man” movie was announced, Marvel Comics fans have been wondering if the superhero giant was going to introduce his bad-guy-busting female counterpart, The Wasp. As it turns out, not only will fans get to see The Wasp in action, but she’ll be vital to the story.

In the comics The Wasp’s real name is Janet Van Dayne, and she is married to Hank Pym (Michael Douglas). However, before you write her off as just the wife of a superhero, you should know she’s much more than that. Not only was she powerful enough to help establish the original “Avengers” in the 1960s (before Captain America even joined the team), but she’s the one that had he idea to call them “Avengers” in the first place. However, the movie is adapting Ant-Man’s later storyline, which sees criminal Scott Lang (Paul Rudd) adopt the hero persona after Pym retires. This generational gap extends to Janet Van Dayne, who Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige says will have a small role, but will have her face covered by The Wasp’s costume the whole time. While no actress has been cast for Janet, her and Pym’s daughter Hope (Evangeline Lilly) will play a big role in the movie.

“It factors in in a number of spoilerish ways,” Feige told CinemaBlend. “But we will see Janet Van Dayne in action in this film, and part of sort of what happened to her – and then we will understand why that is the reason that [Hank ] doesn’t want his daughter to follow in those footsteps.”

As noted in the first trailer for the movie, Hope Van Dayne helps train Paul Rudd’s character in the ways of being a superhero as well as the logistics of what being able to shrink down to the size of an ant means for him. With her mother being a superhero in her own right and Pym looking for an Ant-Man replacement, one hurdle that the movie had to jump was why the costume didn’t go to Hope.

“She hates it. It’s actually become a difficult question to address in the script,” Lilly told ScreenRant with a laugh. “Why isn’t Hope Ant-Man? In a day and age when Ant-Man was first invented, it would have made sense. Why would he hand it off to his daughter? That wouldn’t make any sense at all. But in 2014, why wouldn’t he hand it off to his daughter, especially a daughter as intelligent and capable as Hope? Of course we answer all those questions, but I can’t tell you how or why.”

It’s unclear exactly what will happen to The Wasp in “Ant-Man,” but odds are it won’t be anything good given that she seems to be the catalyst for a whole lot of ugliness that makes Pym want to hang up his high-tech costume for good. Having said that, it will be very nice to see another female superhero added to the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) canon when the movie comes out on July 17.

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