Ghost has been billed as the main antagonist of “Ant-Man and The Wasp”. However, Marvel has been pretty tight-lipped about this character.
What is her real name? What was her life before? What are her motivations for turning to the dark side? Ghost has remained one of the most mysterious piece in this puzzle. We know that Hannah John-Kamen will be portraying this villain, but let’s delve more into the sequel’s supervillain.
1. Ghost is only Marvel’s 2nd female villain
Besides being the 2nd-ever female villain (after Cate Blanchett’s Hela) in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Ghost is also the first major villain to be played by a woman of colour. Director Peyton Reed explained why he decided to change the character’s gender from the comics. “The Ghost character could be male, female, anything, so it just seemed more interesting to us (to cast a woman),” he said.
“I think the kind of gender swapping from male to female is (amazing). You look at graphic novels. You can look at comic books that were written so long ago. And they’re like 50 years old or 40 years old. It’s nice to go, ‘This is the modern world.’ It’s again freeing to be able to take that character and go, ‘Yeah, that can be played by a male or female.’ And that’s definitely forward thinking,” John-Kamen explained.
2. Ghost was originally a male villain from the “Iron Man” comics
In the “Iron Man” comics, Ghost was “an anarcho-engineer/hacker with a grudge against titans of industry and big corporations”. Since the filmmaker has taken the liberty to change things up, it’s been tricky for fans to look for clues. Kudos to the team for making Ghost’s costume totally gender-ambiguous and generally mysterious.
3. She’s a very different villain
Unlike the first 2 villains this year – Killmonger in “Black Panther” and Thanos in “Avengers: Infinity War – Ghost will be a different, unique villain. From the trailer, we know that she stole some of Hank Pym’s technology and wants to destroy the world. At the same time, she also looks rather queasy in her suit, giving the impression that she doesn’t have full control of her powers yet.
Speaking of which…
4. Her abilities
“Ghost’s primary power is the ability to ‘phase,’ which allows Ghost to move through solid matter. She has all sorts of strange versions of that phasing power—it proves quite difficult for Ant-Man and Wasp to deal with,” the director shared. It’s possible that her intangibility powers could be tied to the Quantum Realm.
“The power set is the same and the look is actually pretty classic, you know, not reinterpretation, but like modernisation I think. Our visual design team…does a great job I think of sticking to the classic tropes that made these — what they looked like in the books. Actually going ‘Huh, that’s a pretty good realisation of what that might look like in the real world’ and certainly that’s the case with Ghost. When you think of Ghost, you think of the hood. You think of the white suit and everything like that and Hannah wears it very well. She’s awesome. She’s really, really badass,” said executive producer Stephen Broussard.
5. Ghost is somewhat related to Laurence Fishburne’s Bill Foster aka Goliath
There were initially speculations that Janet van Dyne could be the main villain since we barely seen Michelle Pfeiffer in the marketing. Laurence Fishburne recently revealed the identity of Ghost, saying, “I have this sort of surrogate daughter, this character called Ghost played by Hannah John-Kamen who is incredible, and we sorta have a father-daughter thing going on.”
Since the theme surrounding the “Ant-Man” franchise will be on family. It fits thematically to make Ghost (real name listed as Ava) the daughter of Bill Foster. We may even see Bill suit up as Goliath and be a major thorn against team Ant-Man.
“Ant-Man and The Wasp” will debut in theatres this week.
Sources: The Mary Sue, Screen Rant.
