Ant-Man 3 director explains why Michael Peña's Luis didn't appear in movie

The director of Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania has explained why Luis – played by Michael Peña – didn’t appear in the movie.

Here’s the trailer for the film, in case you’ve not seen it yet:

Peyton Reed has been in charge of the Ant-Man films since day one, having helmed the first flick back in 2015, then follow-up Ant-Man and the Wasp in 2018, before continuing with the ever-lengthening titles for Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania.

Give it a couple more films and they'll have to start buying larger poster advertising space.

Anyway, this latest outing for Paul Rudd and the gang is full of returning cast members from the previous films, but there have also been some noticeable absences.

Whilst musician and actor T.I. hasn’t returned after a number of accusations of sexual abuse that have been made against him, there’s a completely different reason that Michael Peña hasn’t come back.

Reed has now opened up on that reason in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, explaining that it just ‘didn’t make sense’ to have characters like Luis in the third movie.

Marvel Studios

He said that the team had to ‘make decisions early on’ about what they could fit into the film, given how many new characters were set to be brought in.

The director said: “There were no versions of this movie [with Luis].

“There are a lot of characters in the movie.

“We obviously have our Lang, van Dyne and Pym family, but then we also introduced Kang, MODOK and all of our Freedom Fighter characters.

“So, we had to make decisions early on about what stories we could tell and what stories we couldn’t tell."

He continued: “I love those characters.

“They were really, really fun and part of the Lang family, but as we got further and further into [production] and knew we wanted to bring the family into the Quantum Realm pretty early in the movie, it just didn’t make sense [to include Luis and other characters]."

Previously, Peña himself had said that he had ‘no idea’ whether he’d be returning for the movie, but admitted that he harboured hopes that he’d get the call.

Marvel Studios

He told Coming Soon: “For the last one, I didn’t really know what capacity I was going to come back in or if I was going to come back.

“I think they’re a year away from filming, I think it would be great if I could do a third one.

“But you never know, especially with all the stuff that happened in Endgame.

“Right now, Marvel’s in a situation where they can crush some expectations, they’re gonna have to crush some expectations of other characters, not just mine, so hopefully I make the cut.”

Well, in the end he didn’t, but Marvel fans needn’t despair entirely, as there’s no reason he couldn’t appear in another film further down the line.

It’s a big Marvel Cinematic Universe out there.

Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania is out in cinemas now.