Who Is Ghost, The 'Ant-Man And The Wasp' Villain?
If you watched the first Ant-Man and the Wasp trailer without paying much attention to anything except for Paul Rudd's face and Evangeline Lilly's tricked-out Wasp costume, you would be forgiven for missing the brief glimpse of the superhero sequel's villain. The Big Bad of Ant-Man and the Wasp is a mysterious figure, appearing for only a fleeting moment in the trailer, and not doing much other than look menacing in a grey hooded costume and mask.
This is Ghost, and there's more than meets the eye when it comes to the Ant-Man and the Wasp villain.
Who is Ghost?
Ghost is a Marvel Comics villain who first appeared in Iron Man #219 in 1987, created by writer David Michelinie and artist Bob Layton. An expert hacker and anarchist, Ghost invented a unique microchip technology which he infused in his own body, creating a "cyberpathic" connection to computers. The microchips' biggest asset was that they could become intangible, preventing them from overheating and granting Ghost the ability to phase through objects and become invisible — though not at the same time.
Ghost had a chip on his shoulder (pun intended) against corporations, vowing revenge against the company that betrayed him to profit off his inventions. At least, that's what he thinks happened.
Ghost has a remarkably dubious backstory, told only through an unreliable narrator relating what Ghost told them. The comics only introduce Ghost after he has become a supervillain, and he has erased all traces of his existence before he became an anti-corporate hacker and assassin.
Ghost vs. Ant-Man and the Wasp
In a departure from the comics, the movie version of Ghost is played by a woman, Hannah John-Kamen, known for roles in Killjoys, Black Mirror, and Star Wars: The Force Awakens. But other than that, not much is known about the character outside of her costume and a brief scene of a white, gloved hand undergoing a strange blurring effect. /Film's Ethan Anderton touched a bit on this in his breakdown of the Ant-Man and the Wasp trailer, and you can see it in the image above. That scene may comes from Ghost's first experiment with phasing, which seems to be an ability that the film will draw from the comics.
What about Ghost's motivations? We know that Scott Lang (Rudd) was thrown in jail before the events of the first Ant-Man for corporate whistleblowing, and that in the sequel, Hank Pym and Hope van Dyne are now corporate executives-turned-fugitives. Ghost's vendetta against corporations could tie into their story somehow, possibly as a revenge scheme against Pym Technologies.
Ant-Man and the Wasp is set to hit theaters on July 6, 2018.