Janet van Dyne (Earth-199999)
Janet van Dyne is an American scientist and former S.H.I.E.L.D. agent and hero as the original Wasp. She is the wife of Hank Pym—the original Ant-Man—and mother of Hope van Dyne. She has been presumed dead since 1987, when she used the power of Hank's Pym Particles to shrink to subatomic size on a S.H.I.E.L.D. mission, thereby entering the nebulous Quantum Realm.
Biography
The Wasp
- Your mother convinced me to let her join me on my missions. They called her the Wasp. She was born to it. And there's not a day that goes by that I don't regret having said yes.
Janet van Dyne was a S.H.I.E.L.D. scientist when she met and married colleague Hank Pym. Pym had developed the Pym Particle, a miraculous discovery that changed the distance between atoms. He had harnessed Pym Particles in a special bodysuit of his own making that allowed the wearer to shrink to the size of an ant at will. Pym used this suit in field missions under the code name Ant-Man. Janet urged Hank to team up with her on these missions, and he reluctantly agreed: this in itself was a tremendous feat, as Pym was otherwise utterly possessive of the Pym Particle formula, even from S.H.I.E.L.D. itself. The two built a suit for Janet similar to the Ant-Man suit, but with wings: Janet would be known as the Wasp. The two became a potent duo, using their collective size-changing capabilities to assuage various delicate international incidents. The two had a daughter named Hope in 1980. In 1987, Ant-Man and Wasp were sent on a mission in Soviet Kursk, where separatists had hijacked a nuclear missile and launched it at the United States. Hank intended to go subatomic to penetrate the missile's otherwise impregnable titanium casing, but his regulator had sustained too much damage. Instead, Janet entered the missile and deactivated it, causing it to land safely in the ocean and apparently leaving her to die in the Quantum Realm. Hank spent the next ten years studying the Quantum Realm hoping to find a way to get Janet back. He did so in secret and told Hope that Janet had died in a plane crash. He sent Hope to boarding school, fearing that she might otherwise follow in her mother's footsteps. Hope felt betrayed by and distanced from her father, and the two were estranged until many years later, when Hank told Hope the truth about Janet in 2015. That same year, Hank and Hope met Scott Lang, a professional thief whom the aged Pym enlisted as the new Ant-Man to help him stop Darren Cross from replicating the Pym Particles with his Yellowjacket technology. As part of this mission, Lang went into the Quantum Realm himself, and was able to return by installing one of Pym's throwable growing discs in his regulator. Though Lang remembered none of what he saw in the Quantum Realm, his experience gave Pym renewed hope that Janet might still be alive.[1]
See also
References
- ↑ Ant-Man. Dir. Reed, Peyton. Perf. Paul Rudd, Evangeline Lilly, Corey Stoll, Bobby Canavale, Michael Peña, Tip "T.I." Harris, Anthony Mackie, Wood Harris, Judy Greer, Abby Ryder Fortson, David Dastmalchian, Martin Donovan, Hayley Atwell, and Michael Douglas. Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures, 2015.