Ant-Man director Peyton Reed recently confirmed his return to helm the sequel, which will feature Paul Rudd and Evangeline Lilly reprising their roles as Ant-Man and the Wasp in the appropriately-titled Ant-Man and the Wasp. While we haven’t gotten confirmation that any of their co-stars from the first film will be joining them, Michael Douglas seems to suggest that we can count on another appearance from Hank Pym.

As the title of the sequel implies, we’ll be seeing Lilly’s Hope Van Dyne suit up as the Wasp, taking on her mother’s mantle after receiving the super-suit from Hank in the Ant-Man post-credits scene. But with Rudd and Lilly joining forces to take on their next threat, will we be seeing much — if any — of Hank Pym this time around?

In an interview with Collider, Michael Douglas excitedly revealed that he’s been contacted by Marvel to return for Ant-Man and the Wasp, though he’s hoping for less “expositional dialogue” this time around:

I just got a call recently – they want to negotiate for a sequel and I thought “That’s great!” Hopefully, I won’t have to carry quite as much expositional dialogue as the first one but I had a wonderful time doing it. Just a great, great time. The cast was fantastic. Paul, Evangeline, Michael Pena – I’m sure he’ll be back. If they can scrape Corey Stoll off the wall, I’m sure they’ll want him too – he’s such a good villain. And Peyton too. It was a lovely experience, so you know, I welcome it. I chuckle about being involved with a movie that already has a release date in 2018. Ya know, it’s hard to conceive of that, but it’s all good, all the way around, it’s all good.

Douglas sort of nails it with this quote, as Pym’s function in the first film was largely to introduce us to Ant-Man’s corner of the MCU. And yeah, we sort of assume Michael Pena has to return since his stream-of-consciousness monologues were a wonderful highlight. His amusement at being cast in a film that doesn’t hit theaters until 2018 is pretty great, too — I mean, it is kind of nuts that we live in a world where studios have years of superhero films scheduled in advance. It’s fun, but also a bit weird.

We won’t know much else about Ant-Man and the Wasp for a while, though Adam McKay recently suggested that he’s open to return to write the sequel, which hits theaters on July 6, 2018.

A Complete Ranking of Every Superhero Movie Post-Credits Scene

 

More From ScreenCrush