Character bio/history
Aug. 6th, 2035 07:14 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
science_is_funSince the Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes version of Hank Pym is very different from other versions of the character, I thought it might help to provide a summary of what he’s like and what he goes through.
Hank considers himself a scientist first and a superhero second. He wants to help people, but this includes the supervillains, feeling like they need to be rehabilitated and turned into productive members of society. This puts him at odds with the other team members, who want to defeat supervillains rather than trying to talk them down – a strategy which proves fruitless more often than not. Hank is a pacifist at heart, but there are exceptions where he will get violent if the circumstances call for it. A big one is hurting or threatening Janet Van Dyne, his partner – anyone who does that when he’s nearby tends to get a bus-sized fist to the face. Misusing his inventions to hurt others is a big one, and he seems to have no moral qualms with hitting Nazis, punching the 80 or 90-year-old Baron Strucker in the face without any complaints or guilt. His other exception is Ultron, as he seems to feel that his creation is too far gone and can’t be reasoned with.
Hank’s main flaws are a difficulty with communicating on an emotional level (he has trouble with explaining why his hopes for rehabilitating criminals are so important to him, or confessing romantic feelings, and he has trouble with compromising on his values) and a guilt complex, particularly when it comes to Ultron or the prisoners that he tried to rehabilitate. He has a tendency to get lost in his work, to the point where dates, times, tidiness, and even hygiene can take a backseat.
The early history of the founding Avengers is left vague - we get some details here and there, but not as much as Black Panther or the Vision, whose backstories are explored in the series. Considering that the comics version of Ant-Man had a wife who was killed by Communists, and he became a crime-fighter to stop Communist spies from stealing nuclear secrets, it doesn't seem like that backstory still applies. (his whole "will they, won't they" dynamic with Janet van Dyne, a.k.a. the Wasp, isn't because his first wife died and he doesn't want to lose anyone else in the same way, but because he's too nervous/shy to say anything unless one of them is near death, with there being no indication that Maria Trovaya has ever been a part of Hank’s life)
Hank’s early life was presumably focused almost exclusively on his education - some comics describe him as getting his doctorates while others his age were undergrads, and given how many areas of expertise he has, it seems like something similar would apply here. In addition to being one of the foremost experts in biochemistry, Hank also has enough engineering and robotics knowledge that Tony Stark wanted to work with him (on top of creating a helmet that lets him communicate with insects), along with entomology (the study of insects, which he enjoys to the point of finding the concept of studying ant chromosomes to be exciting), particle/quantum physics (discovering the Pym Particle and figuring out how to use it to shrink or grow), and geology (enough knowledge that SHIELD went to him in order to study Vibranium). He also acts as a jailer for SHIELD, trying to rehabilitate supervillains, so he keeps busy.
Even if the order of events might not be clear, we know some details about his backstory prior to the series. Before Tony Stark became Iron Man and, presumably, before Hank became Ant-Man, the two of them collaborated on making an artificial intelligence based on human brain waves, working atStark Industries. The brain that Hank chooses to base the AI on is his own, and this project wound up becoming Ultron. However, it ended poorly when Hank found out that Tony was planning to sell Ultron to the military and left, taking the results with him.
At some point after this, he became a researcher at Grayburn College, discovered Pym Particles (subatomic particles that allow something to shrink while maintaining its full strength, or grow and increase in strength), and met Janet Van Dyne, who became his business partner according to official materials. Bored of the socialite lifestyle, Janet saw Hank’s research as a chance to make a difference and help people, so Hank used implants and Pym Particles to turn her into the Wasp, and in return, Janet helps to fund Hank’s research, and she presumably convinces him to take on the identity of Ant-Man. (since he only seems to be a superhero because of Janet) The series seems to imply that this happened fairly recently, as in his first episode, Hank feels that supervillain attacks are best left to the police and people who are trained to defend themselves, and Iron Man doesn’t realize that Janet Van Dyne is a superhero until the events of the prison break-out despite her doing nothing to hide her identity.
Despite not having a lot of trust for the organization, Hank agrees to work with SHIELD, as they both allow him to rehabilitate criminals with altered genetics through the Big House prison (at least in theory – he comments that none of the criminals actually seem to get rehabilitated) and indulge in any scientific curiosities that they need him for, such as researching samples of Vibranium. He is given a surprising amount of freedom with the SHIELD prison that he designed, as the prisoners have comforts that none of the other SHIELD prisons have (games, a personal library, etc.), and the prison is staffed entirely by Ultron robots. It likely helps that he made it possible, as the Big House is a full-size prison that was shrunk down and placed inside the Helicarrier – even if someone were to escape, they’d have nowhere to go and be the size of an ant (at least in theory).
The beginning of the series ties into this – shortly after Hank prevents Ulysses Klaw from stealing a sample of Vibranium from SHIELD, Janet stops the mutant villain Whirlwind, and the pair place Whirlwind in the Big House, that prison (along with SHIELD’s three other superhuman prisons) suffers a massive power failure. In this case, it means that the Big House grows to a full-size prison inside of the SHIELD Helicarrier. Fighting their way out of the prison, Hank and Janet make their way into Manhattan, where Graviton, an imprisoned villain with a grudge against Nick Fury, is on a rampage. Teaming up with Thor, and later Iron Man and the Hulk, the team defeats Graviton, and rather than work for SHIELD, the five of them set off on their own (with Iron Man funding the team) to avenge the wrongs done by the seventy-four escaped villains and bring them to justice. (Jan, like in the comics, coins the name “Avengers” for the team)
The team line-up doesn’t last long – shortly afterwards, the Asgardian sorceress called the Enchantress manipulates the Hulk to turn against the team, and while he breaks free of the Enchantress’s control, he leaves the team, feeling like they view him as a monster. While searching for the Hulk, they discover the frozen (but still living) Captain America. Once Cap’s old enemies from World War 2, Baron Zemo and Arnim Zola, discover his survival, they attack New York City with the help of one of Zola’s creations, but the Avengers defeat Zola’s monster and force Zemo to retreat, where he’s found by the Enchantress and offered a deal to start a team of their own.
When Tony Stark buys out Simon Williams’s company, Simon’s desire for revenge causes him to turn to the villainous organization AIM for help. They use him as an experiment in order to transform him into the super-powered energy being known as Wonder Man. Despite Hank’s best efforts, the interruptions of the other Avengers prevent him from convincing Simon to give up his crusade for revenge, and Simon eventually dissipates, only surviving because of the Masters of Evil. Hank encounters Ulysses Klaw again when the Black Panther comes to the Avengers for help, and he proves crucial in defeating Klaw when the madman transforms into a being of living sound. Hank stays behind in Wakanda to study Vibranium, missing the Leader’s attempt to transform the inhabitants of Las Vegas into gamma mutates like himself or the Hulk. He returns just in time to find the Masters of Evil attacking the Avengers Mansion, providing a crucial distraction for the team to free themselves and fight back against the villains, who manage to escape thanks to the Enchantress.
Ant-Man and the Wasp are called in by Janet’s friend, Carol Danvers, to examine a deep space observatory in the middle of nowhere. Hank’s help is needed to identify something that their equipment picked up, and Janet makes transparent attempts to see if Hank will get jealous by calling one of Carol’s co-workers, Philip Lawson, cute, since she figures that Hank . However, when the object changes course and crash-lands near the observatory, the two of them and Carol investigate, only to be attacked by an alien robot. As the battle continues, Philip Lawson is revealed to be an alien named Mar-Vell, who shields Carol from a blast. The humans put up enough of a fight that the robot, revealed to be a Kree Sentry, now considers the Earth to be enough of a threat that it will deploy a Nega-Bomb to wipe out all life, and even Mar-Vell’s own Kree authority isn’t enough to stop it. Calling in the rest of the Avengers, the team and Mar-Vell try to stop the Sentry, but it isn’t until Hank saves Janet from some missiles and nearly confesses his love for her (before passing out partway through the confession) that Janet flies into a hole that was made in the Sentry over the course of the fighting and destroys it from within. When Hank awakens back at the hospital, Janet tries to get him to repeat what he was going to say before, but they’re interrupted by Carol floating into the air and glowing.
Kang the Conqueror, a tyrant from the fortieth century, attempts to take over the world in order to prevent it from being destroyed in an upcoming war between the Kree and another alien race called the Skrulls. The Avengers want to find a better way, but Kang’s forces outnumber them. With seemingly no other options, and against his ideals, Hank is forced to alter all of the Ultron units to teach them the concept of violence. The Ultrons are a huge help in defeating Kang’s forces, though most are destroyed in the process. Kang is defeated, though Hank is disappointed that, yet again, fighting is treated as though it’s the only solution.
Shortly afterwards, HYDRA and AIM get into a civil war in New York City over a reality-warping device known as a Cosmic Cube – HYDRA hired AIM to create it, and AIM wants to use it for their own purposes. Despite interference from SHIELD (which, under the direction of Maria Hill, wants HYDRA, AIM, and the Avengers all arrested), the team manages to stop both villainous organizations, with Hank teaming up with Hawkeye to knock out Baron Strucker, one of the heads of HYDRA.
During a stand-off with a group of snake-themed villains called the Serpent Society, Hank attempts to reason with them only for things to quickly turn violent. The other Avengers are angry at Hank because of his behaviour, and in response, he quits the team. Unfortunately, Ultron’s worldview has gradually changed since it was introduced to violence, and it decides to fulfill Hank’s desire for peace – from its perspective, life breeds conflict, so if all life (down to the bacteria) is obliterated, there will be peace. To this end, Ultron takes control of Iron Man’s armours to fight the rest of the team, and accesses SHIELD’s computers to launch all available nuclear missiles in order to destroy humanity. With moments to spare, Hank causes Ultron to shut down by introducing new logic into his programming – Ultron views all of humanity as flawed and deserving of destruction, but Ultron’s own AI is based on a human mind (specifically, Hank’s), and is just as flawed as a result. Ultron shuts down in response, averting the threat of a nuclear apocalypse. (though, as an AI, Ultron can simply upload into a new body, so his threat hasn’t been ended for good)
Feeling responsible for Ultron’s actions, Hank leaves the Avengers. However, while picking up some of his gear, he overhears the mission briefing to track down the Masters of Evil and secretly tags along, saving Janet from the Abomination. Along with Janet, he’s transported to Jotunheim, where he protects Janet from Frost Giants while she’s unconscious. The two are rescued by Sif and the Valkyries, who take them to Asgard, where the rest of the Avengers have overcome their own obstacles to assemble there. The team bands together to stop Loki’s plot to steal Odin’s power and rule over the Nine Realms, though Hank still parts with the team once they return to Earth, albeit on slightly better terms.
Hank gets considerably less focus in the show’s second season since he’s no longer part of the team. When he does return, his voice is noticeably lower and more reserved, and he wants nothing to do with the Avengers, not even working there as a scientist, and rejecting Janet’s suggestions to work around his issues with violence. When visiting the mansion to gather the last of his equipment, he spots a news broadcast about money shrinking down to nothingness within a bank vault. Fearing the worst, he heads back to his college lab only to find that his Ant-Man equipment has been stolen. Feeling that he can’t turn to the Avengers, he hires Luke Cage and Iron Fist to track down the one responsible, who turns out to be Scott Lang. Scott is in debt to a crime boss named William Cross, who has kidnapped Scott’s daughter Cassie. While Hank is enraged by the thought of anyone using his inventions for wrongdoing, he helps Scott save Cassie along with Luke Cage and Iron Fist, and gives Scott permission to keep using the Ant-Man identity since Hank no longer considers himself Ant-Man.
After a series of events that Hank was not present for (including an invasion by the shape-shifting Skrulls, the Hulk being framed and imprisoned, Carol Danvers and the Vision (a creation of Ultron’s who defies his master) joining the team, and the prison in the Negative Zone being attacked and rendered inoperable by Annihilus), Hank calls Tony to his lab to show him a miniature prison that he created, feeling that all of the issues of previous super-villain prisons will be resolved if he’s in control of everything. Janet tags along, and while they both recognize that Hank’s not in a good place at the moment, they try to convince him to come back to the Avengers. He coldly dismisses them, and moments later, his lab explodes with him in it. After the funeral, Nick Fury reveals to Tony and Janet that a detonator was found in Hank’s lab. Combining that with Hank looking into the Serpent Society, and the team comes to the conclusion that they must be the ones responsible for Hank’s death.
They track down Constrictor of the Serpent Society, only to find him seemingly vaporized by a new crimefighter called Yellowjacket. Yellowjacket claims to have killed Hank Pym, but the fact that he uses wasps as a weapon leads Janet to believe that Yellowjacket is actually Hank. Nobody believes her, between Hank’s supposed death and Yellowjacket’s brutal executions of the Serpent Society, so after Yellowjacket confronts Thor and seemingly disintegrates the Asgardian, Janet pulls off Hank’s mask to reveal the truth. While trying to fight off the Avengers, all of them are caught in a blast from Yellowjacket’s pistol, revealing that it transports people to Hank’s microscopic prison. The prison is unstable, however, and beginning to collapse. Seeing Janet put in danger brings Hank back to his senses long enough for him to get the Avengers and the Serpent Society out of the imploding prison, and Janet convinces Tony to let Hank back on the team, even if Tony has reservations. (while Hank was his friend, Yellowjacket is an unstable loose cannon)
A lot about Hank’s transformation into Yellowjacket is left unexplained – Yellowjacket claims to have killed Hank Pym because he was the “weak link” of the Avengers (before it’s revealed that Yellowjacket really is Hank Pym). However, the explosion was intentional (as indicated by the detonator), and his body was modified so that he could fly on his own and shoot bio-electric blasts like the Wasp (and it was changed enough that the Avengers ID cards didn’t recognize him as being Hank Pym), so it’s unclear when Hank became Yellowjacket, and if it’s a split personality separate from his normal self. As he gets so little focus beyond this point, and since a cartoon from 2012 isn’t going to dwell on the mental issues of one of its characters, the details are unclear beyond Hank becoming Yellowjacket to do the things that he normally couldn’t, like being less reluctant about working with the Avengers.
After rejoining the team as Yellowjacket, Hank doesn’t get much to do for the remainder of the series. Hank stays on Earth when the rest of the team travels to the Kree homeworld, and in the series finale, he helps Tony Stark and Reed Richards create a portal to the Negative Zone in order to send Galactus there.
The last canonical pieces of material are tie-in comics (Marvel Universe: Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes), where he appears in two of the twelve issues: five and ten. Issue five has him appear briefly as Yellowjacket, though issue ten has him back to being Ant-Man and helping Captain America foil the Leader’s latest plan. (with the Vision on the team, the issue takes place after season 2) It’s unclear if the editor’s note listing Ant-Man and the Wasp as being in a relationship is a way of simplifying things, or if they actually made progress on that front.
Character Relations:
-Janet van Dyne/The Wasp: Hank and Janet are almost complete opposites - Janet's excitable and outgoing, while Hank is calm and prefers to keep to himself. Janet is extremely open about her feelings, while Hank keeps them bottled up. Janet enjoys beating up bad guys, while Hank would rather do just about anything else. Despite this, they're among the closest of the Avengers, working together as a team even before they founded. Both of them love each other, though Hank has trouble admitting it, and Janet seems to take Hank's inability to admit it as a sign that he's not interested.
-Tony Stark/Iron Man: the history between Tony and Hank is a rocky one; Tony hired Hank to help him bring his plans for an A.I. based on human brain waves to life, only to go behind Hank's back and try to sell the resulting creation (Ultron) to the military. Hank's still bitter about this even after the Avengers have been founded, and he feels like Tony hasn't changed much since those days. It takes an attack by Wonder Man for Hank to change his mind, and the two of them are close friends beyond that point, even if Tony gets annoyed by Hank's pacifism and insistence on talking things out with various super-villains.
-The Hulk: Hank and the Hulk have very different worldviews - Hank feels like fighting isn't all that useful and wants to help people, while the Hulk just wants to smash things. He never interacts with Bruce Banner, though it seems like they would get along much easier, given that Bruce is the polar opposite of the Hulk.
-Thor: Hank doesn't understand a lot about Thor, whether it's Thor's love of battle or the magical nature of Asgard, but they get along well enough.
-Steve Rogers/Captain America: Steve and Hank don't interact often, though Cap's observant enough to realize how Hank and Janet felt about one another even if they weren't sure about how the other one felt.
-Clint Barton/Hawkeye: out of the team, Hawkeye is probably the most vocal about Hank's screw-ups, and has one of the more open dislikes of Hank's pacifism, while Hank feels that Hawkeye's love life is even more screwed up than his own. Still, the two of them trust each other, or at least Hank trusts Hawkeye enough to let him shoot Hank across several city blocks on an arrow.
-T'Challa/Black Panther: there seems to be a mutual trust and respect between the two; while they don't interact often, T'Challa is willing to let Hank stay in Wakanda and study Vibranium (something that not many outsiders would have the chance to do), and he's less willing to poke fun at Hank than he is with Tony. (possibly due to Hank's lack of ego to bruise, not counting the fact that Hank named his discovery "Pym Particles")
-Carol Danvers/Ms. Marvel: Carol doesn't get many opportunities to talk to Hank; she trusts him enough to call him in for identifying some unusual phenomenon in space, and seems to care about the state of Hank and Janet's relationship (calling Jan out on how she's unsubtly trying to make him jealous), but by the second season, her view on him seems to have soured, as she says "if Hank really cared, he wouldn't have left".
-The Vision: oddly enough, even though Hank created Ultron and Ultron created the Vision, Hank and the Vision never interact over the course of the series. This can be chalked up to the second half of the second season largely focusing on the characters who had movies at the time - Iron Man, Captain America, Thor, and to a lesser extent the Hulk.
-Nick Fury: while Hank's willing to work with Nick Fury prior to the events of the series, he doesn't particularly trust him; he's the first to call out that Nick was responsible for the creation of Graviton, and to refuse Nick's offer for them to become SHIELD agents at the end of the Breakout episodes. Likewise, Fury makes it even clearer than the Avengers that he finds Hank's mindset to be naïve, though he is willing to help when it looks like Hank was murdered.
-Reed Richards/Mr. Fantastic: one of the few people outside of the Avengers that Hank interacts with. They worked together with Tony to build a prison in the Negative Zone, along with attempting to figure out how to cure Ravonna's condition. They seem to get along well, even if Reed can be absent-minded and not even realize that Hank isn't there.
-Simon Williams/Wonder Man: Hank wants to help Simon, even if he tends to get distracted by Simon turning into a being of ionic energy. He understands why Simon's angry at Tony, having gone through something similar when Tony tried to sell Ultron to the military behind his back, and Simon's seemingly the only enemy that the Avengers face who's receptive towards Hank's ideas of rehabilitation.
-The Serpent Society: most of the Serpent Society were Hank's patients at the Big House, so he has a lot of sympathy towards them. They tend to be present during big changes in Hank's life - Hank attempting to negotiate with them led to him quitting the Avengers, and they were his first targets as Yellowjacket. In spite of everything, Hank still likely views them as people who need help and a second chance.
-Ultron: one of the few villains that Hank sees no point in negotiating with. Hank feels a lot of guilt about Ultron's actions, since Ultron's AI is based on his own mind - as far as Hank's concerned, anything that Ultron does is something that he could possibly do if he underwent a slight change and embraced violence. Despite Ultron being one of Hank's biggest scientific accomplishments, he has no problem with shutting down the mad robot or destroying his remains.
Hank considers himself a scientist first and a superhero second. He wants to help people, but this includes the supervillains, feeling like they need to be rehabilitated and turned into productive members of society. This puts him at odds with the other team members, who want to defeat supervillains rather than trying to talk them down – a strategy which proves fruitless more often than not. Hank is a pacifist at heart, but there are exceptions where he will get violent if the circumstances call for it. A big one is hurting or threatening Janet Van Dyne, his partner – anyone who does that when he’s nearby tends to get a bus-sized fist to the face. Misusing his inventions to hurt others is a big one, and he seems to have no moral qualms with hitting Nazis, punching the 80 or 90-year-old Baron Strucker in the face without any complaints or guilt. His other exception is Ultron, as he seems to feel that his creation is too far gone and can’t be reasoned with.
Hank’s main flaws are a difficulty with communicating on an emotional level (he has trouble with explaining why his hopes for rehabilitating criminals are so important to him, or confessing romantic feelings, and he has trouble with compromising on his values) and a guilt complex, particularly when it comes to Ultron or the prisoners that he tried to rehabilitate. He has a tendency to get lost in his work, to the point where dates, times, tidiness, and even hygiene can take a backseat.
The early history of the founding Avengers is left vague - we get some details here and there, but not as much as Black Panther or the Vision, whose backstories are explored in the series. Considering that the comics version of Ant-Man had a wife who was killed by Communists, and he became a crime-fighter to stop Communist spies from stealing nuclear secrets, it doesn't seem like that backstory still applies. (his whole "will they, won't they" dynamic with Janet van Dyne, a.k.a. the Wasp, isn't because his first wife died and he doesn't want to lose anyone else in the same way, but because he's too nervous/shy to say anything unless one of them is near death, with there being no indication that Maria Trovaya has ever been a part of Hank’s life)
Hank’s early life was presumably focused almost exclusively on his education - some comics describe him as getting his doctorates while others his age were undergrads, and given how many areas of expertise he has, it seems like something similar would apply here. In addition to being one of the foremost experts in biochemistry, Hank also has enough engineering and robotics knowledge that Tony Stark wanted to work with him (on top of creating a helmet that lets him communicate with insects), along with entomology (the study of insects, which he enjoys to the point of finding the concept of studying ant chromosomes to be exciting), particle/quantum physics (discovering the Pym Particle and figuring out how to use it to shrink or grow), and geology (enough knowledge that SHIELD went to him in order to study Vibranium). He also acts as a jailer for SHIELD, trying to rehabilitate supervillains, so he keeps busy.
Even if the order of events might not be clear, we know some details about his backstory prior to the series. Before Tony Stark became Iron Man and, presumably, before Hank became Ant-Man, the two of them collaborated on making an artificial intelligence based on human brain waves, working atStark Industries. The brain that Hank chooses to base the AI on is his own, and this project wound up becoming Ultron. However, it ended poorly when Hank found out that Tony was planning to sell Ultron to the military and left, taking the results with him.
At some point after this, he became a researcher at Grayburn College, discovered Pym Particles (subatomic particles that allow something to shrink while maintaining its full strength, or grow and increase in strength), and met Janet Van Dyne, who became his business partner according to official materials. Bored of the socialite lifestyle, Janet saw Hank’s research as a chance to make a difference and help people, so Hank used implants and Pym Particles to turn her into the Wasp, and in return, Janet helps to fund Hank’s research, and she presumably convinces him to take on the identity of Ant-Man. (since he only seems to be a superhero because of Janet) The series seems to imply that this happened fairly recently, as in his first episode, Hank feels that supervillain attacks are best left to the police and people who are trained to defend themselves, and Iron Man doesn’t realize that Janet Van Dyne is a superhero until the events of the prison break-out despite her doing nothing to hide her identity.
Despite not having a lot of trust for the organization, Hank agrees to work with SHIELD, as they both allow him to rehabilitate criminals with altered genetics through the Big House prison (at least in theory – he comments that none of the criminals actually seem to get rehabilitated) and indulge in any scientific curiosities that they need him for, such as researching samples of Vibranium. He is given a surprising amount of freedom with the SHIELD prison that he designed, as the prisoners have comforts that none of the other SHIELD prisons have (games, a personal library, etc.), and the prison is staffed entirely by Ultron robots. It likely helps that he made it possible, as the Big House is a full-size prison that was shrunk down and placed inside the Helicarrier – even if someone were to escape, they’d have nowhere to go and be the size of an ant (at least in theory).
The beginning of the series ties into this – shortly after Hank prevents Ulysses Klaw from stealing a sample of Vibranium from SHIELD, Janet stops the mutant villain Whirlwind, and the pair place Whirlwind in the Big House, that prison (along with SHIELD’s three other superhuman prisons) suffers a massive power failure. In this case, it means that the Big House grows to a full-size prison inside of the SHIELD Helicarrier. Fighting their way out of the prison, Hank and Janet make their way into Manhattan, where Graviton, an imprisoned villain with a grudge against Nick Fury, is on a rampage. Teaming up with Thor, and later Iron Man and the Hulk, the team defeats Graviton, and rather than work for SHIELD, the five of them set off on their own (with Iron Man funding the team) to avenge the wrongs done by the seventy-four escaped villains and bring them to justice. (Jan, like in the comics, coins the name “Avengers” for the team)
The team line-up doesn’t last long – shortly afterwards, the Asgardian sorceress called the Enchantress manipulates the Hulk to turn against the team, and while he breaks free of the Enchantress’s control, he leaves the team, feeling like they view him as a monster. While searching for the Hulk, they discover the frozen (but still living) Captain America. Once Cap’s old enemies from World War 2, Baron Zemo and Arnim Zola, discover his survival, they attack New York City with the help of one of Zola’s creations, but the Avengers defeat Zola’s monster and force Zemo to retreat, where he’s found by the Enchantress and offered a deal to start a team of their own.
When Tony Stark buys out Simon Williams’s company, Simon’s desire for revenge causes him to turn to the villainous organization AIM for help. They use him as an experiment in order to transform him into the super-powered energy being known as Wonder Man. Despite Hank’s best efforts, the interruptions of the other Avengers prevent him from convincing Simon to give up his crusade for revenge, and Simon eventually dissipates, only surviving because of the Masters of Evil. Hank encounters Ulysses Klaw again when the Black Panther comes to the Avengers for help, and he proves crucial in defeating Klaw when the madman transforms into a being of living sound. Hank stays behind in Wakanda to study Vibranium, missing the Leader’s attempt to transform the inhabitants of Las Vegas into gamma mutates like himself or the Hulk. He returns just in time to find the Masters of Evil attacking the Avengers Mansion, providing a crucial distraction for the team to free themselves and fight back against the villains, who manage to escape thanks to the Enchantress.
Ant-Man and the Wasp are called in by Janet’s friend, Carol Danvers, to examine a deep space observatory in the middle of nowhere. Hank’s help is needed to identify something that their equipment picked up, and Janet makes transparent attempts to see if Hank will get jealous by calling one of Carol’s co-workers, Philip Lawson, cute, since she figures that Hank . However, when the object changes course and crash-lands near the observatory, the two of them and Carol investigate, only to be attacked by an alien robot. As the battle continues, Philip Lawson is revealed to be an alien named Mar-Vell, who shields Carol from a blast. The humans put up enough of a fight that the robot, revealed to be a Kree Sentry, now considers the Earth to be enough of a threat that it will deploy a Nega-Bomb to wipe out all life, and even Mar-Vell’s own Kree authority isn’t enough to stop it. Calling in the rest of the Avengers, the team and Mar-Vell try to stop the Sentry, but it isn’t until Hank saves Janet from some missiles and nearly confesses his love for her (before passing out partway through the confession) that Janet flies into a hole that was made in the Sentry over the course of the fighting and destroys it from within. When Hank awakens back at the hospital, Janet tries to get him to repeat what he was going to say before, but they’re interrupted by Carol floating into the air and glowing.
Kang the Conqueror, a tyrant from the fortieth century, attempts to take over the world in order to prevent it from being destroyed in an upcoming war between the Kree and another alien race called the Skrulls. The Avengers want to find a better way, but Kang’s forces outnumber them. With seemingly no other options, and against his ideals, Hank is forced to alter all of the Ultron units to teach them the concept of violence. The Ultrons are a huge help in defeating Kang’s forces, though most are destroyed in the process. Kang is defeated, though Hank is disappointed that, yet again, fighting is treated as though it’s the only solution.
Shortly afterwards, HYDRA and AIM get into a civil war in New York City over a reality-warping device known as a Cosmic Cube – HYDRA hired AIM to create it, and AIM wants to use it for their own purposes. Despite interference from SHIELD (which, under the direction of Maria Hill, wants HYDRA, AIM, and the Avengers all arrested), the team manages to stop both villainous organizations, with Hank teaming up with Hawkeye to knock out Baron Strucker, one of the heads of HYDRA.
During a stand-off with a group of snake-themed villains called the Serpent Society, Hank attempts to reason with them only for things to quickly turn violent. The other Avengers are angry at Hank because of his behaviour, and in response, he quits the team. Unfortunately, Ultron’s worldview has gradually changed since it was introduced to violence, and it decides to fulfill Hank’s desire for peace – from its perspective, life breeds conflict, so if all life (down to the bacteria) is obliterated, there will be peace. To this end, Ultron takes control of Iron Man’s armours to fight the rest of the team, and accesses SHIELD’s computers to launch all available nuclear missiles in order to destroy humanity. With moments to spare, Hank causes Ultron to shut down by introducing new logic into his programming – Ultron views all of humanity as flawed and deserving of destruction, but Ultron’s own AI is based on a human mind (specifically, Hank’s), and is just as flawed as a result. Ultron shuts down in response, averting the threat of a nuclear apocalypse. (though, as an AI, Ultron can simply upload into a new body, so his threat hasn’t been ended for good)
Feeling responsible for Ultron’s actions, Hank leaves the Avengers. However, while picking up some of his gear, he overhears the mission briefing to track down the Masters of Evil and secretly tags along, saving Janet from the Abomination. Along with Janet, he’s transported to Jotunheim, where he protects Janet from Frost Giants while she’s unconscious. The two are rescued by Sif and the Valkyries, who take them to Asgard, where the rest of the Avengers have overcome their own obstacles to assemble there. The team bands together to stop Loki’s plot to steal Odin’s power and rule over the Nine Realms, though Hank still parts with the team once they return to Earth, albeit on slightly better terms.
Hank gets considerably less focus in the show’s second season since he’s no longer part of the team. When he does return, his voice is noticeably lower and more reserved, and he wants nothing to do with the Avengers, not even working there as a scientist, and rejecting Janet’s suggestions to work around his issues with violence. When visiting the mansion to gather the last of his equipment, he spots a news broadcast about money shrinking down to nothingness within a bank vault. Fearing the worst, he heads back to his college lab only to find that his Ant-Man equipment has been stolen. Feeling that he can’t turn to the Avengers, he hires Luke Cage and Iron Fist to track down the one responsible, who turns out to be Scott Lang. Scott is in debt to a crime boss named William Cross, who has kidnapped Scott’s daughter Cassie. While Hank is enraged by the thought of anyone using his inventions for wrongdoing, he helps Scott save Cassie along with Luke Cage and Iron Fist, and gives Scott permission to keep using the Ant-Man identity since Hank no longer considers himself Ant-Man.
After a series of events that Hank was not present for (including an invasion by the shape-shifting Skrulls, the Hulk being framed and imprisoned, Carol Danvers and the Vision (a creation of Ultron’s who defies his master) joining the team, and the prison in the Negative Zone being attacked and rendered inoperable by Annihilus), Hank calls Tony to his lab to show him a miniature prison that he created, feeling that all of the issues of previous super-villain prisons will be resolved if he’s in control of everything. Janet tags along, and while they both recognize that Hank’s not in a good place at the moment, they try to convince him to come back to the Avengers. He coldly dismisses them, and moments later, his lab explodes with him in it. After the funeral, Nick Fury reveals to Tony and Janet that a detonator was found in Hank’s lab. Combining that with Hank looking into the Serpent Society, and the team comes to the conclusion that they must be the ones responsible for Hank’s death.
They track down Constrictor of the Serpent Society, only to find him seemingly vaporized by a new crimefighter called Yellowjacket. Yellowjacket claims to have killed Hank Pym, but the fact that he uses wasps as a weapon leads Janet to believe that Yellowjacket is actually Hank. Nobody believes her, between Hank’s supposed death and Yellowjacket’s brutal executions of the Serpent Society, so after Yellowjacket confronts Thor and seemingly disintegrates the Asgardian, Janet pulls off Hank’s mask to reveal the truth. While trying to fight off the Avengers, all of them are caught in a blast from Yellowjacket’s pistol, revealing that it transports people to Hank’s microscopic prison. The prison is unstable, however, and beginning to collapse. Seeing Janet put in danger brings Hank back to his senses long enough for him to get the Avengers and the Serpent Society out of the imploding prison, and Janet convinces Tony to let Hank back on the team, even if Tony has reservations. (while Hank was his friend, Yellowjacket is an unstable loose cannon)
A lot about Hank’s transformation into Yellowjacket is left unexplained – Yellowjacket claims to have killed Hank Pym because he was the “weak link” of the Avengers (before it’s revealed that Yellowjacket really is Hank Pym). However, the explosion was intentional (as indicated by the detonator), and his body was modified so that he could fly on his own and shoot bio-electric blasts like the Wasp (and it was changed enough that the Avengers ID cards didn’t recognize him as being Hank Pym), so it’s unclear when Hank became Yellowjacket, and if it’s a split personality separate from his normal self. As he gets so little focus beyond this point, and since a cartoon from 2012 isn’t going to dwell on the mental issues of one of its characters, the details are unclear beyond Hank becoming Yellowjacket to do the things that he normally couldn’t, like being less reluctant about working with the Avengers.
After rejoining the team as Yellowjacket, Hank doesn’t get much to do for the remainder of the series. Hank stays on Earth when the rest of the team travels to the Kree homeworld, and in the series finale, he helps Tony Stark and Reed Richards create a portal to the Negative Zone in order to send Galactus there.
The last canonical pieces of material are tie-in comics (Marvel Universe: Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes), where he appears in two of the twelve issues: five and ten. Issue five has him appear briefly as Yellowjacket, though issue ten has him back to being Ant-Man and helping Captain America foil the Leader’s latest plan. (with the Vision on the team, the issue takes place after season 2) It’s unclear if the editor’s note listing Ant-Man and the Wasp as being in a relationship is a way of simplifying things, or if they actually made progress on that front.
Character Relations:
-Janet van Dyne/The Wasp: Hank and Janet are almost complete opposites - Janet's excitable and outgoing, while Hank is calm and prefers to keep to himself. Janet is extremely open about her feelings, while Hank keeps them bottled up. Janet enjoys beating up bad guys, while Hank would rather do just about anything else. Despite this, they're among the closest of the Avengers, working together as a team even before they founded. Both of them love each other, though Hank has trouble admitting it, and Janet seems to take Hank's inability to admit it as a sign that he's not interested.
-Tony Stark/Iron Man: the history between Tony and Hank is a rocky one; Tony hired Hank to help him bring his plans for an A.I. based on human brain waves to life, only to go behind Hank's back and try to sell the resulting creation (Ultron) to the military. Hank's still bitter about this even after the Avengers have been founded, and he feels like Tony hasn't changed much since those days. It takes an attack by Wonder Man for Hank to change his mind, and the two of them are close friends beyond that point, even if Tony gets annoyed by Hank's pacifism and insistence on talking things out with various super-villains.
-The Hulk: Hank and the Hulk have very different worldviews - Hank feels like fighting isn't all that useful and wants to help people, while the Hulk just wants to smash things. He never interacts with Bruce Banner, though it seems like they would get along much easier, given that Bruce is the polar opposite of the Hulk.
-Thor: Hank doesn't understand a lot about Thor, whether it's Thor's love of battle or the magical nature of Asgard, but they get along well enough.
-Steve Rogers/Captain America: Steve and Hank don't interact often, though Cap's observant enough to realize how Hank and Janet felt about one another even if they weren't sure about how the other one felt.
-Clint Barton/Hawkeye: out of the team, Hawkeye is probably the most vocal about Hank's screw-ups, and has one of the more open dislikes of Hank's pacifism, while Hank feels that Hawkeye's love life is even more screwed up than his own. Still, the two of them trust each other, or at least Hank trusts Hawkeye enough to let him shoot Hank across several city blocks on an arrow.
-T'Challa/Black Panther: there seems to be a mutual trust and respect between the two; while they don't interact often, T'Challa is willing to let Hank stay in Wakanda and study Vibranium (something that not many outsiders would have the chance to do), and he's less willing to poke fun at Hank than he is with Tony. (possibly due to Hank's lack of ego to bruise, not counting the fact that Hank named his discovery "Pym Particles")
-Carol Danvers/Ms. Marvel: Carol doesn't get many opportunities to talk to Hank; she trusts him enough to call him in for identifying some unusual phenomenon in space, and seems to care about the state of Hank and Janet's relationship (calling Jan out on how she's unsubtly trying to make him jealous), but by the second season, her view on him seems to have soured, as she says "if Hank really cared, he wouldn't have left".
-The Vision: oddly enough, even though Hank created Ultron and Ultron created the Vision, Hank and the Vision never interact over the course of the series. This can be chalked up to the second half of the second season largely focusing on the characters who had movies at the time - Iron Man, Captain America, Thor, and to a lesser extent the Hulk.
-Nick Fury: while Hank's willing to work with Nick Fury prior to the events of the series, he doesn't particularly trust him; he's the first to call out that Nick was responsible for the creation of Graviton, and to refuse Nick's offer for them to become SHIELD agents at the end of the Breakout episodes. Likewise, Fury makes it even clearer than the Avengers that he finds Hank's mindset to be naïve, though he is willing to help when it looks like Hank was murdered.
-Reed Richards/Mr. Fantastic: one of the few people outside of the Avengers that Hank interacts with. They worked together with Tony to build a prison in the Negative Zone, along with attempting to figure out how to cure Ravonna's condition. They seem to get along well, even if Reed can be absent-minded and not even realize that Hank isn't there.
-Simon Williams/Wonder Man: Hank wants to help Simon, even if he tends to get distracted by Simon turning into a being of ionic energy. He understands why Simon's angry at Tony, having gone through something similar when Tony tried to sell Ultron to the military behind his back, and Simon's seemingly the only enemy that the Avengers face who's receptive towards Hank's ideas of rehabilitation.
-The Serpent Society: most of the Serpent Society were Hank's patients at the Big House, so he has a lot of sympathy towards them. They tend to be present during big changes in Hank's life - Hank attempting to negotiate with them led to him quitting the Avengers, and they were his first targets as Yellowjacket. In spite of everything, Hank still likely views them as people who need help and a second chance.
-Ultron: one of the few villains that Hank sees no point in negotiating with. Hank feels a lot of guilt about Ultron's actions, since Ultron's AI is based on his own mind - as far as Hank's concerned, anything that Ultron does is something that he could possibly do if he underwent a slight change and embraced violence. Despite Ultron being one of Hank's biggest scientific accomplishments, he has no problem with shutting down the mad robot or destroying his remains.