The Marvel Cinematic Universe is a vast, epic universe, encompassing many heroes and worlds. However, it does have its flaws. One big flaw that many critics have noted was a lack of female superheroes. Marvel does seem to be attempting to address this with Jessica Jones getting her own Netflix series and the Carol Danvers Captain Marvel getting a movie.
There is something else they can do as well, based on something in Ant-Man. In that film, Janet Van Dyne, the original Wasp, went subatomic to stop a missile and save the world, ending up trapped in the Quantum Realm. Scott Lang would nearly suffer the same fate, but his return gave hope that Janet could be retrieved and restored to the regular world one day.
But what happened to Janet? What if in the Quantum Realm, she had her own adventures? What if she helped liberate a subatomic world from the iron grip of a mad tyrant? Maybe she possibly got to team up with...the Micronauts?
Yes, the Micronauts! Who are the Micronauts? Well, in 1979, Marvel Comics got the license to publish comics based on the Micronauts toy line, a series of toys based on a Japanese toyline that was centered around the concept of heroes from a subatomic world, that disguised themselves as toys on Earth, due to their small size. The toyline lasted from 1976 to 1980, the line ending a couple years before the producer of the toys went bankrupt and dissolved.
Written primarily by Bill Mantlo, who also wrote another toy tie-in called ROM, the Micronauts had two Marvel series, and like ROM, outlasted the toyline, going until 1986. In fact, Mantlo was inspired to write their adventures thanks to his son getting some Micronaut toys on Christmas. He convinced Jim Shooter, the editor in chief of Marvel at the time, to get the license, and the rest is history.
Hmm, between this and ROM, it seemed that Mantlo was a master at bringing depth and epic adventures to toyline tie-ins.
The series used a mixture of established toy characters and new characters, and it told an epic adventure with, in the Mantlo style, had lots of adventure, tragedy, and an epic mythology.
Which would make a great foundation for a new Netflix series centered around Janet Van Dyne. After shrinking down to subatomic, Janet finds herself in the Quantum Realm, the MCU's version of the Microverse. While exploring this new world, hoping to find her way home, she discovers she is on a world that is under the grip of a mad tyrant. She finds herself joining a resistance force, led by astronaut Arcturus Rann, to take on the tyrant, and save the Quantum Realm from his iron grip. As a nod to her naming the Avengers and the Vision in the comics, she can be the one to give the resistance group its name. I'm thinking of a couple possibilities: The Microns, the Enigma Force, or the Quantum Rangers.
The series would be a great opportunity to tell stories in the science fantasy genre, combining advanced technology with ancient magic. Think about it. One of the characters, Arcturus Rann, was an astronaut who used a magic sword. The series can help further show something that I think the MCU should show, like the comic Marvel Universe that inspired it: that it can tell a variety of stories in a variety of genres. Daredevil is a gritty crime drama, Avengers was an epic superhero film, Captain America: The First Avenger told a war story, etc.
One big obstacle to this series is that two significant characters in the series, the heroic Acroyear and the villainous Baron Karza (the main villain of the Micronauts series), were characters from the original toyline, and as such, Marvel does not have the rights to them. There are ways around it, though. They can always create new characters in their place, and also, Baron Karza was not the only villainous character running around the Microverse.
Another big problem may be the budget. I'm not sure how much of a budget these Netflix series get, but this series may not get a lot of money. Of course, many series in the sci-fi genres managed to become classics with out massive budgets, like most notably the original Star Trek series. However, considering the power and quality of the Marvel brand, I think the series will get the money it needs.
Why a Netflix series and not a film? Well, to be honest...I enjoyed Daredevil on Netflix, mainly. And considering Marvel seems to want to I also feel you can do more with a series than with a film. With a film, you only have so much time to set things up and get to where you want the story to go. With a series, you can take your time telling the story. You can have your characters grow and change and become much fuller and three-dimensional.
You can take the time to show off the Microverse and its various worlds, show its many peoples. The Microverse can be portrayed as a living dynamic universe hidden within our own. Wasp can be our eyes in this wild new world, experiencing its wonders alongside us.
As for actual episodes, I actually have to admit, I don't really have any ideas for episodes. But I have a basic idea for how the season ends. Wasp and the Micronauts battle the Big Bad of the series, who has found a way to come to our world. During this, Janet is able to contact Hank Pym (for a bit of a bittersweet thing, it can be revealed that due to the way time passes between our world and the Microverse, Hank Pym is now an aged old man, but Janet is still relatively young), and she tells him she is alright, but has to destroy the MacGuffin to prevent an invasion, if it means she'll be trapped in the Microverse. Janet destroys the MacGuffin, willing to make that sacrifice to save her home. It would be in character for her to do so.
For those reasons, The Wasp and the Micronauts would make a great addition to the Netflix MCU lineup alongside Daredevil, Jessica Jones, Luke Cage, and Iron Fist.
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