The MCU’s newest Big Bad, Kang the Conqueror (Jonathan Majors), gets tons of screen time in Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, but we can’t let Kang overshadow the movie’s secondary villain, M.O.D.O.K. (Corey Stoll), aka the Mechanized Organism Designed Only for Killing. Granted, M.O.D.O.K. is a little ridiculous — he’s a massive floating head with baby arms and baby legs, after all. However, he also uses terrifying pink buzzsaws to mow down his victims, so don’t count him out quite yet.
In Quantumania, M.O.D.O.K. is Kang’s glorified henchman tasked with hunting anyone Kang is looking for. He’s also Darren Cross, or Yellowjacket, from the very first Ant-Man, giving him a personal vendetta against Scott Lang (Paul Rudd). However, the movie’s portrayal of M.O.D.O.K. is quite different from how he appears in the comics.
Who is M.O.D.O.K. in the Marvel comics?
The comic version of M.O.D.O.K. is not linked to Yellowjacket. Instead, he’s originally a man named George Tarleton. George worked for Advanced Ideas Mechanics (A.I.M.), a villainous faction that split from Hydra. As a company, A.I.M. appears in the MCU in Iron Man 3, but it has no link to M.O.D.O.K. in Quantumania.
A.I.M. mutated Tarleton into M.O.D.O.K., hoping to use him as a weapon. However, M.O.D.O.K. killed his creators and took over A.I.M. himself. He then went on to battle characters like Captain America and the Incredible Hulk, as well as square off with villains like Doctor Doom. Safe to say that after Quantumania, we will not be seeing any of these match-ups in the MCU.
How does Darren Cross/Yellowjacket become M.O.D.O.K.?
In the final act of Ant-Man, Scott shrinks into Darren’s Yellowjacket suit and causes massive amounts of damage. As a result, Darren and the suit shrink uncontrollably until they vanish from sight. The shrinking presumably kills Darren, although the movie does leave his fate open.
However, Quantumania confirms that not only did Darren survive Scott’s attack, he also shrank down into the Quantum Realm, where he met Kang. Kang remade him into M.O.D.O.K. and gave him a new purpose — of course, that purpose places him on a collision course with Scott once again. And while he doesn’t quite get to settle the score against Scott, he does get to die an Avenger. (At least, we’ll let him keep thinking that.)
Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania is now in theaters.
