| NOTE: This article is about the incarnation of Ghost from the Marvel Cinematic Universe franchise. The mainstream version can be found here: Ghost (Marvel) |
| “ | Nothing can prepare you for what's coming. | „ |
| ~ Ghost to Ant-Man and the Wasp. |
| “ | I'm not sure what's happening here, but you're all exhausting and my job is done. | „ |
| ~ Ghost to Yelena Belova and John Walker/U.S. Agent. |
Ava Starr, better known as Ghost, is the main antagonist of the 2018 Marvel Cinematic Universe film Ant-Man and the Wasp, one of the four tritagonists (alongside Bucky Barnes, U.S. Agent and Red Guardian) of the 2025 film Thunderbolts*, and will return in the upcoming 2026 film Avengers: Doomsday. She is a young woman with the ability to phase and bypass through solid objects due to an over-exposure to Quantum energy in a failed experiment. However, the aftermath of her mutation is also a disease that is slowly killing her.
She is portrayed by Hannah John-Kamen, who also played F’Nale Zandor in Ready Player One. As a child, she was portrayed by RaeLynn Bratten.
Design[]
Ava Starr is a tall with 5'8", athletic build woman with curly brown hair with a tan-skinned tone and green eyes. While wearing her costume, it is entirely colored white with some shades of grey made from rubber and an unknown texture. She also has a protective mask with red eyes and sensors that allow her to see someone without getting detected. Her hood also conceals the rest of her head as a sort of protection. While not wearing her suit she wears a skin tight suit with a hoodie.
History[]
Ant-Man and the Wasp[]
Ghost is first seen when she spies on Scott Lang and Hope Van Dyne (along with Hope's father Hank Pym) driving away with their miniaturized laboratory, learning of their plan to rescue Hope's mother Janet from a quantum realm. Ghost enters Sonny Burch's restaurant after Hope successfully defeats Burch's men and takes the part he refused to sell to her and engages her in a fight over the same part. Ant-Man quickly joins in on the fight to prevent Hope from being killed, although the two of them are unable to prevent Ghost from escaping. Outside the restaurant, she forces Hank Pym to give up his miniature laboratory by phasing her fist into his throat and then makes off with it.
With help from Bill Foster, Scott, Hope and Hank manage to track down Ghost's location, but they are quickly apprehended by Ghost, who promptly reveals her identity named Ava Starr, the adoptive daughter of Bill. She peacefully explains that her father was once a colleague of Hank Pym but was fired alongside Bill, prompting him to run a quantum test that failed and caused an explosion that killed Ava's parents and mutated her molecular structure, giving her the ability to phase through matter and become invisible. For years S.H.I.E.L.D. used Ava as a stealth assassin in exchange of researching a possible cure or her, during which they developed the Ghost Suit which gives Ava some degree of control over her abilities.
However, Bill discovered that Ava's powers are actually a deadly disease that will kill her. Foster built a cabin that feeds quantum energy into Ava to stabilize her, but Ava's condition will only worsen over time and the cabin can only do so much to delay the symptoms. Ava and Bill plan to cure her using the quantum machine (with Bill's help) to extract quantum energy directly from Janet. Believing that the plan might kill Janet, Hank refuses to tag along and he, Scott and Hope manage to retrieve the lab before escaping, much to Bill and Ava's distraught.
However, things took a turn for the worst when Burch learned of the trio's location and had his FBI contact Stoltz to inform the FBI, who then arrest Hank and Hope while Scott is forced to escape. This allows Burch to finally get hold of the lab before setting his plan to sell it. Fortunately, Scott broke Hank and Hope free before retrieving the lab and using it to open a portal to save Janet, but Ava arrives to confront them again. Inside the building, she uses the energy that is supporting Janet, but is stopped by Ant-Man and Wasp once again. They eventually managed to get back to the real world unharmed, and Janet uses her energy to temporarily cure Ava of her condition. This allows both Bill and Ava to escape free while Burch and his men end up being arrested by the arriving FBI.
With Ava temporarily cured and Burch arrested, Scott and the Pym family decided to work more on the quantum energy in an effort to find a permanent cure for Ava; however, when Thanos wiped out half the universe, Scott ended up trapped in the Quantum Realm for 5 years since the Pym family were among the victims, leaving the plan to save Ava in vain. It's unknown if Ava survived the Snap.
Thunderbolts*[]
Ava returns years later, now working for an organization called O.X.E who gave her a new suit filled with quantum energy that permanently stabilized her condition. She was hired by Valentina Allegra de Fontaine to retrieve a hostage at an O.X.E. facility. She gets into conflict with Yelena Belova, Antonia Dreykov/Taskmaster and John Walker/U.S. Agent, during which Ava kills Antonia. She, Yelena and Walker then realize they were all hired by Valentina and the mission was a trap to make them kill each other. They decide to work together to escape, only to find the entrance surrounded by Valentina's men. Bob, a guy they met at the facility, creates a distraction so that Ava and the others can escape. Outside, they were rescued by Yelena's surrogate father Alexei Shostakov/Red Guardian.
However, the group is then captured by Bucky Barnes, who needs the team (now referred to as "The Thunderbolts" by Red Guardian) to testify at Valentina's impeachment. Suddenly, he gets a call that Valentina captured Bob, who is revealed to a super powerful entity called "Sentry", and releases the Thunderbolts so they can rescue him. They track Valentina down to Avengers Tower, which Valentina bought and renamed Watchtower since the fallout of the Avengers. As they confront her, Bob shows up as the Sentry and attacks the Thunderbolts forcing them to escape. Bob then transforms into the Void and spreads his darkness all around New York City, trapping the people in their own nightmares.
After Yelena lets herself be assimilated, Ava and the Thunderbolts eventually follow her inside where they find her having located Bob's inner good self. Suddenly, his Void self appears and pins everyone except Bob at the walls to keep them out of his way. Bob beats up his Void self causing even more darkness, but thankfully the Thunderbolts are able to calm him down and he releases everyone from his control. Just as they are about to arrest Valentina, she lures them into a press conference where she declares them the New Avengers with they are proudly applauded for saving the city.
Avengers: Doomsday[]
Ghost will return in Avengers: Doomsday.
Personality[]
Due to the accident that caused her parents' demise, Ava proved herself to be quite vengeful and ruthless in nature as she holds a grudge against Hank Pym for discrediting her father that inadvertently led to the accident. As Ava's condition worsens, she continuously becomes more desperate to find a cure and scared of death, acting out of impulse and not caring if saving her life implies killing others. Due to her extreme condition, Ava was willing to do anything that could help find a cure for her, even attempting to coerce Lang to help him out by threatening to kidnap his daughter Cassie and attacking her surrogate father.
Despite this, Ava does seem to care for family and her surrogate father Bill, even warning him to flee as she doesn't want him to be on the run from the authorities due to her actions. She even willingly gave up her grudge against the Pym family after Janet used the extracted quantum energy to temporarily cure her following the arrest of Burch and his men.
In Thunderbolts*, she is shown to be sarcastic to other people sometimes, when she interacts with people she knows. She can show determination of how to work together as team when the Void persona inside the Sentry who was terrorizing Manhattan and was able to protect as many civilians as possible reducing collateral damage. She was eager to rescue Yelena Belova and Bob Reynolds from the Void by volunteering herself without hesitation.
Relationships[]
Family[]
- Elihas Starr † - Father
- Catherine Starr † - Mother
- Bill Foster - Adoptive Father
Friends[]
- Scott Lang/Ant-Man - Former Enemy
- Hope van Dyne/Wasp - Former Enemy
- Hank Pym - Former Enemy
- Janet van Dyne - Attempted Victim, Former Enemy and Curer
- Luis - Former Enemy
- New Avengers - Teammates, Friends and Allies
- Yelena Belova - Leader and Former Enemy
- John Walker/U.S. Agent - Former Enemy
- Alexei Shostakov/Red Guardian
- Bucky Barnes/Winter Soldier - Former Capturer
- Robert Reynolds/Sentry - Former Enemy, Savior and Rescuee
Enemies[]
- Sonny Burch
- Uzman
- Stoltz † - Enemy and Victim
- Antonia Dreykov/Taskmaster † - Victim
- Valentina Allegra de Fontaine - Former Boss
- Void
Gallery[]
Ant-Man and the Wasp[]
.png "Ghost (Marvel's Ant-Man and the Wasp).png (377 KB)")
Thunderbolts[]
Quotes[]
| “ | I doubt Hank have ever mentioned my father. Why would he? Elihas Starr. They were colleagues at SHIELD. Quantum research. Until my father dared to disagree with the great Hank Pym. You had him fired. Oh, and discredited for good measure. My father tried to continue his research on his own. Desperate to restore his name, so he took risks. Too many. Until something went wrong. He told us to run. I didn't want him to be alone. When I woke up, my parents were dead. I wasn't so lucky. They call it "Molecular Disequilibrium." A rather dull name, I think. Doesn't quite do justice to what it means. Every cell, in my body, is torn apart and stitched back together. Dr. Foster did his best to keep me safe. But others at SHIELD saw an opportunity in my affliction. They built me a containment suit so I can control my phasing. And trained me to be a stealth operative. They weaponized me. I stole for them, spied for them, I killed for them. And in exchange for my soul, they were going to cure me. They lied. | „ |
| ~ Ghost explains her story to Hank, Hope and Scott. |
| “ | NO! | „ |
| ~ Ghost upon discovering Ant-Man about to disconnect her extraction machine from the Quantum Tunnel. |
Trivia[]
- Similar to the original comic counterpart, this version of Ghost has an ability to become invisible from one place to another, but the difference is this incarnation is a female, particular due to lack of numerous main female villains in the franchise.
- The Ghost is the second main female antagonist in the Marvel Cinematic Universe after Hela. She was followed by the Scarlet Witch, Dar-Benn, and Cassandra Nova.
- RaeLynn Bratten played the young incarnation of the character during the flashback where her parents died from the experimental accident.
- Unlike her comic-book counterpart, this version of Ghost is the adopted daughter of the MCU counterpart of Ant-Man's archenemy Egghead.
- Ghost's role in the movie is similar to Ivan Vanko/Whiplash in Iron Man 2: both are main antagonists who wanted to get revenge on the heroes whose families are indirectly responsible for their parents' deaths - Hank Pym and Tony Stark respectively. Although Ava was able to let go of her grudge of the Pym/van Dyne family while Ivan failed to do so and wanted to get even on the Stark family.
- Ant-Man and the Wasp and Ready Player One, both of which Hannah John-Kamen starred in as villains, came out in 2018. The difference is that her character, Ghost in the MCU got redemption, a second chance and becomes an actual hero, while her other character F'Nale Zandor is in custody for her actions.
- Ghost is the second main antagonist in an MCU film to redeem themself and become a protagonist in a later one, the first being Loki.
External Links[]
- Ghost on the Heroes Wiki.
