'Ant-Man,' 'Hello Tomorrow!' explore alternate universes

The third and ostensibly final season of "Star Trek: Picard" premiered on Paramount+ on Feb. 16, but with only one episode released as of press time, I'm waiting for another episode or two to drop because the luxury of a streaming series is that you, the home viewer, can catch up on the episodes that already aired, anytime you want.

Fortunately, when "Hello Tomorrow!" premiered on Apple TV+ on Feb. 17, it did so with three of its projected 10 half-hour episodes at once, which is a big part of what's keeping me hooked as a viewer.

In an alternate version of America that seems to be straddling the late 1950s to the early 1960s, only with advanced technology to match how those eras conceived of the future, a slightly "Mad Men"-style team of traveling salesmen makes its living selling timeshare housing that they promise is available in oxygen-domed colonies on the moon, but Jack Billings (Billy Crudup), the team's go-between for their supposedly remote upper management, is keeping significant secrets from his coworkers.

As with any quasi-period piece that's mining the same era of Americana as "The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit," there are discreet extramarital affairs, crippling gambling addictions, duplicitous financial dealings and covert familial connections, but there are also hovering cars with tailfins and video-phones with black-and-white screens and self-propelled floating briefcases.

Casting Crudup, who played Doctor Manhattan in Zack Snyder's 2009 "Watchmen," and Hank Azaria, the voice of multiple characters on "The Simpsons," as a couple of ever-hustling Willy Loman-flavored scam artists is flawless casting, as is bringing Alison Pill on board as a twice-betrayed housewife whose impulsive decisions have left her with nowhere to go.

And the always delightful Jacki Weaver brings her relish to the role of Jack's demanding mother, who's willing to help perpetuate his deceptions - for a price - and she's growing rapidly impatient.

I'm giving this one another week or two to grab me, because its retro-futurism is endearing, but its central mystery feels a bit flat, although that could change.

This past week's big release was "Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania," which saw Jonathan Majors' multiversal villain, Kang the Conqueror, finally make his Marvel Cinematic Universe debut in earnest, after a variant of Kang, also played by Majors, appeared as the mastermind behind the Time Variance Authority in the first-season finale of "Loki" on Disney+.

Majors promised his portrayal of Kang would be completely different from his performance as the TVA's "He Who Remains," which both is and isn't true.

He Who Remains was almost comically enthusiastic about the opportunity to interact with those whom he'd manipulated to serve his own ends, simply for the novelty of engaging in an unscripted conversation, while the Kang of "Quantumania" is initially unnervingly placid, even when issuing existentially terrifying threats to motivate others to do his bidding.

But with both versions of the same character, Majors emphasizes that Kang doesn't see anyone as a real person, which makes him capable of committing the most staggering of atrocities against them.

Kang wipes out entire timelines of countless lives without a thought, and even when he first meets Paul Rudd's Scott Lang, aka Ant-Man, Kang introduces himself by dispassionately inquiring, "You're an Avenger. Have I killed you before?"

It's because the fates of multiple universes are at stake that no amount of individual lives are real to Kang, emotionally.

We're treated to glimpses of a past partnership between Kang and size-changing superheroine Janet van Dyne (Michelle Pfeiffer), during the decades when she was stranded in the subatomic Quantum Realm.

In response to Janet's freely volunteered aid, Kang displays something surprisingly close to empathy when he seeks to reassure her that she'll see her daughter again. But when she realizes the havoc he plans to wreak on the multiverse once he's freed, he loses all patience with her.

In addition to not seeing people as real, Kang is convinced he alone is right, leading him to declare war on an infinite number of other versions of himself from other universes.

This is what makes the first of this film's two end-credit scenes so chilling, because if multiple versions of Kang are willing to set aside their ego-driven differences to unite against the rest of the multiverse, the odds for everyone else become grimmer. The death of any one incarnation of Kang only opens the door for an incursion into the MCU by yet another version of Kang.

Pfeiffer and Michael Douglas, as former superhero Hank Pym, are as effortlessly talented as ever, while Kathryn Newton steps into the role of Scott's 18-year-old daughter, Cassie Lang, aka superheroine-in-the-making "Stature," with a spunky Spider-Girl energy.

Which brings us back to the character of Scott himself, who benefits enormously from Rudd's charisma and reminds me of the adult Peter Parker that old-school readers of Marvel Comics grew up with, who was friendly and light-hearted and ultimately remembered to "look out for the little guy," as Scott himself puts it.

The tug of war between Scott and Cassie is a compelling way of exploring how a formerly "hard-luck" hero handles it when fortune finally starts to favor him, as Cassie speaks to the latent side of Scott that feels guilty over his own success when he'd previously gone to prison to try and do the right thing.

Michael Peña's cheerful chatterbox ex-con Luis is sorely missed in this third installment in the "Ant-Man" series, while Evangeline Lilly continues to underwhelm me as Hank and Jan's adult daughter, Hope van Dyne, who has negligible chemistry with Scott.

On the flip side, Corey Stoll's return, as Scott's self-important one-time rival, manages to be amusing and unexpectedly moving all at once, while the visuals for the Quantum Realm, a reality with no single consistent definition of "up," demand to be seen on the big screen to fully appreciate their gooey, techno-organic visceral details.

It's not spoiling anything to confirm this is not the last the MCU has seen of Kang, considering so many of his variants have carved out identities of their own. "Quantumania" all but guarantees we'll be seeing the character in other films and streaming series, from ancient Egyptian pharaohs and turn-of-the-century inventors to elder scholars, and even cross-time councils composed of Kang's own multiversal variants.