We still can't be completely sure of all the details surrounding Ant-Man's mysterious absence from Infinity War, but chances are it's going to have something to do with someone named Ghost, set to make her MCU debut as the villain of this summer's Ant-Man & The Wasp. But who exactly is Ghost, and what about her was so important that it might have stopped Scott from showing up to fight Thanos?
In the comics, Ghost is a pretty shifty character. Originally introduced as a male Iron Man villain in the late '80s, Ghost was an average joe working in tech before a series of accidents prompted him to augment his body with "flux state" processors that were, eventually, merged with him permanently. The processors allowed Ghost to become incorporeal and invisible, and gave him the ability to phase through matter, which is obviously where he got his code name.
Beyond that, very little is actually known about the original Ghost's past. His origin story was only ever recounted by him and never actually corroborated. We don't even know his civilian name or who he was in his past life beyond the details he volunteered (or, you know, fabricated).
Ghost's motives are as unclear as his backstory. Typically he acts as a mercenary with a preference for jobs that rally against corporate expansion and greed--the reason he and Tony are so frequently at odds--but because of his murky history, it's difficult to connect the dots about why he does what he does. He's acted as a member of various teams, including the semi-reformed villains club the Thunderbolts, but he rarely spends too much time in the spotlight.
It's largely assumed that, rather than any sort of wealth or personal vendetta, Ghost values more abstract concepts like anarchy and chaos for his own supervillainous M.O. Sometimes even his teammates find themselves a little creeped out by him--especially when he seems to be veering into obsessive-eccentric territory.
In the live action universe, however, we're probably going to see a very different interpretation of Ghost. A woman this time around, played by Hannah John-Kamen, we get some indication from the trailers that her powers are going to derive from the Quantum Realm.
It's not explicitly clear what the origins of Ghost's powers are beyond that--she apparently "stole" Pym's tech relating to his Quantum Realm research, or perhaps had some sort of accident with it, both of which imply that she's potentially got some sort of history with Pym or his labs.
If not Pym himself, she may have some sort of connection to Bill Foster (Laurence Fishburne), who we know was working with Hank on the Goliath project prior to the shuttering of Pym's programs.
With the Quantum Realm factored in, it's likely that Ghost is also going to have some connection to or relationship with the currently lost Janet Van Dyne, who, as we learned in the first Ant-Man, has been trapped in the Quantum Realm for years. There's a distinct possibility that Ghost's tech, accidental as it may be, is going to be one of the keys to Janet's eventual return.
As for her motivation? Well, that's a little more clear than her origin. According to Luis in the trailer, Ghost apparently wants to "take over the world or whatever," which, in terms of comic book supervillains, is pretty standard operating procedure. Of course, given Luis's penchant for, well, we'll say creative storytelling, there very well might be more to Ghost than world domination--especially if she does wind up having a personal stake in Pym's research.
At this point, thanks to the fluid nature of her comic book inspiration and the major departures from the source material that are already clear, anything is possible.
