The Ant-Man movies aren’t necessarily known for fealty to the comics.
Consider the addition of Luis as a major character, a new version of Ghost that shares similar powers with the comic version but almost nothing else, and a significantly different ex-wife for Scott Lang. But sometimes, they’re more faithful than they appear. Many viewers may leave Ant-Man and the Wasp thinking Walton Goggins‘ character was created for the film, given that (a) he’s not especially supervillain-y for a primary bad guy, and (b) he’s such a typical Walton Goggins character that one might assume Marvel just wanted the actor aboard and let him do whatever he wanted.
In fact, Sonny Burch has a past in the comics, though as with Ghost, he’s more of an Iron Man enemy than an Ant-Man antagonist, with his most notable act of villainy being an attempt to claim Tony Stark’s armor patents for himself. Lacking Stark’s genius, however, his attempt to repurpose the technology resulted in catastrophic malfunctions, and eventually Burch’s suicide. Thankfully, he’s still alive to work more mischief in the MCU, but the movie leaves a big mystery unanswered: just who, exactly, are his powerful backers?
My initial guess was Justin Hammer–come back, Sam Rockwell; you were the best thing about Iron Man 2!–but the comics give us two more-likely answers. Burch was chairman of Cross Technologies, but Darren Cross was pretty definitively crushed to death by the Yellowjacket suit onscreen. Another big shot affiliated with Cross Technologies? Obadiah Stane, last seen falling into an exploding reactor. He’s presumed dead, but in comics and comic-book movies, unless you see a corpse literally pulled out of the wreckage afterwards, that’s not an iron clad assumption. Ask Crossbones, or Bucky.
Could the groundwork be in place here for a Jeff Bridges comeback? By only being in the very first Marvel Cinematic Universe movie before “MCU” was even a thing, he has missed out on some prime opportunities to Dude it up with aliens and powered people. Right now, odds are that Burch’s mysterious benefactor has been purposely left a mystery because everyone’s concerned with Thanos, and when it comes time to revisit this particular plot strand, whoever’s directing at the time can plug in literally any character (if things remain good with Sony, you could even have it be Norman Osborn). But Stane would be a solid comics-based choice, and a Stane with all the resources of a post-Infinity War world would be a much bigger and more fun threat than ever before. And that’s, like, our opinion, man.
Even if Tony Stark doesn’t live to fight him another day. But that’s a speculation piece for the next movie.
