OK so why did I choose Jim Paxton for the letter J when there’s characters like JARVIS, James “Rhodey” Rhodes and Jane Foster? They’re all great but I find Jim Paxton just really interesting and a character that subverts the usual sterotypes.

He’s set up kind of like an antagonist in Ant-Man but he’s never downright horrible to Scott. He’s Scott’s ex-wife’s fiancé but there’s no competition between the two men over Maggie’s affections. Instead, Paxton is rightly wary as he doesn’t want Maggie or Cassie to get hurt if Scott goes back to his criminal ways. He’s a detective so he has to do his job when Scott gets caught burgling Pym’s house, but he’s still disappointed in him. Over the course of the film though, Paxton see’s that Scott can be a hero too and he directly puts himself in harms way to protect Cassie from Yellowjacket.

Then in Ant-Man and the Wasp it takes it a step further and Paxton now cares about Scott just as much as Maggie and Cassie do. And he, Scott and Maggie are a team who are together raising Cassie and again, there’s no competitiveness or nastiness to be found. I think having this kind of family on screen is so important.

Paxton is a great minor character. He’s charming, caring, a good cop and a good stepdad. He looks out for his family and he will speak his mind. I just love the whole Lang-Paxton family and think they’re one of the most functional and well-adjusted families in the entire MCU.

If I’m being honest, there could’ve been way more characters from the Ant-Man films featured in this A-Z of My Favourite Characters in the MCU because there really are some great, fun and interesting characters in those two films. After this post there will be one more Ant-Man character featured, can you guess who it’ll be?