Evangeline Lilly is blasting The Walt Disney Company over the layoffs at Marvel, which saw their workforce reduced by about 8%.
The company-wide cuts at Disney affected most departments, including film and TV production, comics, franchise, finance, legal, and visual development. Marvel’s visual department was severely affected by the cuts, even after a small round of layoffs in 2024.
Lilly, who is part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe and starred as Hope van Dyne, the Wasp, in 2015’s Ant-Man, took to social media to call out Disney over the cuts.
“SHAME ON YOU for turning your back on the people who built the power you are now using to throw them away,” Lilly captioned her Instagram post.
In the video, Lilly was reacting to news of the Marvel layoffs. She noted that she had seen the video and, to confirm its veracity, she contacted Andy Park, who created the Wasp suit she wore in the first film.
Upon confirmation that the cuts were true and he was also laid off, Lilly said, “I can’t quite believe that, that Disney have let go of the artists who brought the current Marvel Universe to life through their imagination and their genius. That the people who invented these characters in the first place, who designed them in the first place, are now being replaced by AI. AI that will take their designs and take what those artists created and use it to create iterations of that.”
“I am so sorry Andy, and I am so sorry to every single one of the artists who were let go in the 1000 artists that Disney fired, and particularly the entire team at Marvel who have been considered obsolete now after building the Marvel empire,” she continued.
Lilly added that the artists behind the Marvel visuals were “human creations, and they shouldn’t be stolen by tech giants so that their robots can replicate them. I think it’s disgusting and horrible, and I stand with all the artists and Andy.”
After 2015’s Ant-Man, Lilly reprised her role in 2018’s Ant-Man and the Wasp, 2019’s Avengers: Endgame, and 2023’s Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania.
Watch Lilly’s full statement in the video below.