Marvel actress Evangeline Lilly has announced that she’s suffered brain damage due to an accident last year, and is now “functioning at a decreased capacity.”
The star, best known for her Marvel role as Hope van Dyne, AKA the Wasp, gave an update on her condition via a video posted to Instagram over the weekend, in which she told fans she had “bad news” to share following a recent brain scan.
“Almost every area in my brain is functioning at a decreased capacity,” Lilly said, as a result of an accident in May 2025 where she hit her head on a boulder after blacking out. The damage has now resulted in “cognitive decline”, she continued.
“So I do have brain damage from the TBI [traumatic brain injury] and possibly other factors going on,” Lilly explained. “But now my job is to get to the bottom of that with doctors and then embark on the hard work of fixing it, which I don’t look forward to because I feel like hard work is all I do.”
“But that’s OK,” she continued. “My cognitive decline since I smashed my face open has helped me to slow down and helped me to have a more restful finish to my 2025.” Indeed, Lilly went on to describe her final months of last year as the “calmest and most restful” since she had children 14 years ago, something she said was “good thing.”
Also known for her starring role in Lost, as well as a turn in Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit trilogy, Lilly’s last role was in 2023’s Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, where she once again reprised her role as Hope van Dyne. Her appearance followed a series of comments from the actress on the deployment of Covid vaccines which raised eyebrows during the early stages of the global pandemic. Following the release of Quantumania, Lilly indicated that her acting career was now on hiatus while she focused on charity work.
Last year, the actress reported that she had lost consciousness while at the beach and fallen “face first into a boulder”, and noted that she had suffered from “fainting spells” since her youth.
Responses to her new post included wishes of goodwill from Lilly’s Marvel co-star Michel Pfeiffer and Lost actress Rebecca Mader. “You are a warrior,” Pfeiffer wrote. “Nothing — not even this will defeat you my friend.” Said Mader: “Sending you all my love and a massive hug.”
Image credit: Gareth Cattermole/Getty Images for Disney.
Tom Phillips is IGN’s News Editor. You can reach Tom at [email protected] or find him on Bluesky @tomphillipseg.bsky.social
