Thunderbolts* is one of the best MCU movies since Avengers: Endgame, and it also features two classic MCU post-credits scenes. The first isn’t important to Marvel’s future, but it does deliver one extra, very funny scene from the unlikely team’s most enthusiastic member. The other is hugely important to the series. It’s among the most consequential end-credits scenes in franchise history What happened in both and why is the latter such a big deal?
If you haven’t seen Thunderbolts* just yet and want avoid spoilers now’s the time to visit the Void.
When Do Thunderbolts* Post-Credits Scenes Happen?
Thunderbolts* has two post-credits scenes. The first runs immediately after what might be the best credits sequence in MCU history. After the main action of the movie ends, we see a hilarious montage of newspaper headlines and magazine covers questioning the legitimacy of the New Avengers. When they stop the first post-credits scene begins.
Those news headlines end up being important for the film’s second post-credits scene, which takes place after the more traditional credits finish completely.
What Happens in Thunderbolts* First Post-Credits Scene?
The film’s first post-credits scene slips in an extra gag that pays off a promise first made in the Thunderbolts* Super Bowl trailer. It features David Harbour’s Red Guardian grocery shopping. He shaved off his Santa Claus-like beard in favor of a killer mustache, but unlike Samson he clearly didn’t lose his greatest power: being a big dork. In the scene he eagerly tries to get a woman to buy a box of Wheaties featuring him and his team. She doesn’t understand why he’s doing this despite him holding his picture up to his face. She quickly walks away leaving the cereal behind.
Too bad she didn’t realize how valuable those will become! Wheaties real-life Thunderbolts* collector’s box sold out immediately.
What Happens in Thunderbolts* Second Post-Credits Scene?
The film’s second post-credits scene takes place 14 months after the events of the film. It shows members of the New Avengers—Bucky, Yelena, Ava, and Walker—getting off the elevator and walking into the former/new Avengers Tower Valentina now owns. It appears the extra time allowed Val to finally finish renovating the building.
The group, sporting an assortment of new hairstyles, earrings, and one dumb little beret, arrive in a bad mood. Most people have still not accepted them as Earth’s mightiest heroes. Some have made their disapproval clear with really mean memes.
There’s a bigger problem than the public questioning their legitimacy, though. America’s greatest hero feels the same way. Sam Wilson is trying to make good on his promise to Joaquin Torres (Falcon) at the end of Captain America: Brave New World. The official Captain America is trying to put together his own Avengers team. Sam is even suing Valentina’s squad for legal rights to the Avengers name. Bucky’s attempt to talk to Sam about everything “went poorly,” but we don’t know exactly why.
Red Guardian then enters the room and offers a solution. He wants them to rebrand themselves as the “Avengerz” with a “z” and wear ridiculous outfits that looks like a rainbow threw up on a racing team.
Yelena doesn’t even want to touch his suit. She’s also more focused on the fact no one is telling them anything about the “space crisis” currently going on. (She means outer space, not office space, John.) Bucky tells her to run a scan and to get the jets ready while Red Guardian fantasizes about riding Sentry into the sky. Turns out Bob is still with the group and has been quietly reading the whole time. But he says without his “other side”—the black void of loneliness inside him the Thunderbolts helped Bob overcome—he doesn’t have any powers. He can’t be the Sentry. He can only wash dishes.
That’s when the real fireworks happen. Yelena’s scan identifies an “extradimensional ship entering the atmosphere.” That ship belongs to the Fantastic Four, who will star in the MCU’s next movie. We see their arrival into Earth-616’s dimension.
Are the Fantastic Four responding to the unknown space crisis the New Avengers don’t even know about? Are they fleeing it? Causing it? And what does this mean for the pending arrival of Robert Downey Jr.’s Victor von Doom? We’ll find out in the franchise’s next film, the way MCU post-credits scenes used to always give us immediate payoffs.
That’s fitting for one that is among the most important ever.
Thunderbolts* is now playing in theaters.
Content shared from nerdist.com.