Captain America: Brave New World Has Marvel’s Lamest Post-Credits Scene Yet

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Marvel Studios has turned watching movie credits into a thrilling game of anticipation. Previously, only franchises like Transformers and G.I. Joe might have had post-credits teasers, but the MCU mastered this technique. Regularly, characters such as Nick Fury would appear to recruit new team members, or ominous hints about upcoming villains would be dropped, such as Thanos’ sinister grin or the Maximoff twins, Wanda and Pietro, lurking in prison. However, since around 2021, it appears that Marvel Studios has lost some of its skill in this area of marketing. For instance, the teaser at the end of Captain America: Brave New World failed to generate any excitement.

Typically, these sequels introduce fresh characters (like Thor), novel settings (such as Wakanda), or innovative ideas (for example, Multiversal incursions). At least they serve as humor. However, the one at the end of Brave New World deviates from all of that. Instead, it centers around the film’s cunning antagonist, The Leader alias Samuel Sterns (Tim Blake Nelson, reprising his role from the Edward Norton-starring The Incredible Hulk). After he is subdued by the gamma radiation-enhanced genius, he is confined in a prison complex located in the middle of the ocean, called the Raft. This facility makes its reappearance for the first time since it was initially introduced in Captain America: Civil War. The new Captain America, Sam Wilson (Anthony Mackie), pays him an unexpected visit, but Sterns then hints at — cue the drumroll — the multiverse.

In essence, we’ve been exploring the exact same interconnected sequence of parallel realities across various screen productions over a span of four years. These include series like Loki and films such as Spider-Man: No Way Home, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, Deadpool & Wolverine, among others. This multiverse is what I’m referring to. In the latest events, Sterns tells Wilson that despite their differing humor, they inhabit the same universe. He then hints mysteriously, “It’s on its way. I’ve glimpsed it in the probabilities, as clear as daylight. You heroes believe your world is unique? You think this is the only world?

The way Sterns speaks is reminiscent of Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) in the post-credits scene of Marvel’s first film, Iron Man, where he told Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.), “You believe you’re the only superhero out there? Mr. Stark, you’ve become a part of something larger than yourself, even if you don’t realize it yet.” Fury was hinting at future superhero collaborations leading to the groundbreaking Avengers team-up. However, Sterns is merely confirming what the audience already knows and seems to be growing weary of, as suggested by the low box-office earnings for Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, a film centered around a now-disregarded multiverse villain. On set, Wilson’s response to Sterns is minimal, suggesting that Mackie may not have had a line to respond to during filming.

The Legend of the Ten Rings in 2021. This mystery seems to hint at an otherworldly message being sent by the Ten Rings, although nothing in the movie directly connects this to any specific cosmic entity. This plot point might be reminiscent of Lex Luthor’s cryptic warning in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, where he hinted at a coming threat without specifying who exactly it was. Fans of comics generally understood that this referred to the villain Darkseid, but nothing in the movie itself supported this connection.

If Stern’s monologue had been attached to a movie like Black Widow, which was released in 2020 when the multiverse concept was still a budding idea in Kevin Feige’s mind, it would have at least given us a taste of what could be expected in the future. However, it’s now been two years since Kang, a villain who thrives on the multiverse, was last seen in Quantumania, and he seems to have been replaced by Robert Downey Jr.’s Doctor Doom. By this point, several films have shown characters from different realities intermingling. Merely hinting that more of this may occur doesn’t feel like a very compelling teaser anymore.

First Steps” and “Avengers: Doomsday” will likely utilize this concept too, but unless they offer something new, it might be tough for viewers to stay engaged. However, if even the protagonist of “Brave New World” seems unimpressed by more multiverse movies, is it really shocking that audiences aren’t invested?

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2025-02-14 03:54