‘Justice League’ hits theaters this weekend, and as any good superhero-movie fan should know by now, you’d better stay in your seats until the very end of the credits when the theater brings the lights on. It’s no secret that there is both a mid-credits and a post-credits scene in this film; after my press screening this evening, I wanted to share with you the details of what I saw once the credits started rolling, if you’re up for taking the journey with me!
WARNING: You are about to read spoilers for the credits scenes in ‘Justice League.’ Nothing in this article will spoil any major plot points of the film itself, but consider yourself warned to turn back now if you do not wish to hear information about the credits scenes!
Okay, that’s out of the way – on to the good stuff. In a direct flip of Marvel’s preference, ‘Justice League’ features a “funny” scene as the mid-credits version and the “serious” snippet at the very end of the credits.
The “mid-credits” (really you only have to wait through about 60 seconds of credits before you get this one) sequence brings us Ezra Miller’s Flash and Henry Cavill’s Superman standing on a country road. It only takes a millisecond before comic book fans will realize what we’re about to see: the oft-debated race to determine who’s truly faster, the “Man of Steel” or “The Fastest Man Alive.” After some light banter and the setting of some good-natured wagers, Flash decides he wants to race all the way to the West Coast – “I’ve never been,” he says cheerfully as he points in the wrong direction – and the runners take their mark before a slow-motion release that brought to my mind some of the silly contests in the old Hanna-Barbera ‘Laff-A-Lympics.’ Who wins the race? Well, that story will have to wait until ‘Justice League 2,’ apparently.
The post-credits scene is a much more serious bend: it’s cell-clearing time at Arkham Asylum, only everyone’s favorite bald-headed villain, Lex Luthor, won’t come out. So, a guard goes into the cell to retrieve him – only we see that when he’s turned around, it’s not Luthor at all! No, Lex has escaped, and is living large on a yacht on the water, possibly in Gotham Harbor. A smaller boat zips up and drops off another character… one clad in orange and black armor. That’s right, friends, it’s Slade Wilson, aka Deathstroke the Terminator! He takes off his helmet and Luthor begins to chat him up, and Joe Manganiello – replete with grayish-white hair and eyepatch – listens intently as Luthor bemoans the creation of the Justice League. He wants to make sure that a team of superheroes is no threat to him, so he has big plans; as he so eloquently states, “We have to level the playing field. To put it plainly: shouldn’t we have a League of our own?” DC fans should recognize this as a pretty direct reference to the Injustice League, a grouping of super-villains in the comics that included not only Luthor and Deathstroke, but also many other baddies we’re getting in the DC Extended Universe, including The Joker, Harley Quinn, Catwoman, and Poison Ivy, among others.
There you have it, friends: stay in those seats and enjoy the post-movie goodness of the credits scenes!
‘Justice League’ opens in American theaters on November 17, 2017.
