This literally has “post-credits scenes” in the title. Is a SPOILER ALERT really necessary?
Does anyone else still go see Marvel movies in the theaters and watch in confusion as people get up and leave as soon as the credits begin? Do these people read about the extra scenes online and skip actually watching it? Do they watch pirated scenes online? Are there actually people that don’t know that there are extra scenes? Or do they think, “If these scenes are so good, why aren’t they in the actual movie?”
Anyway, let’s talk about the post-credits in ‘Captain Marvel’. In an interesting move, the mid-credits scene is the more crucial of the two. The final after-credits stinger is just a comical bit featuring Goose the Flerkin.
In this comical sequence, Goose hops up on Fury’s desk and starts heaving. Any cat owner knows what’s coming next– a hairball. Well, not quite. This Flerkin hocks up the Tesseract, the crackling blue cube that served as the McGuffin in ‘Captain America: The First Avenger’. It was later shown in the possession of Tony’s dad, Howard Stark (played in that film by Dominic Cooper), before S.H.I.E.L.D. acquired it, as shown in ‘Thor’. Then, of course, Loki used it to unleash the invasion of New York in ‘Avengers’.
The events of ‘Captain Marvel’ take place in between. It’s not explained (unless I missed it) how it passes from the hands of Howard Stark to Wendy Lawson (Annette Bening), but this presumably explains how S.H.I.E.L.D. got it.
But it was the mid-credits scene that really looked forward.
In a direct follow-up to the end-credits scene from ‘Avengers: Infinity War’, the Avengers are in possession of Fury’s “Marvel Signal” two-way pager, the one he whipped out just before he and Maria Hill were dusted by Thanos’ finger snap. The Avengers don’t quite know what the device’s purpose is, but they are aware that Fury was trying to send a signal to someone.
When it stops, Captain America frantically demands that they get it working again. But as viewers soon realize, it stopped sending its S.O.S. because the person on the other end of the signal is there. Black Widow turns around to come face-to-face with Captain Marvel, who demands to know where Fury is.
This isn’t just a tease for ‘Endgame’, it knocks out a huge demand on it. Joe and Anthony Russo’s cut of the film is said to be three hours long. ‘Infinity War’ was two hours and 40 minutes, but it was packed from beginning to end. There was just so much that that movie had to make happen. Presumably, ‘Endgame’ faced the same issue.
But now, ‘Endgame’ doesn’t have to introduce Captain Marvel and depict her journey from space to Earth. She’s already there and she’s already in the Avengers’ headquarters. Sure, there still need to be some introductions and explanations, but at least this initial encounter is over and done with.
Did the post-credits stingers in ‘Captain Marvel’ get you even more pumped for ‘Endgame’?
‘Captain Marvel’ is in theaters now. ‘Avengers: Endgame’ opens on April 26.
