How the ‘Captain America: Brave New World’ post-credits scene teases what’s next for the MCU
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This story contains spoilers for “Captain America: Brave New World.” If you haven’t seen the movie yet, consider checking out our review instead.
Is a movie really an installment of the Marvel Cinematic Universe if it doesn’t have at least one post-credits scene?
Directed by Julius Onah, “Captain America: Brave New World,” out Friday, kicks off the ever-expanding franchise’s attempt to return to form. After a year that saw just one Marvel Studios offering — July’s “Deadpool & Wolverine” — “Brave New World” is the first of three MCU films slated to hit theaters in 2025.
Perhaps even more exciting for longtime fans, the film, which stars Anthony Mackie’s Sam Wilson as the eponymous hero for the first time after the events of “The Falcon and the Winter Soldier,” also hints at the Avengers being assembled once again.
The screenplay of the latest movie in the MCU tries to be too many things to too many prior adventures, but at its core is a resonant story about Black heroism.
Despite building up some anticipation for what’s to come, “Captain America: Brave New World’s” post-credits scene plays its cards close to the vest.
The sole scene, which arrives after the full credits roll, sees Wilson visit Samuel Sterns (Tim Blake Nelson) at the Raft, a maximum-security prison for superpowered beings.
Sterns, whose plan for getting revenge against President Thaddeus “Thunderbolt” Ross (Harrison Ford) has been thwarted by the new Captain America, has a warning for Wilson: “It’s coming.”
“All you heroes protecting the world,” says Sterns from his cell, “you think you’re the only ones? Do you think this is the only world? We’ll see what happens when you have to protect this place from the others.”
Although Sterns is warning Wilson that the multiverse is coming, the MCU faithful know that the multiverse has been here for quite a while. Ever since the Disney+ series “Loki” ripped open the seams between the realities, the multiverse has played a part in films from “Spider-Man: No Way Home” (2021) and “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness” (2022) to “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania” (2023) and even “The Marvels” (2023). “Deadpool & Wolverine” fully relished in it.
The first trailer for ‘The Fantastic Four: First Steps,’ starring Pedro Pascal, introduces the MCU’s take on Marvel’s First Family and its retro-futuristic world.
The “Brave New World” post-credits scene confirms that even though the franchise has moved on from its originally planned major villain, Kang the Conqueror, there’s no stopping the multiverse’s collision course.
It’s also no secret that the MCU has been steadily marching forward to a new Avengers team-up. Despite various shifts on timing and the players in front of and behind the camera, “Avengers 5” — now titled “Avengers: Doomsday” — has long been a fixture on the horizon. Fans will have to wait until 2026 to see just how Doctor Doom (Robert Downey Jr.) will harness the multiverse for his plans.
Next up on the Marvel theatrical slate is “Thunderbolts*,” set for May, which at least appears to be set in a familiar corner of the multiverse. The film will assemble a group of former villains, including Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan), Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh), Alexei Shostakov (David Harbour), John Walker (Wyatt Russell), Ghost ( Hannah John-Kamen) and Taskmaster (Olga Kurylenko) into a new team of antiheroes.
Then, Marvel will kick off Phase 6 with “The Fantastic Four: First Steps.” From the glimpses in its teasers, the First Family appears to live in a retrofuturistic world that is distinctly its own. The film hits theaters July 25.
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