The 35th MCU movie, Captain America: Brave New World, comes with a lot of questions MCU movies only sporadically face, like “How does this relate to current politics?”, along with the usual ones, like “What should I watch to prepare for this movie?” and “Does it have a post-credits scene?” Brave New World does have […]
The 35th MCU movie, Captain America: Brave New World, comes with a lot of questions MCU movies only sporadically face, like “How does this relate to current politics?”, along with the usual ones, like “What should I watch to prepare for this movie?” and “Does it have a post-credits scene?”
Brave New World does have a post-credits scene, for what that’s worth, but it’s a baffling one, particularly compared with the MCU’s usual habit of using the post-credits space to drum up excitement for the next movie on Marvel’s roster. Let’s dig in.
Does Captain America: Brave New World have a mid-credits scene?
Nope! Which is also a significant surprise, since even MCU movies with no post-credits sequence usually still throw in a mid-credits beat to wrap up some small bit of business from the movie. In this case, though, you’ll have to wait all the way to the end of the credits to get your final shot of Cap.
Does Captain America: Brave New World have a post-credits scene?
It does. But while that’s the question everyone always Googles while sitting in the theater watching the credits roll by, the real question should be “Was that post-credits scene shot 15 years ago and never updated? What the hell is that exchange about, and what are we supposed to get from it?” Full spoilers for the scene ahead.
What happens in Captain America: Brave New World’s post-credits scene?
The sequence opens with the movie’s big villain, Samuel Sterns, incarcerated in The Raft, the MCU’s floating prison for superpowered individuals. (Tim Blake Nelson was established in the role as Sterns in 2008’s The Incredible Hulk. As of this movie, he still hasn’t been labeled “The Leader,” the name of this character in Marvel Comics continuity.) Captain America (Anthony Mackie) comes to talk to him, apparently having been told Sterns has something to say.
Sterns’ message is the kind of threat that would normally be designed to set up a future Marvel movie: “It’s coming. I’ve seen it in the probabilities. You think this is the only world? Let’s see what happens when you have to protect this world from the others.”
What the hell does ‘the others’ mean?
So okay. I know Samuel Sterns has been imprisoned at a government black site for the past 15 years, where he’s been doing life-sustaining medical work for “Thunderbolt” Ross (Harrison Ford) out of a grimy, neon-lit lab that looks like a torture dungeon from a Saw movie. So maybe he doesn’t have a ton of access to the news, to go with his in-depth access to the American military personnel files he has all over his walls. But “protecting your world from the others” is most of what Marvel heroes have been doing since around 2011’s Thor.
Does Sterns know Thor came from a different planet, and so did a giant destructive robot that made a huge mess on Earth? Did he miss out on the Chitauri invasion in The Avengers? What about Thanos’ lackeys smashing up New York City and Thanos himself obliterating half the life on Earth (just for starters) in Avengers: Infinity War? Or the full-on Thanos invasion in Avengers: Endgame, or the worldwide alien terrorist plot of Secret Invasion, or the alien that literally hatched out of the earth in Eternals, prompting much of the plot of Brave New World? “Other worlds” invading Earth is old, old news in the MCU.
So maybe he means “other worlds” in the multiverse sense? This would be a lot more logical, since that’s a newer MCU threat, known to fewer people within the MCU itself. But it’s pretty familiar ground at this point for MCU fans. Brave New World is the penultimate movie in the MCU’s Phase Five, the second part of the “Multiverse Saga” — while Sam Wilson hasn’t been dealing with multiverse incursions, we’ve been getting a pile-on of multiverse-focused stories since season 1 of Loki back in 2021. Which makes Stearns’ threat feel pretty tame — the equivalent of Mike Myers’ Dr. Evil in Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery emerging from 30 years of cryo-sleep, completely out of touch with the value of modern money, and launching a blackmail plan for “One meeeeeeellion dollars!”
In keeping with Marvel’s usual foreshadowing, though, it feels like the “other worlds” threat should somehow be queuing up the eventual threat of Dr. Doom, which seems to have replaced the threat of infinite Kangs that Marvel Studios had to scrap after Jonathan Majors’ assault trial. Given that The Fantastic Four: First Steps takes place in an alternate timeline, we can maybe assume that Doctor Doom is an alt-universe villain eventually headed to the mainline MCU. The “probabilities” line certainly suggests that Sterns has somehow been analyzing possible futures in the same way Doctor Strange does to find the Avengers’ one path to success in Infinity War, which points us in the direction of alternate universes or timelines. (Unless “other worlds” just means there are aliens we don’t know about coming in Thunderbolts* in May.)
But if that’s what Stearns is trying to hold over Sam’s head, it doesn’t land — either for the character, or for the audience this tease is really aimed at. It isn’t ominous, it isn’t specific, it isn’t even a wink at the fandom. (Would it have been so hard to say “Doom is coming from another world”?) It’s a weak, vague jab to aim at someone who just stood his ground against Red Hulk, and it’s a weak, vague setup for whatever’s up next in the MCU toolkit.
