I’m glad to see that Thunderbolts* is shaping up to be the best Marvel movie of the year, and certainly one of the Multiverse Saga’s highlights leading up to the Avengers: Doomsday and Secret Wars movies. Sure, The Fantastic Four is still a few months out, but I had Thunderbolts* at the top of my list when it comes to this year’s MCU attractions long before the praising reviews came out.
As it’s been the case since Avengers: Endgame, I knew everything about Thunderbolts* well before its premiere, starting with the leaks that explained the asterisk in the title and ending with the Thunderbolts* full plot leak and credits scenes that appeared after last week’s early screenings.
That knowledge has not ruined the Thunderbolts* experience for me. Knowing what happens in a Marvel movie before I watch it never ruins it for me. The only thing that can destroy an MCU project is Marvel itself, which was especially true for most of Phases 4 and 5.
Thankfully, Thunderbolts* continues to clean up Marvel’s mess, and I’m not talking here about the various MCU loose ends the film is picking up and solving, but about the film’s quality. I love what Marvel has done here with these characters, and I can’t wait to see them in Doomsday.
Yes, this isn’t a secret or spoiler. Marvel hosted a clever Doomsday cast reveal on YouTube a few weeks ago, well before the Thunderbolts* premiere, where it revealed that most Thunderbolts team members will appear in Avengers 5.
With all that in mind, hearing that Marvel actually shot the brilliant and apparently record-breaking Thunderbolts* end-credits scene just recently, during the Doomsday production, makes all the sense in the world.
Massive spoilers from that scene and the meaning of the asterisk in the title will follow below. You can read our spoiler-free Thunderbolts* review while you wait to see the film.
The asterisk
The leading theory behind the Thunderbolts* film title was that the team’s name is only a placeholder. The Thunderbolts will be called the New Avengers by the end of the film, and that’s how they’ll be known in Doomsday, much to the annoyance of Sam Wilson (Anthony Mackie), who decided at the end of Brave New World to form his own team of New Avengers.
The Thunderbolts* end gives us the confirmation we expected. The Thunderbolts are known as the New Avengers, and Bob (Lewis Pullman) is on the team. He can’t not be on the team, given that someone needs to keep The Sentry in check and ensure The Void never comes out to play.
The credits scene further advances the idea that the world has New Avengers. It also proves how Marvel’s decision to avoid talking about Avengers for so long ruined the Multiverse Saga until now.
The credits scenes
The first credits scene gives us Red Guardian (David Harbour) taking advantage of his newfound fame. He’s an Avenger and he’s loving it so much that he’s trying to convince a woman in a grocery store to buy the New Avengers-themed cereals.
As I’ve explained before, the second Thunderbolts* credits scene is more exciting and the one that matters. Some 14 months after the events in Thunderbolts*, we see the New Avengers team established in the Watch Tower, the former Avengers Tower.
They’re discussing a mysterious space threat the government has yet to inform them about and a pressing legal matter. Sam Wilson has registered a trademark for the New Avengers team name, given that he is also forming his own Avengers. The Thunderbolts already worry that those Avengers would be more credible to the world, and so do I, frankly.
During this conversation about Avengers team names, a warning comes to Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh), telling her a spaceship from a different dimension is about to appear in space. That’s when we get the spacecraft seen in The Fantastic Four trailers, with the unmistakable “4” on it.
Just like that, Thunderbolts* ties up a few other loose ends, including the link between the Fantastic Four team and the Avengers. These need to happen before Doomsday hits theaters, and they show how much time Marvel has wasted establishing these hooks.
Pandemic and industry strikes aside, we could have had New Avengers in the MCU a long time ago. We wouldn’t have needed Marvel to speed up the clock in a credits scene to get us closer to where we need to be.
Maybe that’s why the Thunderbolts credits scenes are record-breaking in length. We’re looking at 3 minutes of additional content. Yeah, we need three minutes of banter between the New Avengers to get these connections to The Fantastic Four ahead of Doomsday.
These relationships need to make sense by the time Robert Downey Jr.’s Doctor Doom threatens the multiverse, including Earth-616’s new and old Avengers.
It turns out that the pivotal Fantastic Four credits scene wasn’t even decided during the Thunderbolts* principal shooting. It wasn’t even shot at the time. Instead, Marvel filmed the whole thing a few weeks ago.
Thunderbolts* director Jake Schreier said in an interview that they always knew where the story would lead, that the Thunderbolts would become the New Avengers. But the specifics of the final credits scene came together only a few weeks ago, with the entire thing having been shot maybe a month ago.
Schreier didn’t even film that scene, though he said he was on set when it happened. As for that set, it’s from an MCU movie that’s starting production about now, the director teased. That can only be Avengers: Doomsday, which Kevin Feige recently confirmed that it started filming.
Where’s Doctor Doom?
That Marvel took so long to develop a great Thunderbolts* credits scene shows they might have been considering their options.
Remember that the biggest loose end Marvel must address is Doctor Doom’s absence from the Multiverse Saga movies or TV shows released so far. We only have one movie to go until Doomsday, and we haven’t seen Doom. Compare that to the movies leading up to Infinity War that had plenty of Thanos (Josh Brolin) in the credits scenes.
I know, I know, Doom has only recently replaced Kang (Jonathan Majors), the former big villain of the Multiverse Saga. But Marvel still decided not to show any Doctor Doom teaser in two of the three MCU films hitting cinemas before Doomsday. At this point, I wonder if The Fantastic Four will have a Doctor Doom hook at the end or not.
That said, I can’t but wonder if the Fantastic Four arrival in the main Earth-616 reality is how Doomsday starts, but that’s a story for a different day. Because, yes, we somehow have to figure out why, of all of the multiverse’s Avengers, Doom will fight the ones in Earth-616.
