Marvel couldn’t wait to spoil the big Thunderbolts* plot twist, revealing the movie’s real title even before its first weekend in theaters was over. Whether you’ve seen the film or not, you know Marvel mounted a massive marketing campaign to explain that asterisk and begin promoting the movie with its true title: The New Avengers.
Just like that, the MCU has the first Avengers film of the Multiverse Saga, and it’s definitely not what we thought we’d get. Ignoring the Avengers all this time has been a massive oversight, and something I kept saying as every project took us deeper into the new saga.
The Thunderbolts* story could have happened a lot earlier, but we’ll take what we can get. And, make no mistake, The New Avengers is easily one of the best movies of the Multiverse Saga.
While the film’s title is a spoiler nobody can avoid, given what Marvel has done with its marketing campaign, the story is still a mystery to those who have not seen the movie — especially those who aren’t aware of the Thunderbolts* post-credits scenes.
This is where I tell you that big spoilers will follow below, because I’m going to share with you the canceled final credits scene for The New Avengers, which I’m now dying to see.
The New Avengers reveal
Thunderbolts* ends with Val (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) announcing to the world the scrappy Thunderbolts team as her New Avengers, an initiative she’s been working on behind the scenes. It’s all a Hail Mary save from the CIA boss to avoid arrest. Luckily for her, everyone on the team takes kindly to becoming Avengers, and so the New Avengers are formed.
Fast-forward 14 months, as the film’s second credits scene shows, and the Thunderbolts are working as New Avengers inside the old Avengers Tower, which is now the, well, New Avengers Tower.
The scene is nearly three minutes long and tells us the New Avengers have legal problems with Sam Wilson (Anthony Mackie). Captain America is forming his own New Avengers, and he has a trademark on the name.
This further drives home the point that the world isn’t convinced these New Avengers deserve the title, much like audiences leaving theaters. I loved the film, but I think the Thunderbolts are not enough to protect the MCU’s main reality. They’ll be easy victims for Doctor Doom (Robert Downey Jr.), well, everyone but Bob (Lewis Pullman).
The credits scene ends with the Fantastic Four ship coming to Earth-616 from their reality, thus setting the stage for The Fantastic Four and Avengers: Doomsday.
Director Jake Schreier confirmed in interviews that the amazing credits scene teasing the future of the New Avengers was actually shot a month before the Thunderbolts* premiere. It wasn’t him in the director’s seat, but the Russo brothers, as the scene is part of the Doomsday production.
It turns out that Schreier revealed more details about what went into making the movie, and the credits scenes, showing that he had a different plan for that final stinger.
The original credits sequence
In a wide-ranging interview with Collider about Thunderbolts*, available below, he talked about the plans for the big “New Avengers” reveal at the end. They had big expectations for the audience’s reaction, but test screenings surprised them. There were no big cheers at the end:
When we were making the movie… it really is basically the same piece of music, and I was editing. In my head, I was like, ‘We’re going to go to that, she’s going to announce. Yelena will walk up. It’s building up, and then push in on a close-up of her face in the background. Hit the credits. You know she’s going to say it [the New Avengers]. Everyone’s going to cheer…’ And that didn’t happen.
Marvel realized they needed to address that reaction head-on, so they changed what follows after Val’s big reveal. That’s how they ended up with the brilliant collage at the end of the film that shows newspaper and blog clippings from the MCU’s Earth, where well-known publications question the New Avengers team, much like the real audience did.
This allows the audience to identify themselves with the regular people from the MCU universe who don’t think the Thunderbolts qualify as real Avengers.
The unexpected reaction to Val’s reveal during test screenings is also what convinced Marvel to go a different route with the final credits scene that’s now playing in theaters. They needed to show the future of the New Avengers and make it clear that they will act as Earth’s mightiest heroes for quite a while before meeting Doctor Doom.
That’s when Schreier revealed his plans for the canned New Avengers credits sequence.
“What we found from those discussions is it’s a little like, ‘Really? Are you sure [these are Avengers]?'” Schreier said. “And so it felt like not only did we need more, we had a whole different credit sequence that we were working on. We were doing a guinea pig going through a bunch of Void rooms because people do ask about the guinea pig.”
I don’t know about you, but I loved that newspaper clipping showing a boat with the Avengers in it and the guinea pig. It was a great way to tie up that loose end, indicating that Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh) still cares for the animal.
If you somehow read all this but haven’t seen the film, then you have no idea what the guinea pig is all about. It’s an animal that Yelena saves from one of Val’s testing locations for the Sentry program. She blows up the place but takes the guinea pig with her early in the movie.
Later, we learn from Bob that his Void personality surfaced while he was at that same location. It all happens while all the Thunderbolts are in the Void, trying to save Bob and the entire planet along the way.
We don’t get to see each New Avenger’s experience in the Void. Presumably, each of them revisited various rooms and relived some of their biggest traumas, much like Yelena did. It would be amazing to see what they went through and what they did to find each other. This is similar to imagining what Steve Rogers (Chris Evans) did to return the Infinity Stones and Thor’s hammer at the end of Endgame.
Now, place the guinea pig in the same Void, and that’s something I want to see. Again, the animal was recovered from a Sentry test site. God knows what it experienced before Yelena saved it. And some of that trauma will surely surface inside the Void.
And yes, having the guinea pig in New York would have been a big plot hole. Who takes their pet to work? But that doesn’t change the fact that I’m just dying to see that Void scene play out.
Thunderbolts*, aka The New Avengers, is currently playing in theaters. Collider’s full interview with Schreier follows below:
