Nothing says Marvel quite like a good post-credits scene. Whether they tease the next movie, give us a cameo, or get one last joke in before the theater lights go up, the best Marvel Cinematic Universe post-credits scenes rival the content of the movies themselves. Of course, they’re not for everyone.
But we Marvel fans lap them up like kittens with a bowl of cream! Here are the best post-credits scenes in the MCU, ranked.
14. Doctor Strange: Thor’s visit
Strange has settled into life as master of the Sanctum Sanctorum, and he has a guest! After a moment, the camera reveals that that guest is none other than Thor Odinson, who has brought Loki to earth to help him look for their father.
The overlap between Doctor Strange fans and Thor fans is pretty big, so getting the two of them in the same room is a treat. More than that, though, this scene has all the stuff that makes good post-credits scenes so satisfying. Thor is a delicious and surprising cameo. The reference to Loki and Odin picks up where Thor: The Dark World left off, giving the movies the feel of one long story. Finally, Strange saying he’ll help Thor hints at his own upcoming cameo in Thor: Ragnarok. The post-credits scenes are part of what ties the whole MCU together, and in that sense, this one was perfectly executed.
13. Hawkeye: the Avengers Musical
After the series finale of Hawkeye, we’re transported back to a Broadway theater to the musical that Clint was watching before he turned off his hearing aid. Then we just … watch the entire musical number. The whole thing. They wrote and performed this entire song just to subject us to it in the post-credits.
This scene is fantastic just for how hard it punked everyone. It’s the most annoying song in history, with choreography that makes you want to crawl under your chair. If, like me, you were a big enough sucker to sit through the whole thing in the hopes that something else would happen—like, I don’t know, Blorko bursting through the wall or something—then you deserve every ounce of cringe that you got. This scene is so bad that it passes through bad into good, and then on to amazing.
12. Loki: the Loki squad
Season 1, episode 5 of Loki is tumultuous: first Mobius gets pruned, and then Loki bites the dust. But he can’t be dead (again)—he’s the main character of the show! Luckily, after the credits roll, Loki wakes up and finds himself lying on the ground. When he wonders out loud if he’s dead, someone tells him that he’s not, but he will be unless he follows them. Loki looks up to see a whole group of variants of himself, in various forms.
Not only was this scene a relief for fans wondering if the MCU had Game of Thronesed one of its best characters. It also introduced the beloved Alligator Loki, and led to a week of speculation about the trashed Avengers Tower behind the variants.
11. Captain America: the Winter Soldier: the Scarlet Witch rises
S.H.I.E.L.D. and Hydra are both in tatters, but Steve Rogers finds out that his best friend Bucky is still alive. All of that heavy plot development falls away in The Winter Soldier‘s mid-credits scene, when we discover that Hydra had an ace up its sleeve. In a holding cell, we see two test subjects who have been enhanced by exposure to Loki’s scepter. One has super speed, while the other manipulates objects with her mind. These two turn out to be beloved Marvel characters Pietro and Wanda Maximoff, a.k.a. Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch. What a great reveal.
10. Ant-Man and the Wasp: the Snap hits San Francisco
Ant-Man and the Wasp came out just a few months after Infinity War, so audiences went into it knowing that Thanos’s Snap, which erases half the living things in the universe, was going to show up somehow. Sure enough, at the end, Scott enters the Quantum Realm in order to collect a sample of quantum energy. However, he finds himself trapped there when Hank, Janet, and Hope are all dusted before they can pull him out.
Although the scene raises a couple of timeline questions (are they following the news about the spaceship that appeared in New York the other day? Is Scott not going to go help out with that whole thing? Okay), it’s a chilling way to show the Snap reverberating across Earth. Plus, it sets up Scott’s integral role in figuring out how the Quantum Realm can be used for time travel in Endgame.
9. Doctor Strange in The Multiverse of Madness: Pizza Poppa
Pizza Poppa, played by Bruce Campbell, was an instant hit when Multiverse of Madness premiered. He’s an irascible pizza ball vendor from Earth-838, and he always gets paid! Seriously, Pizza Poppa has a legitimate grievance against Stephen and America, who steal a bowl of pizza balls and refuse to give them back. When Pizza Poppa goes to punch Stephen, though, Stephen casts a spell on him that makes him beat himself up for three weeks.
In the post-credits scene, the spell finally wears off, and a relieved Pizza Poppa looks at the camera and says, “It’s over!” Just like the movie’s over! Go home, audience! Bruce Campbell is a national treasure.
8. She-Hulk: Attorney at Law: Captain America’s love life
In She-Hulk: Attorney at Law, Jen Walters has a theory that Captain America died a virgin. (Remember that she doesn’t know he actually went back in time and married Peggy Carter.) At the end of the first episode, she’s drunkenly crying to Bruce about how sad that is, so Bruce decides to set her straight. He tells her that Steve hooked up with a woman during the 1940 USO tour, and Jen, elated, reveals that she wasn’t drunk after all. She lifts her hands to the sky. “CAPTAIN AMERICA FUUUU—” she shouts, before the scene ends and cuts her off.
This scene doesn’t just help build Jen’s character, it gives us vital information about Steve Rogers. CAPTAIN AMERICA HAD SEX! I’m over the moon for him, and I bet you are, too.
7. The Marvels: The X-Men arrive
Marvel fans have been waiting years for the X-Men to join the MCU, but licensing issues have kept mutants off Earth-616 so far. Not anymore! In The Marvels‘ mid-credits scene, we finally get the crossover we’ve been craving.
Monica Rambeau, after getting trapped in a parallel universe, wakes up in a hospital room. She’s greeted by her mother, Maria Rambeau, who is this universe’s Binary. Kelsey Grammer is also there, reprising the role of Beast from the X-Men movies. It’s about time.
6. Spider-Man: Homecoming: Captain America’s PSA
Steve Rogers’s educational videos are one of the highlights of Spider-Man: Homecoming, and the final one in the movie doesn’t disappoint. Captain America comes onscreen and says, “Hi, I’m Captain America, here to talk to you about one of the most valuable traits a soldier or student can have: patience. Sometimes patience is the key to victory. Sometimes it leads to very little, and it seems like it’s not worth it, and you wonder why you waited so long for something so disappointing.” He finishes, smiling, but the camera is still rolling. He looks at someone offscreen. “How many more of these?” he asks.
If a post-credits scene isn’t going to tease the next Marvel movie or reveal some fantastic cameo, then it should lean hard into the comedy, and in that regard, this post-credits scene is masterful. Steve Rogers is one of the funniest straight men (in the comedic sense, although I guess in the heteronormative sense, too) in the MCU. Steve really shines when Marvel highlights just how wonderfully ridiculous the whole concept of Captain America is.
5. Shang-Chi: Wong sings karaoke
Shang-Chi and Katy are examining the ten rings with the help of a few experts who have been called in: Wong, Carol Danvers, and Bruce Banner. They notice that the rings are sending out some kind of beacon, but they don’t know what kind of beacon it is, or who might be receiving it on the other end. Wong tells the youngsters to get some rest … but then they all get drunk and go out for karaoke instead.
Shang-Chi is largely a self-contained movie, focusing on Shang-Chi’s origin story instead of throwing a bunch of other heroes in the mix. That’s why it’s so much fun to see Carol and Bruce show up at the very end. They and Wong basically announce to the audience that Shang-Chi is going to become an Avenger. Plus, Wong doing a drunken “Hotel California” isn’t just hilarious—it shows a side of his character that we haven’t really seen much of before.
4. Spider-Man: Far From Home: Peter is outed as Spider-Man
Peter is taking MJ for a web-sling through the streets of New York, when a news broadcast appears all over the city. J. Jonah Jamison of the Daily Bugle has obtained Mysterio’s last message. That message not only reveals Spider-Man’s identity but blames Peter for Mysterio’s death.
It’s exciting enough that we finally get to see Jamison in Tom Holland’s spider-verse, and turning the Bugle into a cable news-type Youtube channel makes total sense, given that we now live in the age of streaming content instead of print newspapers. But the cliffhanger is the best part of this post-credits scene, with Peter finding out that his identity has been revealed and he’s now wanted for murder in the space of two seconds. It left audiences clamoring for the next installment of Spidey’s story.
3. Black Panther: Wakanda Forever: T’Challa’s son revealed
Black Panther: Wakanda Forever is a moving tribute to Chadwick Boseman, and the final scene, in which Shuri remembers T’Challa and burns her funeral clothes, is a beautiful memorial. After the first credits sequence, we return to the same scene, where Nakia is bringing a child out to meet Shuri. It turns out that the boy is T’Challa’s son, whom T’Challa and Nakia decided to raise in secret away from the throne.
In a movie that deals with grief and mourning, revealing the younger T’Challa, also called Toussaint, allows the movie to end on a hopeful note, with the characters moving on from T’Challa’s death and looking toward the future while still honoring his memory.
2. The Avengers: the shawarma scene
No post-credit scene is funnier than the famous shawarma scene at the end of The Avengers. After closing the portal to the Chitauri, Tony tells his new teammates that there’s a good shawarma place a few blocks away. Then, after apprehending Loki, they go eat.
The scene is just a few moments of the Avengers sitting in the restaurant, chewing. That’s it. That’s all it is. But the humor in the scene is brilliantly dry, with the exhausted heroes taking a load off and filling their bellies.
1. Iron Man: Welcome to the Avengers Initiative
Who could have known, when Iron Man first came out in theaters, that the MCU would become such a colossal part of American cinema? Love it or hate it, Iron Man was the beginning of something very, very big.
And the post-credits scene shows it. Tony goes home to find a mysterious figure waiting for him. The man—whom comics fans recognized as S.H.I.E.L.D. director Nick Fury—tells Tony he’s become part of a “bigger universe.” You said it, Nick.
(featured image: Sony Pictures)
