Kevin Feige Casts Doubt On The Thunderbolts Post-Credits Scene
But is it just a misdirect?
When the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s post-credits scenes first began in Iron Man, they felt like secret Easter eggs only those who are in the know would stay for. Now, more than 15 years later, post-credits scenes are a given, and can sometimes veer toward the predictable.
Take, for example, Thunderbolts. The post-credits scene focused on the newly dubbed New Avengers hanging out before they get an alert of a ship entering the atmosphere, a mid-century style spaceship emblazoned with what looks to be a “4.” It wasn’t hard to interpret what this means, as The Fantastic Four: First Steps had been on the release schedule for years and had already released a trailer.
But maybe that scene wasn’t as cut and dry as we thought. Marvel president Kevin Feige told Empire Magazine that while we see the Fantastic Four in a spaceship in the First Steps trailer, Earth-616 may not be their final destination.
While we know the Fantastic Four are space travelers, that doesn’t mean we see them at the end of Thunderbolts.
The name of their ship is the Excelsior, and there is a Fantastic Four ship entering the MCU in the tag,” Feige said in the print edition of the magazine. “But I’m not sure they’re the same ship.”
This quote is difficult to believe for a number of reasons. It’s hard to imagine Kevin Feige being unsure of anything — he’s the man pulling all the strings at Marvel. So there’s definitely some manipulation going on, it’s just a matter what he’s trying to make us believe.
What is Kevin Feige trying to tell us about The Fantastic Four: First Steps.
Without sounding like too much of a conspiracy theorist, he’s probably trying to hint that there’s more to this post-credits scene than we think, unless that’s exactly what he wants us to think and the simplest explanation is the correct one.
If this is just a Fantastic Four ship and not the Fantastic Four ship, there is one tantalizing theory: this ship actually contains Dr. Doom, the new Avengers big bad played by Robert Downey, Jr. Maybe this scene isn’t a tease for The Fantastic Four, and the big moment where the team’s theme plays is just a red herring. Maybe this is actually a tease for the upcoming Avengers: Doomsday, as that would be when we’d see the New Avengers next.
Of course, this re-evaluation is playing right into Feige’s hands, but that just makes the anticipation all the more fun. If The Fantastic Four: First Steps doesn’t end with the team jetting off into our universe, then we’ll know he was right all along.
