By George & Josh Bate
WARNING: The following article contains spoilers for Captain America: Brave New World
Fans have come to expect one or two post-credits scenes tagged to the end of every MCU to either tease what’s to come or give them one final laugh. The latest MCU outing – Captain America: Brave New World – is no exception in this regard. Below, we breakdown the post-credits scene in the film, which teases its connection to the broader Multiverse Saga.
Captain America: Brave New World features one post-credits scene and no mid-credits scene, a departure from many previous MCU films. The post-credits scene begins with Anthony Mackie’s Sam Wilson visiting The Raft, the high security prison out in the ocean that was introduced in Captain America: Civil War. At this point, Harrison Ford’s Thaddeus Ross has rescinded his position as President of the United States and turned himself into authorities, now finding himself in bars in The Raft just like Wilson was at the end of Captain America: Civil War.
Presumably after leaving Betty Ross (played by Liv Tyler, reprising her role from The Incredible Hulk) to speak with her father Thaddeus, Wilson journeys to another cell, which is occupied by Dr. Samuel Sterns (aka The Leader, played by Tim Blake Nelson). In the scene, Wilson hopes to bring closure to his conflict with Sterns, emphasizing that the mad scientist has been defeated, despite his plan to ruin Ross’ legacy going almost entirely to plan.
Sterns responds ominously to Wilson, with remarks that tie Captain America; Brave New World to the broader Multiverse Saga. Previously in thee film, it was established that Sterns’ brain became infected with gamma radiation, which enhanced his intellect and turned him into essentially an all-knowing being. Using his big brain, Sterns predicts that the world they live on is in great danger. He elaborates that their world (referring to Earth-616, the timeline in which the main MCU occurs in) is just one of many worlds and that there will be soon a conflict as Earth-616 collides with other worlds.
Sterns is teasing what many expect to be the plot of Avengers: Secret Wars, based on the famous Marvel comic that saw heroes and villains from multiple worlds transported to a planet called Battleworld. Remember that Captain America: Brave New World, despite its absence of any multiversal plot threads, takes place in the MCU’s Multiverse Saga. The upcoming two Avengers movies will conclude the Multiverse Saga likely by bringing together characters from multiple timelines (as Sterns suggests in this post-credits scene).
In our review for Captain America: Brave New World, we said that we found this post-credits scene to be a lazy attempt to tenuously tease the Multiverse Saga and connect a film entirely disconnected from the Multiverse to the Multiverse. That being said, there are only a few projects left in the MCU’s Multiverse Saga and time is running out to link these stories and have them converge into an epic and cohesive multiversal finale.