It’s no secret that the MCU‘s Multiverse Saga isn’t enjoying the rude health that the Infinity Saga did before it, even the positively received Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 being so standalone rather proves that point. On the plus side, Marvel Studios has plenty of time to course-correct as we’re only at the beginning of Phase Five and the reign of Kang the Conqueror won’t end until the conclusion of Phase Six in 2026. And one way to fix things might be as simple as going back to how things used to be.
As part of a Twitter trend in which users voiced their most controversial Marvel opinions, The_GM_Is_God dropped their personal hot take that “Post-credit scenes should just go back to teasing what’s in the next movie.” The opinion likely stems from many recent MCU end-credits sequences thinking further afield — e.g. Clea’s introduction in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness or Eros appearing in Eternals — resulting in endless waits for answers that have left fans frustrated.
As this tweeter reminds us, this is a far cry from how things used to be back in Phase One and Two, as most of the time they simply existed to set up the next film — think the Collector’s cameo at the end of Thor: The Dark World. Of course, you could argue that the MCU is so huge now, and is comprised of so many different strands, that this method doesn’t make sense anymore.
In fact, that’s what one commenter put to the OP, debating that it wouldn’t make sense for, say, Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania to tee up Guardians 3. To this the OP dropped another, perhaps even hotter, take: “If it doesn’t make sense to tease anything then just do fun joke ones.” Not the dreaded gag post-credits scenes!
Others, meanwhile, went even harder on the current state of Marvel’s post-credits, with @JordanGarlandMI claiming that they “aren’t impactful anymore when they are expected in every movie.” In a similar vein, @RealComfyfren declared that the studio should “ban post credit scenes.”
To be fair, even the early days of the MCU still threw in the occasional long-term tease for Thanos’ emergence, so you can’t begrudge the Multiverse Saga the odd nod to Kang. But maybe Marvel shrinking its ambitions when it comes to its credits might be the way to go for the most part.