I’ll probably always remember the reaction of the audience during the climactic ‘Snap’ sequence in Avengers: Infinity War. My friend next to me was just silently whispering “no way…” over and over again. People were gasping as characters both bit and became the dust. At the point where Tom Holland’s loveable Peter Parker collapsed into Tony Stark’s arms and gasped his last, a clearly traumatized kid in the back was asking his mom whether this was all real.
When the credits began, everyone was in shocked silence. Oh well, we thought, at least the post-credits scene will give us a glimmer of hope, right? Hah. Not a chance.
We then got the triumphant and short-lived return of Samuel L. Jackson’s Nick Fury, who manages to activate his pager and let out a “motherf..” before going to dust too. Joe Russo talked about this scene in a recent Q&A at his old high school in Iowa this week, and was asked why they made it so miserable.
“Because we wanted you to be in pain until the very end – if we gave you a credit scene right after the end- frankly we considered not putting any credit scene,” said the director.
Well, that’s just not very nice! This is already proving to be a somewhat controversial movie, but can you imagine how pissed off fans would be after all those deaths and then sitting through the credits for no reward? I imagine they’d be tearing the seats off the cinema floor and hurling them through the screen.
At least this way we got a little bit of Nick Fury, which is better than no Nick Fury at all. And there’s the tease that he’s summoned Captain Marvel to Earth, who we’ll get to know in her MCU debut next March. Of course, she’ll then return on May 3rd, when she helps our heroes finally defeat Thanos in Avengers 4.