Have Post-Credits Scenes Gone Too Far? A History From 1966's The Silencers to the MCU

Post-credits scenes have gone from a fun surprise to something that can overshadow the films they are attached to. Some might say these tails are now wagging the dog, and that filmgoers are really just paying to see movies to find out where things are going next. So I want to ask whether post-credits scenes have become more important than the movies themselves.

The post-credits scene used to be a tasty surprise dessert, promising a fruitful night of revelry and mystery. Now it can feel like a suspicious piece of street meat we wolf down because the dinner party only served heavy appetizers. These scenes are a staple for franchises like the Marvel Cinematic Universe: one final morsel at the end of the names of hundreds of undervalued VFX artists, designed to tease future installments and assure us there is a narrative plan to invest our hopes in. To see how they became such power moves, we have to go back to the start. Later in this piece I lay out a checklist for what makes one actually work.

The Silencers Started It in 1966 as a Genuine Sequel Tease

The first recognized movie post-credits scene came in 1966's The Silencers. Matt Helm, a photographer and spy played by Dean Martin, shows up after the credits on a revolving bed with scantily clad women, as text announces that Matt Helm is coming up next in Murderers' Row. That sequel arrived later in 1966, the second of four Matt Helm movies based on Donald Hamilton's novels, so this series was definitely planned out.

I find it interesting that this original post-credits scene was also one of the few early examples of a film's tag being used as a marketing ploy to get audiences to come back for a planned sequel. There's no shame in that, especially when there was an actual plan for a sequel with an approaching release date.

The Muppets, Ferris Bueller and Deadpool Turned Stingers Into Jokes

In this earlier era, post-credits scenes were usually places for jokey callbacks or meta gags. 1979's The Muppet Movie ends with Animal telling everyone to go home, a running joke that was called back in 1984's The Muppets Take Manhattan. That concept inspired the post-credits scene of 1986's Ferris Bueller's Day Off, with its message that it's over and everyone should go home.

That idea was parodied in the post-credits scene of 2016's Deadpool, but since 2016 was the modern era, he also teased that Cable would be coming in the sequel. Teasing audience expectations became a joke in itself, cashed in on in the post-credits scenes of 2017's Spider-Man: Homecoming and 2022's Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, which mock you for waiting so long for something so disappointing.

Other credit sequences worked as epilogues or bonus material. That was the case with Jackie Chan films like Police Story and Rush Hour, and Jim Carrey films like Liar Liar, where the extras were designed to send people out of the theater laughing. Pixar later parodied this with credit outtakes for A Bug's Life, Toy Story 2 and Monsters, Inc., as if the animated characters were actors on sets.

Credits Moving to the End Made the Post-Credits Scene Possible

Why didn't we see post-credits scenes before 1966? Because film credits used to be shown before the main runtime, as in 1939's The Wizard of Oz and most other movies of those decades. That began to change in 1956 with Around the World in 80 Days, which shifted its credits to the end to make room for a prologue about Jules Verne and rocketry.

Further films moved the credits to the end, including 1966's Alfie, 1968's Head and 1972's The Godfather. The Godfather was the real game changer, because Francis Ford Coppola was part of the New Hollywood generation of filmmakers that changed everything, alongside Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese and George Lucas.

In 1977's Star Wars, Lucas famously placed his name in the opening credits and the rest of the crew at the end. When he wanted to do the same for The Empire Strikes Back, with his Lucasfilm logo opening the film, the Directors Guild of America fined him a quarter of a million dollars and lobbied to remove the film from theaters. Lucas paid the fine and left the DGA. With credits generally shifted to the end, gimmicks like bloopers and post-credits scenes became really popular with filmmakers.

Aliens and The Phantom Menace Used Sound to Leave a Final Chill

Sometimes these stingers are just creepy little winks to leave audiences with one final scare, like the credits of James Cameron's Aliens in 1986, which ended with the sound of a facehugger crawling around. Sometimes the sound is a thematic grace note, like the final sound during the credits of Avengers: Endgame, which is just Tony Stark hammering.

But I think it's better when it's a little creepy, like 1999's Star Wars: Episode I The Phantom Menace, whose credits included the sound of Darth Vader breathing in their final seconds. That, plus the Naboo victory theme in the final scene being a major key rendition of the Emperor's theme from Return of the Jedi, both hinted at the dark future that awaited Anakin Skywalker in the next two films.

Pirates of the Caribbean and Fast and Furious Made Stingers Part of the Story

All of this inspired a more aggressive and intentional era of experimentation, with post-credits scenes as extensions of film stories between installments. Before the MCU refined this for superhero cinema, we saw it in Disney's Pirates of the Caribbean. The post-credits scene of 2003's The Curse of the Black Pearl shows Barbossa's monkey snatching a piece of gold, showing the curse is back on, with a creepy little jump scare as he leaps at the camera.

Dead Man's Chest had a more jokey one, with the dog being worshipped by the natives, and At World's End had a scene of Will and Elizabeth's son ten years later, reunited with Will. Similarly, the Fast and the Furious films and the Transformers films would almost always end with post-credits scenes, even if it was just Dom Toretto driving around in Baja.

Kevin Feige Perfected the Form, Starting Before the MCU

The art of this was really perfected by Kevin Feige and Marvel Studios, but his approach began with Marvel titles at other studios. 2003's Daredevil at Fox, starring Ben Affleck, ended with Bullseye in a full body cast killing a fly with a syringe. 2006's X-Men: The Last Stand ended with Charles Xavier's consciousness in a new body.

Neither of those scenes led to anything. In fact, Patrick Stewart's Charles Xavier just returned randomly, alive again in his own body, in the post-credits scene of 2013's The Wolverine.

When Feige launched the MCU with 2008's Iron Man, he used very well planned post-credits scenes to link all of the Phase One films. Tony Stark meets Nick Fury, Tony asks Thunderbolt Ross about the Hulk, Loki moves in on the Tesseract in Thor's post-credits scene, and then Thanos arrives in The Avengers. This continued through Phase Two, with one movie's scene linking to a future installment that had nothing to do with it, like Captain America: The Winter Soldier setting up the Maximoff twins we would meet in Age of Ultron.

Other Studios Followed, and Marvel's Own Teases Started Going Nowhere

Seeing that success, franchises at other studios followed suit. X-Men: Days of Future Past had a post-credits scene setting up Apocalypse in ancient Egypt. Warner Bros. used them to interlink its Godzilla and Kong films, some of my favorite post-credits scenes in one of my favorite film franchises. One of the craziest examples was Universal's 2017 M. Night Shyamalan thriller Split, which ended with a smash cut to the title followed by a scene connecting it to his 2000 Bruce Willis film Unbreakable, setting up 2019's Glass.

But the commercial success of the maneuver caused studios to get a little greedy and get ahead of themselves, throwing Hail Marys for sequels they didn't really have plans for yet. We tend to make fun of other franchises for this, but Marvel's hands aren't so clean. In Phase Three, a number of post-credits scenes set up plotlines that, as of 2023, were still unresolved years later. 2016's Doctor Strange showed Mordo attacking Benjamin Bratt's character, complaining of too many sorcerers. That Mordo never showed up in the sequel; we only met his multiversal variant, though I guess there was a deleted opening scene that would have shown the sorcerer hunting Mordo getting decapitated by Wanda.

Spider-Man: Homecoming's post-credits scene showed Adrian Toomes running into Michael Mando's Mac Gargan in prison, and as of 2023 that character had yet to reappear. Perhaps recognizing how wild post-credits scenes had gotten, James Gunn gave 2017's Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 five of them, the most for any MCU film. One, with Adam Warlock's cocoon, was resolved in Volume 3. Three were just gags. The other showed Sylvester Stallone leading a group of Ravager pirates including Michelle Yeoh as Aleta Ogord, which seemed likely never to come back since Yeoh played another role in Shang-Chi. More recent stingers, like the piece Eddie Brock's Venom left behind after No Way Home, Charlize Theron introducing Clea and Brett Goldstein introducing Hercules, left us to wonder when, if ever, the MCU would pick them back up.

DC's Justice League, Shazam and Black Adam Teases Fell Apart

It's even weirder outside the MCU. The 2017 Justice League theatrical cut ended with Lex Luthor escaping prison and teaming up with Joe Manganiello's character, who was going to be the villain of the Ben Affleck Batman solo film. Affleck later parted from that project, and it became Matt Reeves' The Batman with Robert Pattinson, without that villain.

2019's Shazam had a post-credits scene with Mister Mind and Sivana that still wasn't resolved in the post-credits scene of the 2023 sequel. Black Adam's post-credits scene was hastily shot a month before the film's release as Dwayne Johnson's attempt to change the hierarchy of power in the DC Universe, as he had promised, by bringing back Henry Cavill as Superman for a future matchup. Within a few weeks, James Gunn announced they would be recasting Superman.

Quantumania and Captain Marvel Felt Like Cutscenes for What Came Next

So when we see bold post-credits scenes like the one in Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, showing Jonathan Majors as countless over-the-top Kang variants, we just have questions. Was this really the best way to introduce Kang? Was Quantumania worth it as a story to get to this? Was Quantumania even a movie, or just the semblance of a film, a two hour experience that was part of a narrative investment?

The 2019 Captain Marvel film made over a billion dollars. Think about that: how much have you thought about that film since then? I have to ask, "was that really a film or was it a two-hour cutscene between Infinity war and end game", with a post-credits scene dovetailing into the latter. Brie Larson infamously shot that scene before anything else for Marvel Studios, on a random green screen set, without being told what it was for or who she was even in the scene with.

The truth is that the most exciting future teasing MCU post-credits scenes I mentioned, Tony Stark meeting Nick Fury, Thanos arriving and the Maximoffs, all followed films that were much more memorable than the scenes: Iron Man, The Avengers and The Winter Soldier. "The post-credit scenes mattered because the movies that preceded them mattered." We will not care about what's next if we are bored with the path as it is. When we sit in theaters during the credits, we shouldn't be twiddling our thumbs waiting for the scene so we can leave. Ideally, we should be in awe of the movie we just saw and all the artists who worked on it, replaying it in our heads, and then, surprise, a nice little bonus scene with a twist.

My Four Point Checklist for a Satisfying Post-Credits Scene

Looking back at all the ways post-credits scenes have been used since 1966, I think we can assemble a checklist of qualities that make a satisfying one that doesn't overshadow its film. One: if it sets up a sequel or spinoff, that project should be confirmed or at least explicit from the context; otherwise, what are you even selling? Two: it should call back some recurring bit or curiosity from the film before it, feeling like an epilogue rather than a random scene from another movie.

Three: it should both amuse us and terrify us, keeping us anxious about the future while enjoying the ride, like the feeling as we scale the peak of a roller coaster. Four: the film it comes after needs to stand on its own and not just be a cog in the studio's franchise machine.

Nick Fury, Thanos and the Infinity War Dusting Remain the MCU's Best

Applying this checklist, I think the most effective MCU post-credits scenes have been Nick Fury meeting Tony Stark, the Thanos reveal after The Avengers in 2012, and Nick Fury dusting after Avengers: Infinity War. All three followed amazing films, all three were equally funny and equally creepy, they directly set up confirmed follow-up films, and they flowed directly from the events of their films. They hit us with unexpected consequences we didn't think of until that second, but the moment we see them we realize that this is exactly what should be happening.

Again, there is no shame in studios using moonshot sales pitches to get us to come back. We know what we signed up for, and we love being pitched like this. But just deliver the goods, to honor the artists who worked on the film, as their names crawl up the screen while we wait for these last little goodies.

Which post-credits scene do you think best passes this checklist, and which one went too far?