Avengers Endgame Encore Post Credit Scenes Broken Down: Loki, Doom, Banner and the TVA Explained

Avengers Endgame Encore added four brand new post credit scenes, and the Russos have said these are critically important and required viewing before Avengers Doomsday. I have now seen all four in the cinema, and I am going through exactly what happens in each one, along with my theories on how they set up the next film. The scenes involve Peggy and Steve, Bruce Banner and Doom, the TVA, and flashes of Dr. Doom himself.

Steve and Peggy's dance is cut short when Loki knocks on the door

The first scene picks up right after the ending of Avengers Endgame, which famously had no post credit scene at all and simply closed on Steve finally dancing with Peggy. Since then, both Loki season 1 and 2 and Multiverse of Madness have shown that messing with time and dimensions is a huge risk to the multiverse. So that lovely dance moment has retroactively become a reckless act that has ruined the entire multiverse. As I put it, I hope it was worth it, Steve.

The new footage shows the dance lead into a kiss, which is interrupted by a knock at the door. Loki arrives, with the music from the end of the Loki season 2 finale playing. Peggy asks, "Can I help you?" and Loki replies, "No, but I believe I can help you. I can help both of you." The last time Steve saw Loki, he was still a villain, so he has no idea about the character growth Loki has been through since escaping after the first Avengers film.

By the end of Loki season 2, Loki achieved his glorious purpose, pulled every timeline and universe together, and effectively became the world tree, holding all of reality in place. Because of that, I think this appearance is a projection, since we know the character can send versions of himself anywhere. I have also seen theories suggesting this could be set before he created the tree, and the trailer does show Steve receiving a business card from Loki with a tree on the back, which makes me lean toward him still being at the centre of it all.

A leaked plot description explains why Loki needs to save the Rogers family

There is a leaked plot description going around that seems plausible for what happens in this moment, and I want to flag that before going into it in case anyone wants to skip ahead. According to that leak, Loki arrives to warn Steve and Peggy that Steve's presence in this time period has caused a catastrophe and incursions across the multiverse, made worse by the fact the pair are having children. Loki reportedly tells them he can take them somewhere they do not technically exist, which would be the Earth seen in Fantastic Four First Steps, and that this is the only way to keep them safe.

If that leak is accurate, it would explain how Steve ends up on the Fantastic Four's ship. The same leak claims Loki tries to recruit Steve to help save the multiverse, but Steve turns him down, and it is only years later that he gets pulled into events, which would explain the beard and long hair we see on him elsewhere. I think there will be real tension between Steve and Loki given their history, but Loki is going to have to explain he is not the villain Steve once knew.

The comics' Time Runs Out and Secret Wars storylines show how incursions could destroy the multiverse

In the comics, this kind of crisis played out during the Time Runs Out storyline, which led into Secret Wars in 2015. An ancient race called the Beyonders wanted to destroy the multiverse and start again, using the Molecule Man as a living bomb whose variants would all explode at once. Doom tried to stop this by building his own army to kill every version of the Molecule Man across the multiverse, but that ended up destroying the multiverse in a different way, causing it to contract until Earths began colliding, which is what incursions are.

With that in mind, Steve's desire to finally get his perfect happy ending may have led, indirectly, to the deaths of countless people across the multiverse. I think this could also be why Steve eventually joins the other heroes to help save the multiverse, because he wants to protect his own family from the consequences of what he caused.

The TVA scene shows Miss Minutes reprogrammed and two Earths on a collision course

The second post credit scene is set in the same TVA room seen in Deadpool and Wolverine, and it brings back the returning agent who is seen holding a cup. We then get a new Miss Minutes welcome video that is very different from the one shown in Loki season 1, since she was reprogrammed after the events of season 2 and is now working for the good guys. The TVA's job now seems to be keeping the timeline safe and preventing tangled branches or incursions, with Miss Minutes asking people to stay in their own universe so the TVA does not have to hunt them down.

That connects directly to the first scene, because the Rogers family could not simply move to Steve's original timeline, since he and Peggy's child would be classed as an anomaly there, risking a huge number of lives and potentially destroying the main 616 timeline. This is likely why Loki went to Steve directly instead. As Mobius walks into the command room, we see a tree on the monitor where the old circular timeline used to be, and a portrait of Loki that reminded me of a government department head's portrait hanging in an office.

The TVA staff appear to treat incursions as a fairly normal occurrence at this point, and we learn that Earth 1005 and Earth 1127 are about to collide. The former is the Fox X-Men universe, and the artwork on screen looks a lot like Hickman's Avengers run, where Reed Richards explained how incursions work. Based on the leaks, I am guessing the other Earth is Sam Raimi's Spider-Man universe, which has been rumoured to open the film, possibly tying into the Brand New Day post credit scene where a Peter Parker was picked up in space, potentially the Tobey Maguire version.

The Illuminati's incursion war in the comics gives a blueprint for the destroyed Earths we hear about

In the comics, not every Earth simply let incursions happen, and many tried to destroy the opposing Earth first, sparking a full multiversal war. The 616 Illuminati tried to use the Infinity Gauntlet to stop it, but when Captain America attempted to wield it, it broke along with the stones. The rest of the Illuminati then decided to start destroying incurring worlds outright, but Steve objected, so they altered his memory and had Tony focus him on the new Avengers so they could carry out the plan without him interfering.

The Illuminati built a number of universe destroying weapons and eventually used an anti-matter injector to wipe out the Great Society's Earth, with Namor ultimately taking the decision to deploy it after a lot of back and forth. This led to all out war across the multiverse, similar to what we saw at the start of Loki season 1, and I do wonder if the film will repeat that pattern with a figure like He Who Remains rising up to hold everything together again, given what happened around Jonathan Majors.

Going by the Doomsday trailer, the Fox universe looks desolate and bleak, suggesting it has already survived several incursions. Beast helped the Illuminati build incursion weapons in the comics, and he did appear at the end of The Marvels, which might explain why Gambit and his team seem to be fighting the 616 heroes, mistaking them for another team coming to destroy their Earth.

The TVA scene lists a cascade of destroyed Earths, starting with E7355 and E8558, followed by more than 3,000 others. Named worlds include Earth 4083, the Angry Hulk world, which I said I was gutted about since I like that film, Earth 82111, Captain Carter's world, and Earth 15886, the Fantastic Four Earth. I also mentioned I am still holding out for a fan cast I once suggested, where that version of Reed Richards could turn out to be the Maker, an evil, insane version of Reed from the Ultimate Universe.

Secret Wars 2015 hints the MCU could be heading for its own version of Battleworld

Taking a wider view, after Time Runs Out came Secret Wars in 2015, a spiritual successor to the original where Doom actually faced the Beyonder and won, saving the multiverse. Rather than restoring everything from a backup, though, Doom made himself the god emperor of a new universe called Battleworld, a patchwork of Marvel timelines that even included things like the Old Man Logan miniseries.

I think the MCU multiverse is currently being consumed by incursions in a similar way, and I do wonder if this is all building toward everything getting streamlined into a single timeline, essentially a soft reboot where, because Marvel now owns all its franchises again, they can restart the universe while keeping existing stories as canon.

Bruce Banner's scene adapts the comics' Hulk exile before Doom breaks him out

The third post credit scene may follow on from Brand New Day, since I felt Bruce Banner left that film a little too quietly after the battle at Damage Control. It opens with Banner self isolating, which is a strong adaptation of a Hulk comics storyline where the Illuminati sent Hulk off world for being too dangerous, leading him to take over Sakaar and then return to Earth in a rip roaring rampage of revenge. After Tony turned Hulk back into Banner, SHIELD incarcerated him three miles underground, and Thaddeus Ross later used an LMD to secretly move him to a facility and synthesise his powers, which is how Ross became the Red Hulk in the comics.

In this new scene, Banner is working on a gamma suppressant, which made me wonder if it was inspired by the inhibitor Peter built during Brand New Day. The building appears to be Joint Base Anacostia-Bolling, a real facility that also featured in Brave New World. Banner says the Hulk is not getting out and no one else is getting in, which is possibly a reference to Gan Gray, though we see just how wrong that statement is moments later.

Doom abducting Banner echoes the original 1984 Secret Wars and hints at his own team

The research log Banner is recording glitches out as Victor Von Doom breaks in from deep underground with ease, needing the professor for something, and takes Banner to an unknown location. Doom leaves a mark on the ground on his way out, similar to the mark Thor leaves behind at the end of Age of Ultron from the Bifrost. In the comics, Doom is a master of magic as well as science, having bested Doctor Strange before, so it would not surprise me if he found a way to tap into Asgardian power, which could also explain how he neutralises Thor's attack in the trailer, or it could simply be Latverian magic given he now has a cabal of witches.

This abduction is my favourite moment of the four scenes because it hints at nods to the original 1984 Secret Wars, where the Beyonder gathered two teams of heroes and villains to fight each other until Doom defeated the Beyonder and took his power, only for the two sides to keep distrusting each other until Reed eventually got everyone home. Here, it looks like Doom is assembling his own team rather than a Beyonder doing it, and something appears to have happened to his family based on the Doomsday trailer, so he might be looking for a way to undo it.

Going back to the Steve and Loki scene, I wonder if Doom is putting together a team to counter whatever Loki is assembling, possibly a version of the Dark Avengers from the comics, where villains like Bullseye posed as heroes such as Hawkeye. I also wondered whether this Banner is even from the 616 timeline at all, since he could be from another world facing its own incursion, with Doom arriving to save him and recruit him, the same way he may have done on other doomed worlds with people like Steve and Natasha. Doom is essentially a dark version of Tony Stark, so building his own team of Avengers would fit that idea well.

The final scene's clanking sound ties Doom's mask to Tony Stark's Iron Man origin

The fourth scene reuses the clanking sound effect from the very end of Avengers Endgame, which itself echoed the moment Tony built his first Iron Man mask in the cave. This time, though, it is Doom forging his own mask, which I think could be showing us Doom's origin. As Tony said, when you mess with time, it tends to mess back, and going through what he did at the end of Endgame may have created another universe entirely, one with Doom in it.

What do you think is really going on with Steve and Peggy's family, and is Doom building his own team to rival Loki's?