Spider-Man: Homecoming Post-Credits Scenes Explained: Scorpion, the Sinister Six and Captain America

Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017), starring Tom Holland and Michael Keaton, has two post-credits scenes. The first looks simple, but I think it hints at much more for Spider-Man's future in the MCU. The second is a Captain America joke at the audience's expense, and I found it hilarious.

Below I go through both scenes, what the first one could mean, and three alternate post-credits scenes I'd have liked to see, including my favorite, which involves Kingpin. Spoilers follow.

Adrian Toomes keeps Peter Parker's secret from Mac Gargan

The first scene opens in the prison where Adrian Toomes, the Vulture, has been sent after his capture. Walking down a hallway, he runs into Mac Gargan. Gargan isn't the most familiar face. He's in the movie for about 10 seconds during the Staten Island Ferry scene before he gets knocked off into the water.

Gargan tells Toomes there's a rumor he knows Spider-Man's real identity. He says he has friends on the outside who would love to slice Spidey's throat open and put his head in a dryer, which is the weirdest threat. The surprising moment is that Toomes doesn't give up Peter Parker's name. He lies and says that if he knew who Spider-Man was, Spider-Man would already be dead.

As post-credits scenes go, that seems straightforward. Most of its purpose is definitely to show that the Vulture has gotten his heart back and feels he owes Peter for saving both him and his daughter. But it's the MCU, so there's more going on here.

Mac Gargan is the Scorpion, and his tattoo gives it away

Look closely at Gargan, in this scene or in his brief glimpse earlier in the movie, and you'll see a big neck tattoo of a scorpion. If you know your Spider-Man villains, you know Mac Gargan is the alter ego of the Scorpion.

In the comics, the Scorpion started as a private investigator hired by J. Jonah Jameson to find out how Peter Parker always got such great pictures of Spider-Man. He's bad at the job because he can't get ahead of Peter's spider sense. Jameson somehow convinces him to go through a crazy science experiment and pays him something like 10 grand. It drives him insane and gives him scorpion abilities.

The version in the movie lines up much more with the Scorpion of the Ultimate Marvel universe, where Miles Morales is Spider-Man instead of Peter. There, he's a tattooed Mexican crime boss and a former associate of the Prowler. Just like in the movie, he wants to become a new version of the Kingpin and run the New York crime scene.

Could Mac Gargan become the MCU's version of Venom?

The first reason the focus on Scorpion fascinates me involves Venom. In the main Spider-Man comics, roughly 10 years before this film, maybe, the character who became Venom was Mac Gargan.

I wasn't saying that meant he would become the MCU version of Venom. I was saying it wasn't too crazy to imagine the MCU inventing its own version of the symbiote that enhances Scorpion's powers in a very Venom-like way.

That would avoid repeating the formula of Spider-Man against another guy with cool technology based on a natural predator. Instead, it could be an insane individual who often dreams of cannibalism, whose slimy exterior can form a real scorpion tail, and who has all of Spider-Man's powers too.

Gargan's friends on the outside sound like the Sinister Six

The second reason holds even if you toss out the Venom idea. Gargan is still a major crime boss. When he says he has friends on the outside, he isn't talking about low-level thugs. He's probably talking about other big players in the crime world.

A group of friends who all want to put Spider-Man's head in a dryer sounds a lot like the Sinister Six. They're a group of Spider-Man villains who put aside their own criminal exploits to focus all their attention on murdering Spider-Man. Think John Wick: Chapter 2, but with only six assassins hunting our main guy, and six superpowered ones at that.

The movie already established how this group could become a huge threat. Gargan was in the market for Chitauri-based weapons, and Phineas Mason, the genius behind the designs, is still missing. In the comics, Mason is a major character known as the Tinkerer, who creates tech for many villains. In a number of stories, he designed Mysterio's suit. The original Sinister Six lineup includes Vulture, Mysterio, Electro and Doctor Octopus, so you can see how the Tinkerer could connect them through his stolen tech.

Where Scorpion could fit in, and why Kraven should stay

Scorpion wasn't part of the original lineup, but I wouldn't be surprised if he replaced someone else on the team, like Sandman, a villain Spider-Man has already fought pretty thoroughly. I know he's also fought Doctor Octopus and Electro already. I'm only saying Scorpion could sub in somewhere.

One original member I hope he doesn't replace is Kraven the Hunter. I think that guy's awesome. He's the world's best hunter, and he's bored by hunting anything that isn't extremely difficult to catch, hence his obsession with Spider-Man. A while later there's a version where Kraven is replaced by Hobgoblin, I think because Kraven is dead during that time.

The original story line would need work. The first incarnation of the team kidnaps Betty Brant, who is in the movie as the awkward morning announcements girl. And when Spider-Man finally fights them, what you expect to be an unfair six-on-one brawl becomes the villains stupidly fighting him one at a time, even though he can obviously beat each of them individually. In a hilariously meta moment from the old comics, Spider-Man calls it out: "Oh, why didn't you guys team up against me?"

There's also a more recent Sinister Six from the Civil War saga. I'm not a fan of that lineup, and Marvel shouldn't worry about it either. They're very boring. They don't even get defeated on the page: Cap's Avengers handle them off the page while readers look at more interesting things.

Why I'd hold off on a Sinister Six movie

A Sinister Six story would come down to casting and balance. The actor playing Scorpion is a relative unknown, so you have to imagine the rest of the villains could be big-name stars.

Balancing too many villains in a superhero film is famously difficult. Good screenwriting has shown you can make a lot of characters work when the story has two points of view: this versus that, us versus them. That's why a large group of villains who share one point of view can work, like the League of Assassins. But why simplify these villains into multiple sides of the same diamond? I'd probably prefer to hold off on the Sinister Six, develop each villain worth developing on their own, and then bring some of the better ones back in a later film.

The rights issue is also very complicated. Sony considered a standalone Sinister Six movie without Spider-Man a while back, something like Suicide Squad, and then canceled it. There's a lot of interesting drama there. The point is that studio rights might prevent that story from happening at all.

Captain America's patience PSA is the second post-credits scene

The second scene comes at the very end of the credits. Captain America appears on the same white background as his segments sprinkled throughout the movie and talks about the virtues of patience. It's a complete troll moment by Marvel.

The movie runs well over two hours. Marvel knows your bladder is on the verge of bursting and that you sat there waiting through all the names you weren't reading. Instead of a tease for Infinity War or Black Panther, which many people were expecting at the time, we got this. I thought it was hilarious.

I'm not in high school anymore, so I don't know if this is still the case, but these PSAs were a real thing. They starred our world's equivalent of Avengers, NBA players and wrestlers, telling kids not to do drugs or smoke. Cap reminded me most of one PSA I think I remember from elementary school: Schwarzenegger in a gym class, with Zack Morris there too for some reason.

Alternate post-credits scenes, from J. Jonah Jameson to the Iron Spider

One alternate idea came from someone else: J. Jonah Jameson demanding pictures of Spider-Man, still played by J.K. Simmons, because he was basically perfect in the role. I also came up with three ideas that I think could have been fun and might still work at some point.

In the first, Ned and Peter geek out in Peter's bedroom over a news report. NASA announces it's finally sending a mission to Mars, or some planet cooler than Mars. That would be the mission that eventually brings the symbiote to Earth. As a side note, I love the idea that the movie Life could have been this story on its own, like a Venom prequel. That was never going to happen, and none of this idea can happen anyway because of studio rights.

The second is a silly MCU scene where Tony Stark can't let a good suit go to waste and takes the Iron Spider armor out for a spin. Since Robert Downey Jr. probably costs something like $10 million a minute, let's say Happy does it instead, and he's not good at it. Maybe he touches the armor and it does that crazy Iron Spider arm thing.

My favorite idea: Toomes meets Kingpin in prison

My third idea, and my favorite, is almost the same scene with Toomes. He's new to prison and settling in. He has a conversation with another prisoner and complains about this annoying wall-crawler.

He still does the right thing and doesn't reveal Spider-Man's identity. But he talks enough trash to make the name Spider-Man stick in the other man's head as someone who will definitely be a problem when he gets back on the outside.

Then we finally see who the other inmate is: Kingpin. That would reconnect the broken relationship between Marvel movies and TV shows, and do it with a villain who I think has a fascinating relationship with Spider-Man.