Contains spoilers for “Thunderbolts*”

The Marvel Cinematic Universe is soon to bring its Multiverse Saga to a head with the one-two punch of “Avengers: Doomsday” and “Avengers: Secret Wars.” With many recent Marvel films exploring alternate realities, and “Avengers: Doomsday” due out in exactly a year, it may seem unusual to dedicate space to the relatively grounded story within the latest MCU offering, “Thunderbolts*.” But rest assured, this film will be important to the MCU’s future, especially with Marvel’s “Doomsday” cast reveal (the one with the chairs) showing that much of the “Thunderbolts*” cast will pop up in “Doomsday.”

“Thunderbolts*” has received solid reviews, including ours here at Looper, making it a highlight of the MCU’s past few years. It finds antiheroes and villains from previous MCU installments, like Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh), Ghost (Hannah John-Kamen), and U.S. Agent (Wyatt Russell), teaming up to bring down a common foe, namely Valentina Allegra de Fontaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus). Of course, by the end of “Thunderbolts*”, they don’t go by that name at all: they’re rebranded as the New Avengers. So let’s see what the future might hold for them by analyzing the post-credits scenes at the end of “Thunderbolts*.”

The mid-credits scene is simply meant to pay off a joke from earlier in “Thunderbolts*.” Alexei Shostakov, aka Red Guardian (David Harbour), is at a grocery store where an image of the New Avengers adorns boxes of Wheaties. He tries to convince a shopper to buy a box, but she doesn’t recognize him and furtively puts it back while walking away. This is a reference to a scene earlier in the movie, when Red Guardian insists that the Thunderbolts could get on a Wheaties box if they learn to work together and become heroes. 

Marvel’s mid and post-credits scenes are typically either throwaway gags or setups for future movies. This is definitely the former, lacking any deeper ramifications. However, it also wasn’t the original idea for the scene. Looper attended a Q&A with “Thunderbolts*” director Jake Schreier where he offered an alternate idea for the sequence. Earlier in the film, there’s a joke about how another girl on Yelena’s old pee-wee soccer team, the Thunderbolts, pooped her pants during a game. Schreier explained, “I wanted to do the day that Mindy pooped at the soccer game … Like a VHS video of Alexei yelling at the ref.”

Schreier added that they didn’t do it because Alexei would have to speak with an American accent, as he did in “Black Widow,” after using a Russian one in “Thunderbolts*.” There were concerns it would have been confusing, so the callback to the Wheaties box — which has been a major part of the film’s marketing — was done instead. 

The “Thunderbolts*” post-credits scene at the very end is the longest in Marvel history, clocking in at two minutes and 54 seconds. The scene occurs 14 months after the events of the film, so the team has officially been the New Avengers for a while. However, they get word that Sam Wilson (Anthony Mackie) is putting together a new classic Avengers team and has filed a copyright suit against them. This suggests there could be dueling Avengers teams (even if one has to be spelled “Avengerz,” as Red Guardian suggests), but hopefully they learn to play nice by the time Doctor Doom (Robert Downey Jr.) arrives in “Avengers: Doomsday.”

After getting word of a disturbance in space, they pull up a video feed to see a ship materializing just outside of Earth. The hull bears the “4” emblem of the Fantastic Four, making it apparent that Marvel’s first family will officially enter the main MCU timeline. It’s a noteworthy development, since “The Fantastic Four: First Steps” takes place in another universe. But we now know that the team definitely arrives on Earth-616 at some point, either toward the end of “First Steps” or sometime in “Avengers: Doomsday.” 

While we don’t know what precisely will happen in “First Steps,” which is due out July 25, the Fantastic Four will need to leave their reality for one reason or another. The New Avengers may have subdued the Void (Lewis Pullman), but it’ll take more than a group hug to defeat Doom. “Thunderbolts*” is playing in theaters now.