When Nick Fury first hinted at the Avengers Initiative, the MCU didn’t immediately follow up. It built trust slowly, introducing characters at the end of one movie and fleshing them out in the next. Marvel was figuring out how to do this in real time, but it became a fixture of the franchise and a way to keep fan excitement up as the credits rolled. By the time Thanos (portrayed initially by Damion Poitier) was smirking at the camera in Avengers, things slowed down further, building toward Endgame by making Thanos updates a regular occurrence in the credits as the movies assembled a massive cast for the team-up. But more recently, with so many TV shows and movies to sift through, and so many increasingly obscure characters to look up, the stingers lost their luster. How many more movie tickets would we have to buy before this all started to make sense?
Over the last half-decade, these stingers hit one dead end after another. We heard of new battles to fight or friends to rescue, but nothing ever came of it. Shang-Chi (Simu Liu) hasn’t been seen since he, Wong (Benedict Wong), and Katy (Awkwafina) went to karaoke—to say nothing of Wenwu’s (Tony Leung) supposed successor, Xu (Meng’er Zhang). After ditching those three, Marvel introduced fans to Harry Styles’ Starfox for still unexplained reasons. And remember when Doctor Strange grew a third eye, and Charlize Theron showed up as Clea Strange? Before returning to these dangling threads, Marvel moved on to an entirely new Phase. This may have been cleared up on Disney+, where, for all anyone knows, a Clea Strange limited series is wrapping up. No one can say for sure.
Recently, though, Marvel has been Invisible-Woman-clear about where this is going. The mid-credits moments from its last two movies are scenes that will likely appear in Avengers: Doomsday, tying that upcoming film directly to Marvel’s First Family. The Fantastic Four: First Steps‘ mid-credits scene follows up on the one from Thunderbolts*; like how Nick Fury’s (Samuel L. Jackson) pager guided viewers from Infinity War to Captain Marvel, seeing the Fantastic Four’s Multiversal Ship pop up in Thunderbolts*‘ prepares us to head back to the swinging ’60s. Building off that, First Steps‘ stinger, shot by the Russo brothers on the set of Doomsday and set four years after Galactus’ defeat, shows Sue Storm (Vanessa Kirby) finding Doctor Doom playing with her son. Smash cut: “The Fantastic Four will return in Avengers: Doomsday.” It’s a thoroughly effective, if predictable, tease, and with Marvel’s next adventure, Spider-Man: Brand New Day, a year from theaters, Marvel Studios President Kevin Feige needed a more forceful hook than usual.
Marvel wasn’t coy about Doom. The Fantastic Four: First Steps teases him throughout, cutting to the empty chair of the representative from Latveria, Doom’s dominion, at Future Foundation meetings. Even before that, though, Marvel put all its chips on Doom. At last year’s Comic-Con, the studio rebutted years of criticism by announcing a retreat back to the old guard. The Russos were returning to direct Doomsday, and ex-Iron Man Robert Downey Jr. would come back to star as the film’s antagonist, Doctor Doom. By heralding Downey’s return a year and a half early, fans already knew his version of the character was in the mix. First Steps‘ stinger even generates some last-minute anticipation as Sue approaches him. Would he speak? Did he shave? Which Black Sabbath shirt would he be rocking? Marvel didn’t shell out for Downey to actually appear in the 15-second cameo, so those questions will have to wait until the next issue, true believers. Still, in an era when Marvel leaves more dangling threads than it snips, it’s a relief to leave the theater without scratching your head and rushing to Wikipedia.
Although the Fox acquisition somewhat replenished Marvel’s stock of A-list characters, particularly by bringing in the Fantastic Four and X-Men, it still needs to rebuild trust with its audience through clear setups and payoffs. It also has to teach new fans how this works; the kids born the same year as Iron Man will be voting next year. That, the literal passage of time, is where the mid-credits machine began to break down. Marvel took for granted how invested people were in its universe and, more importantly, how much time they had to spend in it. Merely adding an A-lister or obscure character to the MCU isn’t enough. With First Steps, at least, it’s clear Marvel is building to something, even if it’s Doomsday prepping.
