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Credit: Marvel StudiosMarvel’s Secret Invasion released its final episode last week, cementing it as one of Marvel’s biggest disappointments. This is just the latest in a long line of recent Marvel disappointments, including Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania (2023) and a slew of delay and cancellation announcements over the last year.
Secret Invasion was touted as one of the MCU’s most important installments, featuring Samuel L. Jackson reprising his role as Nick Fury, Cobie Smulders returning as Maria Hill, Don Cheadle once again portraying Rhodey, and Emilia Clarke being introduced as G’iah. The series focused on Fury working with Talos, the former leader of the Skrulls, a group of shapeshifting aliens who were first introduced in Captain Marvel (2019). Fury and Talos work together to try and stop a group of renegade Skrulls from taking over the Earth.
It’s the first series to be released under Marvel’s Phase Five and was meant to help set up the upcoming The Marvels (2023), which is essentially a Captain Marvel sequel. However, reactions to the show were heavily mixed, with fans praising Jackson and the other actors but criticizing the writing, pacing, effects, and overall plot. The show also received heavy disdain after the release of the first episode for using AI to create the opening title sequence.
With the release of the sixth and final episode, which received a 7% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, fans were left disappointed…and confused. As the credits rolled, fans waited to see who-or what-would be teased in the post-credits scene. Marvel has become famous (or infamous) for its use of post-credits scenes to either introduce characters, tease a potential character or storyline, or just offer a quirky nod to the fans. However, for the first time since WandaVision kicked off Marvel’s release of series streaming directly to Disney+ in 2021.
In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Secret Invasion director Ali Selim addressed the odd choice, stating that he believes “that they use those end-credit sequences to launch something or to resolve something, and maybe this story feels like it resolves itself.” If there were any discussions about adding a post-credit scene, Selim explained, they never involved him. The only thing it might have teased would be Fury’s involvement in The Marvels, he further added in an interview with TVLine, “And there’s not much else to say about that, so I don’t know that a post-credits sequence would help. But I also am certain they’re launching some things with what’s going on at the end of this series, and I guess they didn’t feel that any of those things warranted a post-credits sequence.”
As the stakes seem to grow ever higher within the MCU, fans are starting to grow tired of Marvel’s repackaged stories. With the amount of movies and series now essentially being required viewing for audiences to understand upcoming releases, it’s created a barrier of entry for fans that otherwise may have enjoyed a Captain Marvel movie. And with so many post-credit scenes introducing stories and plots only to end up ignored or forgotten, fans have started to wonder if the age of Marvel’s post-credit scenes could be coming to an end.
As Marvel Studios starts to pull back the amount of content it has lined up amid Disney CEO Bob Iger’s recent criticisms of the studio, it remains to be seen how they will restructure other areas, if at all. Between constant character cameos, blockbuster-style team-ups in “individual” movies, and dozens of post-credit scenes, fans could see a major shift in upcoming Marvel projects depending on how the next few months go for the company.
Do you think Marvel should end the post-credit scenes? Share your thoughts with us in the comments below!