Deadpool & Wolverine Post-Credit Scenes Break MCU Mold

This post contains massive spoilers for Deadpool & Wolverine.

We all know how post-credit scenes work, right? Nick Fury shows up and recruits Tony Stark into the Avengers. Thanos grabs the Infinity Gauntlet and promises to do the dirty work himself. The Beast tends to the wounds of Monica Rambeau. These scenes are among the purest translations from the comics that inspired the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Comic books often feature interludes in which a shadowy figure appears in the background and laughs malevolently about their future plans, promising more exciting stories in the future.

Even the dumbest post-credit scenes, such as an ant playing drums in Ant-Man and the Wasp or the Avengers eating shawarma, still take place firmly within the MCU, helping to flesh out the world.

But when Wade Wilson, aka Deadpool, comes to the MCU, all the rules are out. Deadpool changes up the world, all the way to the end of the movie. The mid-credits and post-credit scenes to Deadpool & Wolverine thus play in a very different manner than anything seen before in the MCU.

A Sweet Mid-Credits Remembrance of the Fox Universe

One of the best gags in the MCU occurs at the start of Spider-Man: Far From Home, set just after the events of Avengers: Endgame. We see a tribute montage for the fallen heroes, Iron Man, Captain America, and Black Widow. Set to Whitney Houston’s rendition of “I Will Always Love You,” the montage features stock photos of the heroes, complete with Getty Images watermarks. The scene ends by revealing the In Memoriam video was produced by Peter Parker’s high school. It’s the work of teens with more sincerity than talent.

That gag, along the Deadpool character’s general irreverence, makes the Deadpool & Wolverine mid-credits sequence all the more surprising. Instead of the usual scenes of characters from the movie, or even some joke at the MCU post-credits scene gimmick’s expense, the mid-credits sequence here begins a close-up of the doors to Patrick Stewart’s Cerebro room opening.

Then we see behind-the-scenes footage of the various 20th Century Fox superhero movies, much of it for the first time, inter-cut with scenes from the films. There’s Hugh Jackman back in 2000, talking about his first day on set as Wolverine. There’s Chris Evans and Jessica Alba, cracking wise while shooting the climax to Fantastic Four from 2005. There’s Jennifer Garner practicing her ninja moves with sais as Elektra before the image fades into shots of the Thing from 2005 and 2015. We see Halle Berry and Jennifer Lawrence break character while filming their scenes on-set. And finally, there’s Ryan Reynolds doing a B-roll interview on the set of X-Men Origins: Wolverine, talking about the connection he feels to Deadpool. It’s a character he says means a lot to him.

This montage is accompanied by “The Time of Your Life” by Green Day, the ultimate high school graduation song. Between its whole-hearted, acoustic nostalgia and cheesy playfulness, the mid-credit sequence feels like a final goodbye to the Fox cinematic universe. Even if Deadpool & Wolverine leaves many of the characters still alive in their own universe, the credit sequence seems to close the book on the characters and the journey that began with X-Men in 2000.

To be sure, the nostalgia play works, especially to those of us who have watched the movies since 2000 and recognize the behind-the-scenes footage from the DVD special features we would watch again and again. That said, even diehards have to admit that many of these movies are terrible. Sure, it’s nice to see Reynolds talk about how much he loves Deadpool, but his performance in X-Men Origins: Wolverine was barely Deadpool in name, let alone anything else. No matter how much people like Garner as an actor, Elektra was a lifeless slog. No one pines to see any part of the 2015 Fantastic Four again, no matter how much Miles Teller grins at his co-stars.

Worse, Marvel seems to know that the Fox movies sucked and almost congratulates itself for putting the series out of misery. The mid-credit scene plays almost like Marvel positioning the movies made before the MCU as noble failures, failures that we can finally put behind us.

Post-Credits Scene Burns Johnny Storm

The actual post-credit scene in Deadpool & Wolverine feels more familiar, but it doesn’t take place within the mainline MCU, aka Earth-616, otherwise known as “the Sacred Timeline.” Instead it takes place within the TVA where Deadpool returns to pull up “security footage” of the Void that can be used to prove to viewers that Chris Evans’ Johnny Storm insulted Cassandra Nova, and thus was responsible for his own death when Wade quoted him honestly.

It’s returning to Deadpool & Wolverine‘s must reliable runner joke, where throughout the movie audiences are encouraged to think Deadpool lied about the things Johnny said about Cassandra. Perhaps Wade had hoped to get under Cassandra’s skin by rattling off a profane litany of insults that Johnny Storm, aka the Human Torch of the Fantastic Four, supposedly said. If so, hte gambit didn’t work, as Cassandra’s skin remains unbothered. Johnny’s skin, however, gets pulled off by Cassandra, leaving behind a crumbling pile of guts, nerves, and bones.

In the post-credits scene, Deadpool presents footage of Johnny saying exactly what Wade claimed that he said, and even more.

That excess gets at the other layer of the joke: that it’s Chris Evans of all people saying these horrific things. Evans has a long film career that includes more than a few profane characters, including baby-eating Curtis from Snowpiercer or the rebellious son Ransom Drysdale from Knives Out. But when he’s in an MCU movie, Evans is Captain America, a man so wholesome that he chides the other Avengers for their foul language.

Most of Evans’ appearances in Deadpool & Wolverine riff on the fact that he played Johnny Storm, an arrogant hothead, in Fantastic Four and Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer. The cocky and opportunistic hero who Wade and Logan encounter in the Wasteland has little in common with Cap. But still, fans cannot help but feel shocked to see Evans saying such filth in an MCU film. Little did he know who he was saying them to since he apparently also told Deadpool “and you can quote me on that.” Whoopsie.

A New Era Or A Final Goodbye?

Unlike most MCU post-credit sequences, the final bits of Deadpool & Wolverine looks back at the Fox Universe. It doesn’t advance the MCU, doesn’t hint toward new ideas and storylines. Instead it reminds us that there was a very different superhero universe, one that has similarities to the MCU, but was not the same.

And that universe is gone forever, making way for the MCU and its post-credit rules. At least until Deadpool returns again.