Warning: Spoilers for The Marvels and Loki Season 2.
The Marvels made it to the big screen in November 2023 and was met with a bit of a lackluster response. Lauded as a bomb at the box office, the film performed worse than any other MCU film during its opening weekend. However, it deserves more credit than it has received and is a film worth watching. It doesn’t overstay its welcome and offers enough humor and action to keep it entertaining. If nothing else, the film offers the best post-credit scene the MCU has seen in a while. Given the upcoming release of Deadpool & Wolverine next year and the recent season 2 finale of Loki, the post-credit scene of The Marvels suggests huge changes are coming to the MCU in the next few years.
The finale of The Marvels ends as expected but doesn’t disappoint. Carol Danvers/Captain Marvel (Brie Larson), Kamala Khan/Ms. Marvel (Iman Vellani) and Monica Rambeau (Teyonah Parris) defeat Dar-Benn (Zawe Ashton) and close the wormhole, threatening the existence of the universe. Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson), Goose, and the rest of the Flerkens safely evacuate the space station with Kamala’s family and the station employees, allowing everyone to live out their happy ending. Everyone except Monica, however. Having sacrificed herself to close the wormhole from the inside, she’s trapped as Carol and Kamala are left to wonder where she could be. Thankfully, viewers are given insight into her whereabouts, which hints at the future of the MCU.
Update February 20, 2024: This article has been updated following The Marvels arrival on Disney+ and the recent trailer for Deadpool & Wolverine.
The Marvels
- Release Date
- November 10, 2023
- Director
- Nia DaCosta
- Studio
- Marvel Studios
Monica Enters a Parallel Universe
The Marvels’ post-credit scene shows Monica waking up in a hospital room alive and well but confused and groggy. To her surprise, someone resembling her late mother, Maria (Lashana Lynch), who died when Monica vanished during the Blip, is sitting next to her. However, Monica quickly realizes the mystery woman is not her mom, despite the doppelgänger’s appearance. Viewers then see Dr. Hank McCoy/Beast (Kelsey Grammer), whom Monica asks to explain what happened. Just as confused as she is, he explains she’s likely fallen through space and time into some sort of reality parallel to her own, which he deems impossible. He quickly departs after announcing Charles, presumably Charles Xavier, needs an update.
Once Dr. McCoy exits, the mystery woman, who has yet to give a real introduction, asks Monica who she is before revealing her superhero outfit, identifying her as Binary. A Carol Danvers alter ego in the comics, the Binary in this universe resembles Maria and is an official X-Man, but that’s the extent of what audiences learn. Monica immediately realizes the severity of her situation but has no discernible way to return home, at least as far as the viewer is left to understand. Such implications of Monica’s whereabouts, as well as who she encounters, open the door of possibilities as the MCU moves forward, especially when viewed in relation to the Loki series on Disney+.
Enter the X-Men
The biggest revelation of The Marvels is the arrival of the X-Men. While audiences saw Patrick Stewart reprise his role as Professor Xavier in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness as a variant, the arrival of Kelsey Grammer’s Beast is a much bigger deal. While the blue and white walls, the setting is clearly meant to invoke the design of the 20th Century Fox X-Men films that ran from 2000’s X-Men to 2020’s New Mutants. The X-Men is one of the premiere titles of Marvel Comics, but due to the film rights being tied up at 20th Century Fox for so long, they were not allowed to crossover with the MCU until recently following Disney’s acquisition of 20th Century Fox. Now, the X-Men are making their debut in the MCU in a big way.
While audiences have seen a younger Beast played by Nicholas Hoult in X-Men: First Class, Days of Future Past, Apocalypse, and Dark Phoenix, the return of Kelsey Grammer in the role is a big deal. While X-Men: The Last Stand was seen as a disappointment, many agree that Grammer was perfectly cast as Beast, and many were hoping to see him return. He did have a brief cameo at the end of Days of Future Past, but it felt like Grammer was never going to get the chance to see Grammer in the role again.
Yet now Grammer has returned, and his arrival seems to usher in an exciting new era for what Marvel has planned and could tie into the next MCU films: Deadpool & Wolverine.
Deadpool and The X-Men
Deadpool & Wolverine is the only film from the MCU scheduled to hit theaters in 2024, which means it could pack a big punch when it comes to the larger story arc of the MCU. Audiences already know Wolverine will be a major part of the movie, which means The Marvels’ post-credit scene is even more important when speculating on where the MCU will go next.
Deadpool & Wolverine is set to be a multiversal film, one where the TVA from Loki recruits Deadpool to deal with a multiversal threat. The film will not only bring back Hugh Jackman as Wolverine but has confirmed Aaron Stanford will return as Pyro, with Jennifer Garner joining as Elektra from her 20th Century Fox non-X-Men films, Daredevil and Elektra. That and the fact that the trailer shows a destroyed 20th Century Fox logo in the trailer indicates that the film will be a meta-commentary about the 20th Century Fox Marvel films being destroyed following the acquisition by Disney, and their universe suffered an incursion.
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With The Marvels being the film that proceeds Deadpool & Wolverine and based on the mid-credit scene, there is a good chance fans will see Beast, Binary, and Monica Rambeau appear in the film in some capacity as Monica tries to find her way back to her home universe, and get a glimpse to how serious things are in the multiverse.
Not only is The Marvel the film before Deadpool & Wolverine but released in-between them will be X-Men ’97, which has the potential to bridge the gap between both films and play a big role in the future of the MCU.
X-Men ’97
X-Men ’97 is an animated continuation of the popular animated series from the 1990s. Notably, Professor X in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, despite being played by Patrick Stewart, was designed to resemble the one from the animated series. The Beast in The Marvels looks a lot like the animated series version of the character, and Deadpool & Wolverine sees Wolverine in his classic yellow costume, one his film version never wore but one his animated counterpart did. Marvel Studios might be combining the actors from the live-action films to play variants of the animated series counterparts, merging the two so it brings in the faces audiences know from the films but also the aesthetics and costumes of the animated series.
It’s no coincidence nor a mere fun nod to fans that X-Men were included at the end of The Marvels. With Loki’s creation of the Yggdrasil and Wolverine’s inclusion in the next Deadpool installment (now officially part of the MCU), Beast and Binary’s cameos are purposeful and meant for something more as Marvel moves into its next phases.
Loki’s Multiverse
Following the dramatic finale of Loki’s second season, the multiverse is wide open with potential storylines. Now that Loki has become the God of Stories and the timelines resemble the Norse tree of life, known as the Yggdrasil, the future of the MCU could unfold in a myriad of ways. Loki’s ending, coupled with The Marvels’ post-credit scene and the upcoming release of Deadpool & Wolverine, all but guarantee The X-Men are on a path to becoming a real part of the MCU quite soon.
Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness gave fans a glimpse of such worlds with The X-Men but didn’t delve too deeply into those alternate universes. Instead, audiences saw their destruction. However, given The Marvels trapped one of its main characters inside a different timeline, fans are likely to see a larger story develop as a result, which will include Professor X and his squad of mutants.
The animated series What If…? concluded season two with The Watcher showing Captain Carter Loki’s new multiversal world tree, showing that Marvel animated projects and the live-action feature films are linked together. This certainly lends credence to the idea that the version of the X-Men characters fans have been seeing are live-action versions of the animated series characters.
A Multiversal War Is Brewing
Currently, the plans for Avengers: The Kang Dynasty are up in the air, as reports now suggest that the movie is being referred to as Avengers 5 and that Marvel Studios is moving away from Kang the Conqueror following the character’s disappointing debut in Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania and also the firing of Jonathan Majors. The end of Loki season 2, the post-credit scene for The Marvels, and the upcoming release of Deadpool & Wolverine, along with the arrival of X-Men ’97, seem to indicate that the plan for Avengers 5 could be an adaptation of Avengers vs. X-Men with a mixture of the “Time Runs Out” storyline from New Avengers.
Avengers vs. X-Men is pretty self-explanatory, but “Time Runs Out” focused on the Illuminati trying to stop the destruction of the Multiverse from incursions, an event that Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness laid out as what happens when two universes collide. In the comics, this resulted in two universes remaining, the original Marvel Comics universe and the Ultimate Universe, which led to a war between realities and then kicked off the comic Secret Wars. The sixth Avengers film will be called Avengers: Secret Wars.
This means that Marvel Studios could have Avengers 5 be a showdown between two final universes, The MCU and a version of the X-Men franchise, either the 20th Century Fox version or the animated series. For all the talk about how the MCU has not felt as connected as before, the mid-credit scene for The Marvels might be the true beginning of the wider storyline.
Why Is The Marvels Post-Credit Scene the Best?
Given its implications, The Marvels clearly has the best post-credit scene the MCU has offered in recent years. Although seemingly meaningless at first, once audiences dive deeper into what such a scene implies, its significance cannot be overstated. There’s a great opportunity for new characters and new storylines (or beloved characters brought to movie screens again) once Charles Xavier and his team of mutants fully take their place in the MCU. It’s similar to the post-credit scene in Spider-Man: No Way Home, which proves that the future of the MCU has a place for Venom (and/or a possible Eddie Brock variant) as well.
With the finale of Loki and the release of Deadpool & Wolverine in 2024, the final scene of The Marvels most definitely ushers in the inclusion of the X-Men. Furthermore, it reinforces the idea of a wider multiverse battle that will play out in many other MCU films.
Stream The Marvels on Disney+
This story originally appeared on Movieweb
