Joseph Schuhmann

Some examples of post-credit scenes from the past and recent years.

The Post-Credit Scene is a very popular staple in the film genre that was massively popularized by the Marvel Cinematic Universe of films. It plays after the credits roll and serves as “bonus content” as a way to reward audiences for sticking around through all the credits. The first film to actually have a post credit scene was in the 1966 film The Silencers (although, some sources will say The Muppets Movie in 1979 was the first film to do it). They were popular with comedy films in the 1980’s, and the MCU made them more common place with Iron Man in 2008. However, this leads to an interesting question: are post-credit scenes in movies really even necessary anymore?

Post-credit scenes are sometimes used as a little comedy gag, with one of the most famous examples of this being from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off in 1986, where the titular character tells the audience that the movie is over, and that they can go now. This works as a nice little extra ending and gives the film a tiny bit more of it. Nowadays, however, post-credit scenes are used to set up what happens next for a sequel, and there in lies the issue.

When the post-credit scene is implying that there is more story to tell, then that is basically making the audience a promise: that there is going to be more to come and that it will be worth it. However, sometimes a movie doesn’t really need a sequel. Look at the movie WALL-E. It told the story that it wanted to tell in a single movie, and it had a great ending that didn’t justify a sequel, and it never got one. Granted, this was before post-credit scenes became more common, but the point still stands. It didn’t need a sequel.

Then there is the fact that some post-credit scenes have gone absolutely nowhere. One of the first instances I can think of is in Spider-Man: Homecoming. That post-credit scene showed the film’s antagonist, Adrian Toomes, The Vulture, in prison, and he is approached by a man with a scar above his left eyebrow and a scorpion tattoo on his neck, saying to Toomes that he and a few others he knows want revenge against Spider-Man. Eagle-eye Spider-Man fans will recognize this guy as Mac Gargen, the Spidey villain Scorpion. He says that he heard a rumor that Toomes knows Spider-Man’s identity, but Toomes, grateful that the web-head saved his life, doesn’t tell. This was obviously setting up Scorpion as a villain for the future, and possibly the Sinister Six, but due to the direction that MCU Spider-Man has gone in as of recently, and the minor detail that Micheal Keaton’s Vulture is now in a completely different universe, this is now extremely unlikely; making this post-credit scene completely meaningless.

Even with the points that I’ve made, I would say that there’s still a place for post-credit scenes in movies. Movies that are adaptations of things such comics and video games, I’d argue, make the best argument for having post credit scenes because they are adaptations and there’s a lot of story to tell over multiple movies. For example, Sonic The Hedgehog 3’s post-credit scene teased the next film’s antagonist and a new ally for Sonic with Metal Sonic and Amy Rose, setting up a potentially exciting next installment in the Sonic Movie series. This was a good use of the post-credit scene as it showed off two characters that Sonic fans are really excited to see in the next movie.

Whether or not they are still necessary, post-credit scenes are a pretty big part of movies, and I don’t see them going away anytime soon.