This article contains spoilers for Captain America: Brave New World.
Doomsday is coming. You know it. I know it. And now, thanks to the Leader, Captain America knows it too.
In the lone post-credit scene for Captain America: Brave New World, villain Samuel Sterns offers a warning to Sam Wilson, one that points to the next Avengers movie and, potentially, the end of the MCU as we know it.
Captain America 4’s Post-Credit Scene Explained
As the marketing for Captain America: Brave New World loves to remind us, Sam Wilson is not Steve Rogers. And that’s a good thing. Brave New World uses Sam’s history as a counselor to make him into a Captain America who would rather talk things out with baddies than punch them in the face.
So it’s no surprise when Brave New World ends with Sam visiting Thaddeus Ross, no longer in Red Hulk form, in prison on the Raft. Nor is it a surprise when he also drops by the cell of Samuel Sterns, the movie’s big bad, a gamma-radiated supergenius called the Leader.
Even though he’s been defeated, Sterns cannot help but gloat, getting a one-up over Sam by showing off his intelligence. Sterns congratulates Sam and his fellow heroes for the work they’ve done to save the world. But then he reveals the findings of his calculations. “Do you think this is the only world?” Sterns asks. “We’ll see what happens when you have to protect this place… from the others.”
On one hand, Sterns’s reveal is a bit of a let down. We’ve known that there are other worlds. Pop culture is choking on multiverses. Heck, this current phase of the MCU is part of the Multiverse Saga, a storyline that includes Spider-Man: No Way Home, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, and Deadpool & Wolverine. The Leader’s reveal seems obvious and Sam seems slow on the uptake here, even if there’s no reason for most people on the prime reality Earth-616 to know about these worlds.
On the other, Stern’s warning isn’t just that there are other worlds. It’s also that these other worlds are a threat, and that there are heroes on those worlds who would defend them. That’s a more specific reference to the Secret Wars storyline that Marvel Comics published in 2015, the storyline that will inspire the next two Avengers films, Doomsday and Secret Wars.
Unveiling the Secret Wars
Written by Jonathan Hickman, Secret Wars actually begins in his Fantastic Four run in 2009, continued through his run on Avengers and New Avengers in 2013, and culminates with Secret Wars in 2015. The storyline involves a crisis in which Earths from two realities start to phase into the same space, resulting in what Reed Richards dubs an “Incursion,” in which the two Earths interact with one another. Each incursion lasts eight hours, after which the Earths and their respective universes are destroyed.
The New Avengers sections of the Secret Wars storyline deals with attempts by the Illuminati of Earth-616—a secret group of powerful people that includes Richards, Iron Man, Namor, Black Panther, Doctor Strange, Black Bolt of the Inhumans, and Beast/Professor X of the X-Men—to save their planet. Along the way, the group meets heroes and villains from other realities, who want to destroy our Earth to save their own. Although initially repulsed by the idea, the desperate Illuminati eventually follows suit, launching attacks on other realities to save Earth-616.
New Avengers is a bleak story, one filled with a creeping dread that’s more upsetting than anything the MCU has done before. But we’ve already heard reference to incursions before, in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. Not only do the Illuminati of Earth-838 featured in that film refer to incursions, but the post credit scene finds Clea (Charlize Theron) arriving to recruit Strange in a battle against the Incursions.
Furthermore, the title of the next Avengers movie suggests that the MCU heroes will deal with the incursions in a manner similar to that of the Marvel Comics’ heroes. In the final issues of Avengers and New Avengers, most of the heroes either make peace with their inevitable end or die trying to fight it. Only one hero and one villain sees the solution. With the help of the all-powerful Molecule Man, Doctor Strange and Doctor Doom take the fight to the Beyonders, the god-like architects of the multiverse.
The trio battles the Beyonders to the point of breaking loose their incredible abilities. While Strange hesitates to take on such awesome power, Doom does not. He takes the power and saves our universe by recreating it, making himself into God.
The final Secret Wars series tells the story of Doom’s reign as God Emperor of a newly designed Marvel Universe, and how Reed Richards and other heroes fight to restore things as they were.
Preparing for Doomsday
Given the Leader’s warning, it sounds like Avengers: Doomsday will show Marvel’s heroes fighting with those of other realities, all trying to protect their Earth from the incursions. And like the comics, Doctor Doom (played by Robert Downey Jr.) will make an audacious decision that saves his universe, but recreates it in his image.
If that’s the case, Earth’s Mightiest Heroes will face their greatest battle yet in Avengers: Secret Wars. It’s a good thing the Leader gave Sam the warning now, so he can start assembling his Avengers and possibly set things right.
Captain America: Brave New World is now in theaters.
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