All eyes are on Superman to see how the movie sets the stage for the DCU's future. Filmmaker James Gunn has confirmed that the Justice League doesn't exist in this world (not yet, at least), but we will meet the "Justice Gang."
With Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow and Lanterns on the horizon, the expectation is that Superman will do something to set the stage for either those or perhaps even the mystery movie Gunn is working on.
Talking to Entertainment Weekly, he confirmed that Superman has a post-credits scene; however, it won't necessarily set up anything huge for the future. "I have a philosophy about post-credit scenes," Gunn explained. "It's somewhat related to my own mistakes in my time with Marvel."
For example, when Avengers: Endgame ended with Thor joining the Guardians of the Galaxy, Gunn put his foot down and said he didn't want the God of Thunder on the team (leaving it to Taika Waititi to have them part ways in Thor: Love and Thunder).
"I said in the script notes: 'I’m not gonna put him in. I don’t want to have Thor in the Guardians. I don’t want to do a movie with Thor,'" Gunn said of how those teases for the future can cause headaches for other filmmakers and projects. "I don’t understand the character that much. I love watching his movies and I love Chris Hemsworth as a guy. I don't understand how to write that character."
"I did not like what I did in Guardians 2 where we set up Adam Warlock and we set up the Guardians of the Galaxy and we set up all this s--- that I didn't necessarily plan on," he admitted. "Well, I guess I kind of planned on fulfilling that [Adam Warlock] promise, but you want to be careful about that. The way a post-credits scene works is a punch to the face, like, 'Oh my God! Look at this.'"
"At times when you're using it just solely to set something up, sometimes you're screwing yourself over. It was not easy to work Adam Warlock into Guardians 3. I loved working with Will, and I liked dealing with the character, but at the end of the day, was he kind of fitting a weird square peg into a round hole? A little bit, yeah," Gunn confirmed, adding that he preferred Guardians of the Galaxy's humorous post-credits scene introducing Howard the Duck.
Despite that, the DC Studios co-CEO is eager for fans to walk away satisfied when those credits finish rolling. "I do love giving something back to the audience, so I will try to put something in the end credits for audiences to see, because I think it's great," he acknowledged. "I love my crew, and I want you to stick around and see who the gaffers were."
The expectation with post-credits scenes is that they'll set up what's next, and anything that fails to do so is often deemed a disappointment.
However, the Multiverse Saga serves as a good example of why having one eye constantly on the future can go wrong. Marvel Studios has introduced and teased an endless list of characters, many of whom have yet to return and aren't even factored into Avengers: Doomsday plans.
Superman arrives in theaters on July 11, 2025.