Thunderbolts* surprised all of us with a post-credits scene spotlighting the New Avengers—updated uniforms and all—in Avengers Tower as they witnessed the arrival of the Fantastic Four on Earth-616.
The Russo Brothers shot the stinger, though filmmaker Jake Schreier was on hand to lend a helping hand. The implication seems to be that the New Avengers will be first to cross paths with Marvel's First Family, while various rumours have led us to believe that Sam Wilson's Avengers are set to lead the charge in travelling to Earth-10005.
We'll see, but at a time when movie studios are contemplating using AI to make production easier (i.e. cheaper), it might surprise you to learn that the set built for Thunderbolts*'s post-credits scene even surprised its actors.
In the video below, Thunderbolts* production designer Gavin Bocquet reveals that Marvel Studios only had three days of post-production time for the sequence, forcing the Russo Brothers to rely on practical sets and solutions.
"We used a physical backing, a sky backing, of New York outside the window," he shared. "There's a monitor on the screen which shows the F4 ship coming in, and because there was no time for post [production], everything on that set was virtually in-camera. You could go anywhere, and even the screen they had to shoot."
"And everybody was coming on, the Marvel guys were coming on, and the actors were coming on, and they were almost saying, 'Well, this is the first time we've been on a Marvel set where everything is in-camera,'" Bocquet revealed. "They were so used to having 'oh, we'll put the blue on the screen,' 'we can put the ship in later.'"
If that's an indication of the type of filmmaking we can expect in Avengers: Doomsday, then it's fair to say we're in store for something very special next December.
Earlier this year, Schreier told us about alternate post-credits scenes that were considered for Thunderbolts*. "I mean, Alexei is just so fun. I mean, you could come up with post-credits scenes for Alexei all day. I think I think we did have one other idea that maybe it could be the VHS home video of the soccer game with Mindy, and that might be fun; the chaos of that going back in time. But I don't know, this is just where we landed."
Avengers: Doomsday is set to be released on December 18, 2026, with Avengers: Secret Wars scheduled to arrive on December 17, 2027.