Warning: Spoilers ahead for Deadpool & Wolverine.
It’s no surprise that Deadpool & Wolverine, Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman’s official welcome to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, features bonus footage during and after the credits. One of these is a typical fourth-wall-breaking Deadpool gag. But the other, which arrives mid-credits, is an unconventionally sentimental farewell to the now-defunct era of non–Marvel Studios–produced Marvel movies. And you know what? It’s actually sort of moving, if a little mawkish.
Several characters from pre-MCU Marvel movies make cameo appearances in the film, with a handful sticking around to find closure for their stories. Within the film’s fiction, this means we see characters like Jennifer Garner’s Elektra (introduced in the Ben Affleck–starring Daredevil), Wesley Snipes as the daywalking vampire Blade, and Channing Tatum as Gambit (a role he never actually got to play until now) fight until the end despite losing their respective worlds. In a meta-textual sense, it means tying a neat bow on some of the characters and franchises that existed before Disney’s MCU juggernaut took hold of popular culture.
As the closing credits roll, Green Day’s wistful punk ballad “Good Riddance (Time of Your Life)” accompanies clips and behind-the-scenes footage from non-MCU films new and old, paying tribute to these once-scattered properties produced by different studios as they prepare to enter the Marvel fold under a single umbrella. We see footage from the 20th Century Fox–produced Fantastic Four films; its Daredevil and Elektra movies; its X-Men trilogy, prequels, and various Wolverine spinoffs; as well as New Line’s Blade movies featuring Snipes.
While this montage can be hard to take seriously at times — it’s unlikely anyone watching has much love for Jamie Bell’s stone-faced Thing in Fant4stic, including Bell — the reel rides the line between facetious and fond as it bids good-bye to other, more beloved mainstays of the superhero-movie boom. Everyone from the Magnetos and Xaviers of the X-Men films (Ian McKellan/Michael Fassbender and Patrick Stewart/James McAvoy, respectively) to Jackman’s Wolverine get their due. The B-roll sees them goofing off on set and taking bows as the cast and crew around them applaud.
The montage finally ends on an image of the 20th Century Fox opening logo (which also appears as a practical set in the film, in the apocalyptic “void” where people and objects from alternate realities are discarded forever). Since the studio was purchased by Disney, its logo has changed to read “20th Century Studios,” so this is likely the last time its original incarnation will appear onscreen in a new release. It’s a little strange to hold a corporation in as high regard as the individuals who made these films, but now that all other avenues of Marvel nostalgia have been exhausted — from resurrecting characters seen decades ago, to actors’ cameos in parts they almost played — treating studio logos with the same admiration feels like the next logical step.
The stinger at the very end of the credits scroll is more irreverent, and in that way more traditional. Deadpool (Reynolds) addresses the camera in the TVA’s control room and absolves himself of a macabre gag from earlier in the film, when he’d claimed to the powerful, telekinetic villainess Cassandra Nova (Emma Corrin) that Chris Evans’s Johnny Storm (his role from Fantastic Four) had gone on an inventively profane tirade against her. Johnny frantically denied doing anything of the sort, but Cassandra ripped the skin off his body over the perceived insult anyway. Yikes. In the moment, it seemed like Deadpool had merely been passing the buck as a distraction, but in the post-credits scene, he runs back unseen footage from the movie, in which Evans indeed utters every single insult Deadpool alleged he had, vindicating the merc with a mouth.
Johnny’s rant is especially amusing to hear coming out from Evans, who spent most of his time in the MCU playing wholesome Boy Scout Captain America. You’d never hear Steve Rogers lament his “cum-gutter existence” and say he wouldn’t be satisfied even if he were to “urinate on [Cassandra’s] freshly barbecued corpse and husk-fuck the charred remains” while “gargling Juggernaut’s jugger-nuts.” As Cap would say, “Language!”
