The following post contains SPOILERS for The Marvels. Don’t watch until after you’ve seen The Marvels. You might not even read it after that. You can never be too careful where spoilers are concerned.
The final trailer for The Marvels The possibility of major Marvel cameos popping up out of nowhere in this movie was very much hinted at. Title cards warned potential customers that if they didn’t see the film, they’d be missing a “moment” that “changes everything.” It also included a line from Samuel L. Jackson’s Nick Fury saying “they’re here” without saying who them they were meant to be.
The line came after references to the diversity and holes in reality, suggesting that some recognizable characters from other worlds may appear for the first time in the main Marvel Cinematic Universe. For Marvel nerds, the most obvious thing the studio might be teasing is the debut of one of the two signature Marvel teams that have had Fox movie franchises but haven’t joined the MCU proper : The Fantastic Four or the X-Men.
Well, that didn’t happen at all. And I don’t think anytime inside The Marvels “changes everything” in the MCU. Buuuut the film’s post-credits scene features the dramatic debut of a beloved Marvel character who previously appeared (in a slightly different form) in a Fox Marvel movie.
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To set the stage: At the dramatic climax of the film, a villainous Dar-Benn (Zawe Ashton) rips a hole in the fabric of reality made by Captain Marvel (Brie Larson), Ms. Marvel (Iman Vellani), and Monica Rambeau (Teyonah). Parris) to work together to fix it. Captain and Ms. Marvel blast their power into Monica, who then uses their combined abilities to bring reality back together. For whatever reason, Monica does this since another the side of the hole – ie the side that exists in an alternate reality separate from the main MCU. When she closes the hole, she is still stuck on the other side. Her friends are mourning Monica as if she’s gone, maybe forever, but Marvel fans know this is “The Multiverse Saga” we’re looking at, and that means she returned.
Sure enough, Monica returns before the closing credits even roll. After the closing main titles appear, Monica reappears in a hospital bed. Sitting by her bedside is her mother, Maria Rambeau (Lashana Lynch), who was Captain Marvel’s best friend in Captain Marvel and made a brief appearance in an earlier flashback The Marvels. In the main MCU, Maria died of cancer; in this alternate scenario, she is still alive in some way – and she has real powers and is called “Binary”, one of the code names that Carol Danvers has used in Marvel Comics through the years.
She is not alone, at all. Joining her in this high-tech hospital is Beast – the furry blue mutant and longtime member of the X-Men. Although the character is full of CGI, Kelsey Grammer, who previously played Beast (that time in prosthetics) is in X-Men: The Last Stand.
Beast discovers that Monica is from a “parallel reality to our own” and says that “Charles asked for an update” on her health – obviously referring to Charles Xavier, who played the leader of the X-Men in the Fox X-Men franchise ( and more recently in Doctor Strange in the diversity of madness) by Patrick Stewart.
Does this “change everything”? That sounds generous. But it does bring the MCU a small step closer to fully incorporating the X-Men, the most important Marvel property that the company’s studio has yet to adapt to the big movie world. They have TV. This Marvels the post-credits scene is still another reality, meaning that this version of Beast may never be seen again, or may only be seen in another brief cameo. But Marvel is building towards it Avengers: Secret wars movie – and if the movie is like comics, there will be many Marvel characters from many other things.
So Monica, Maria, and Beast could appear in that movie in that context; as the inhabitants of this alternate universe where the X-Men are going full force and Binary is part of the team. (In the comics, there was a time where Binary spent a lot of time hanging out with the X-Men.) The next MCU movie is also Deadpool 3 – and it’s quite possible that that movie takes place in the same universe as this post-credits scene.
But that is only one possible option. Maybe Marvel doesn’t even know how this tag will pay off at this point – it could be a way to give impatient X-Men fans a little hint without worry too much about the good points.
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