The Marvels Credit Scene (And That Surprise Character Cameo) Explained
This article contains major spoilers for "The Marvels."
Whether you loved it (like I did) or hated it, the latest addition to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Nia DaCosta's "The Marvels," is mandatory viewing for fans of the MCU. The film is the follow-up to not only James Gunn's conclusion of the "Guardians of the Galaxy" trilogy but also the Disney+ series "Secret Invasion," "Loki" season 2," and ... oh yeah, "Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania" also came out this year, didn't it? More directly, "The Marvels" is the sequel to 2019's "Captain Marvel" as well as the Disney+ series "Ms. Marvel" and "WandaVision." I know, I know, that's an absurd amount of titles to precede a single film, but that's the MCU, baby!
The new film centers on Carol Danvers/Captain Marvel (Brie Larson), Captain Monica Rambeau (Teyonah Parris), and Kamala Khan/Ms. Marvel (Iman Vellani) as the trio must work together, often literally, to defeat Dar-Benn (Zawe Ashton), a leader from the militaristic race known as the Kree who intends to create interplanetary wormholes to suck resources from the planets and people that Carol Danvers loves best, as payback for Danvers inadvertently dooming the Kree on Hala to a dead planet.
Of course, the Marvels save the day and Carol even restores the sun on Hala for some extra hero points, but this all comes at the expense of Monica Rambeau who ends up trapped on the other side of the closing wormhole, the appearance of a major incursion in the MCU. It's okay if you don't know what "incursion" means, I'll explain that more in a little bit. However, Marvel couldn't leave audiences hanging without a resolution as to where Monica wound up and gave the answer during the post-credits scene.
What happens in The Marvels' post-credits scene?
The post-credits scene was leaked online days before "The Marvels" hit theaters, so if you were lucky enough to avoid spoilers (or were smart enough not to go digging on Reddit) and are looking for an explanation as to what you just saw, this post is for you. In the post-credits scene, Monica wakes up and sees her mother, Maria (Lashana Lynch), looking alive and well. Maria had a prominent role in "Captain Marvel," but we learned in "WandaVision" (and were reminded by a flashback in "The Marvels") that Maria died of cancer after The Snap. This meant that Monica didn't get to say goodbye to her mother, since Maria was already gone when Monica returned to existence following the events of "Avengers: Endgame." Their reunion in this scene is emotional ... for Monica, but Maria doesn't seem to know who Monica is, or understand why she's crying about their "reunion."
This is because this version of Maria is known as Binary (as confirmed by her supersuit), a character in the Marvel Comics that is essentially a duplicate of Captain Marvel. After she explains she does not know Monica, Beast (Kelsey Grammer) of the "X-Men" films arrives in some weird CGI makeup. The room that Monica awakes in bears the same minimalistic, cool gray designs as the "X-Men" films produced by Fox, meaning this scene officially ties the canon of the "X-Men" films to the MCU. It's an amusing scene that had members of my audience audibly squealing and jumping around in their seats because it seems to promise some huge, long-awaited changes to come. But the bigger question here is what this incursion seems to say about the future of the MCU, especially the trio of Marvels.
The incursion changes everything
Incursions by Marvel's definition occur "when the boundary between two universes erodes, they collide... destroying one, or both, entirely." If that sounds familiar, it's because it was a line delivered by Reed Richards (John Krasinski) in "Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness." It's later teased during the end credits of that film that Doctor Strange sparked an incursion with all of his maddening meddling with the multiverse, and Clea (Charlize Theron) joins him to fix it. A strong sign that an incursion has taken place is seeing universal overlap — like the fact Maria Rambeau is now Binary, essentially an alternate universe version of Captain Marvel. During the post-credits scene of "The Marvels," Beast even explains to Monica that she is "now in a reality parallel to [her] own." This is a reality where she was never born to Maria, because Maria was becoming Binary.
There's still a lot up in the air regarding what Marvel is going to do about the planned "Avengers: The Kang Dynasty" following the assault allegations against Kang actor Jonathan Majors. But since "Secret Wars" is on the docket for Phase 6 following that film, the MCU can be expected to follow the storylines from the "Secret Wars" comics series, which center around an abundance of incursions. This is likely going to be the reasoning behind marrying the MCU to the X-Men movieuniferse, but will also put the Marvels back in focus. Captain Marvel, Monica Rambeau/Photon, and Ms. Marvel have been shown to connect with one another through their shared powers, and that may be the key to getting Monica back to the correct reality and figuring out how to close up the incursions for good.