Marvel's Scrapped Thunderbolts Post-Credits Scenes Featured Baron Zemo & Kang

The post-credits scene for "Thunderbolts*" is pretty hard to complain about: The Thunderbolts, now referred to as the New Avengers, are alerted of a "multi-dimensional spacecraft" entering Earth's orbit. The characters don't understand the significance of this, but the audience does — it's the Fantastic Four's spacecraft. And unlike other recent post-credit sequences that have teased plot points far into the future, we'll likely get a follow-up to this scene very soon. "The Fantastic Four: First Steps" releases in theaters July 25, 2025. 

But before "Thunderbolts*" had a post-credits scene teasing "The Fantastic Four," there were other plans in place. Eric Pearson, who co-wrote the movie, revealed in a recent IGN interview that the original post-credits scene idea involved teasing another film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. As he put it, "I was throwing together at the beginning a post-credit sequence that had to deal with Kang."

"Thunderbolts*," which was revealed to be in production back in 2022, started under the assumption that the ominous villain Kang (Jonathon Majors) would be the new ultra-villain of the MCU. However, the production was delayed by the 2023 strikes and complicated further by Jonathon Majors being found guilty of several allegations of harassment and assault. Majors was subsequently fired by Disney, and the "Thunderbolts*" writers had to change course. Instead of a Kang-focused post-credits sequence, we got a more relevant one about the much-discussed Fantastic Four.

Pearson shed some light on another pitched idea for the post-credits sequence, one that teased the return of Baron Zemo (Daniel Brühl), who first appeared in "Captain America: Civil War."

"There was definitely a [post-credits] tag that I did a million years ago where Zemo is like Keyser Söze, like he's been pulling the strings from prison in some way," he explained. (For those who don't immediately recognize that name, Söze is the bad guy from "The Usual Suspects," played by Kevin Spacey.) But, as Pearson admitted, "I don't think that iteration lived longer than like, 'Hey, what about this?' 'Nope, not that.'" 

Although it's fairly self-evident why a Kang-focused sequence would've been a bad idea, it's worth noting that "Thunderbolts*" has the first post-credits scene in a long time that's actually exciting. Most of the recent ones have reeked of desperation, of the writers throwing anything at the wall and hoping it'd stick. The worst one is probably the mid-credits scene in "Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness," which undermines the movie's dark cliffhanger ending to tease the introduction of Charlize Theron's new character, Clea. (Three years later, we've still never found out what her deal was.) Many of the other recent credits scenes have similar vibes, introducing random characters and never following up on them.

We hope "Thunderbolts*," on the other hand, might be setting up a new rule for MCU movies: From now on, only use your post-credits scenes to tease movies that will definitely happen, and will happen soon. Perhaps the "Fantastic Four" post-credits scenes will tease "Avengers: Doomsday" in 2026, and maybe the one in "Avengers: Doomsday" will tease the "Spider-Man" movie expected shortly after. The post-credits sequence in "Thunderbolts*" hints at a new level of discipline in the MCU. The franchise seems to know the audience's patience has worn thin in recent years, so for now, it seems like they're only promising what they know they can deliver.