Avengers: Endgame Encore's TVA 'Multiverse Is Collapsing' Scene Explained By Directors

Marvel Studios is gearing up to unleash "Avengers: Doomsday" and hopefully make up for years of underwhelming Marvel Cinematic Universe streaming shows and eye-glaze-inducing blockbusters. Luckily for studio head Kevin Feige, audiences still seem interested in the event movies — just look at how "Deadpool & Wolverine" and "Spider-Man: Brand New Day" dominated the box office. "Doomsday," then, looks set for a gigantic box office debut, but just in case fans were considering sitting this one out, Marvel decided to grease the wheels of the hype train by re-releasing "Avengers: Endgame" in theaters.

With "Avengers Endgame: Encore," as the re-release is titled, fans don't just get to relive the excitement of Summer 2019. They also get extra footage designed to set up "Doomsday." Directors Joe and Anthony Russo, who oversaw "Endgame" and are returning for "Doomsday," inserted four new scenes into the movie, including three post-credit scenes, one of which involves the collapse of the multiverse itself.

After a brief scene in which Mark Ruffalo's Bruce Banner encounters Robert Downey Jr.'s Dr. Doom, we're taken to the Time Variance Authority (TVA) headquarters. This is, of course, the bureaucratic organization tasked with overseeing the multiverse. In the "Encore" scene, we see Mobius (Owen Wilson), Ouroboros (Ke Huy Quan), and Casey (Eugene Cordero) witness two words colliding, in what's known as an incursion. These two worlds may be Earth-10005, home to the X-Men, and Earth-1127. Seeing as the X-Men are set to appear in "Doomsday," it looks as though their world survives this particular incursion. But that's not the end of the scene. More incursions occur as the TVA crew watch, before Ouroboros recognizes what's happening and puts it as plainly as possible: "The multiverse is collapsing." According to the Russos, this is "the most profound thing that's ever happened to the MCU."

"Avengers: Doomsday" is set to be even more cataclysmic than "Endgame," and the TVA post-credit scene shows us why. In an interview with Empire, the Russo brothers explained the "Avengers Endgame: Encore" post-credits scenes. As Joe Russo went on to say:

"It is the perceived end of times. Everything the TVA was set up to do is to protect the timelines from collapsing, and now they're in a catastrophic collapse. And so that scene, I would argue, yes, has a great level of importance. I wouldn't say that it is more important than another scene. But it is certainly critical to the storytelling of 'Doomsday.'"

But this isn't simply setting up a multiverse-upending event for the sake of giving Marvel heroes something to fight for. According to Anthony Russo, this will ultimately explain how the film's expansive team of heroes comes together. "It is the unifying principle of combining the X-Men universe, the Avengers universe, the Fantastic Four universe," he said. "That is at the heart of the collision of these universes."

Joe Russo also claimed everything in this scene is significant, "premeditated," and that "every inch of footage that you see has some relevance in some way." The co-director claimed that he and his brother included "clues" in all the new footage which point toward "a greater story in 'Doomsday.'" Clearly, then, the multiverse collapsing sets up all the crossovers necessary to assemble the heroes of "Doomsday," which will boast the largest ensemble of Marvel characters yet. The Fantastic Four, 20th Century Fox-era X-Men characters, and longtime MCU heroes will all band together in "Doomsday," and these multiple incursions seem to be the catalyst.

Put simply, "Avengers: Doomsday" has to work. After all, if an Avengers film doesn't bring in the crowds, the age of the Marvel Cinematic Universe is surely well and truly over. Thankfully, it looks as though fans are eager to see the next chapter in the "Avengers" saga. "Avengers Endgame: Encore" ruled the box office, coming it at number one for the weekend of September 26 with a global total of $86 million. The added footage surely wasn't the sole reason for that success, but it's a significant inclusion that sets up the "Doomsday" storyline.

For Joe Russo, however, "Encore" was about more than simply priming audiences for the next "Avengers" movie. "There's a generation that has only seen ['Endgame'] from their couch, or their living room," he said. "And people like to go see these movies with family members, and with children and with grandparents. This is just one more opportunity for them to go out and have a communal experience again." The co-director, who has previously spoken enthusiastically about our looming AI garbage future, went on to talk about movies as "one of the only things left that really truly bind us and give us shared experiences," which, according to him and his brother, was part of the reason for this re-release.

But there's no doubt Marvel's main intention here is to build anticipation for "Doomsday," which it seems to have accomplished considering the box office returns for "Encore." For now, we'll have to wait to see exactly what the multiversal collapse actually leads to in "Doomsday" beyond bringing the various heroes together. But it's clearly the most significant extra scene in "Encore" and, according to the Russos, the most significant thing to happen to the MCU yet.