Avengers: Infinity War Nearly Had No After-Credits Scene

Avengers: Infinity War leaves viewers wanting more, and it follows up with a brief post-credits sequence that hints at what's coming next. But directors Joe and Anthony Russo considered breaking with Marvel Studios tradition and having no post-credits scene at all. Spoilers for Avengers: Infinity War follow.

The film ends with the villainous Thanos ultimately accomplishing his goal: obtaining the remaining Infinity Stones, slotting them into his golden glove, and snapping his fingers to wipe out half of all life in the universe. It's a particularly dour ending, especially given that we see his action wiping out several Marvel heroes big and small, including Spider-Man, Black Panther, Star-Lord, and many others. The directors thought about leaving it on that dark note.

"We debated having no tags in this movie," Joe Russo told Entertainment Weekly. Anthony added, "Part of it was because we knew the ending was a complicated ending, a difficult ending, and we wanted that ending to be very definitive. We didn't want to complicate it with other ideas. So there is one tag that puts a small button it, but that’s it."

That small button leaves viewers with a tiny bit of hope. After witnessing the purge, Nick Fury and Maria Hill start to fade away themselves, but not before Fury sends out an emergency distress signal. The logo that appears is a clear nod to Captain Marvel, a powerful hero in the Marvel universe whose movie is due out next March. She's presumably the cavalry coming to help turn the tide, and her standalone movie will explain what she's been doing in the meantime.

You can check out more of what's likely to come from Captain Marvel as Infinity War barrels toward breaking even more box office records. That only makes sense, as this movie has been years in the making and is one of the Marvel films to have the most substantial impact on the cinematic universe, with several changes even aside from the mass slaughter.