'Spider-Man: Homecoming': Decoding the End-Credit Scenes (Spoilers!)
Warning: This article reveals major plot points for Spider-Man: Homecoming. Proceed with caution if you haven’t seen the movie.
Spider-Man: Homecoming is the web-slinger’s first solo outing in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. And, per MCU tradition, Homecoming rewards fans who sit through the scroll with two end-credits bonus scenes. The first, which comes midway through, hints at a future villain (or six?); the second stinger, arriving post-credits, features some expert audience trolling from one of Marvel’s top heroes. Let’s break them down.
A New Bug in Town
The first sequence features the plucked Vulture/Adrian Toomes (Michael Keaton) being ushered into federal prison after being thwarted by Spider-Man. There, Toomes is confronted by another convict, a slithery fellow sporting a conspicuous Scorpion tattoo on his neck.
“Look who it is. What are the odds you and I would wind up in the same summer camp,” growls the inmate, played by Better Call Saul‘s Michael Mando. “Relax… It’s not on you, it’s on our little spider friend. I’ve got some boys on the outside who’d just love to meet him. You know, take a picture, slice his throat, put his head in the dryer. And I heard a rumor you know who he is.”
“If I knew who he was,” Toomes replies, “he’d already be dead.”
While the Vulture doesn’t divulge anything, the implication is clear: Our friendly neighborhood Spider-Man has a bunch of unfriendly types coming for him.
The tatted-up man issuing the not-so-veiled threats is Mac Gargan, who comic fans will immediate recognize as Scorpion, a frequent Spidey nemesis dating back to the 1960s known for his slick cybernetic costume. Although, speaking to Yahoo Movies, Marvel Studios mastermind Kevin Feige tried to play coy about the scene.
“Maybe that guy becomes the Scorpion, maybe he doesn’t,” Feige said. “To us, that was more about the evolution of Adrian Toomes, the man, and that he actually, somewhere in there, is a good man, was doing things for his family, and that he’s protecting Peter Parker’s secret because he knows Peter saved his life. And he knows Peter saved his daughter’s life, and he knows Peter was doing the right thing, and that he makes, in that moment, a decision to keep that secret. For us, that was all that was about.”
Gargan’s reference to “some boys on the outside” suggests the Sinister Six, the loose-knit, rotating roster of rogues who band together to destroy the wall-crawling hero. Sony has been developing a Spider-Man spinoff about the Sinister Six, so there’s a chance their paths will cross on screen in the future. But Homecoming director Jon Watts doesn’t want to go there yet.
“None of it is a specific tease to anything in the future, certainly not a Sinister Six movie,” he told Yahoo Movies. “But it is sort of just this idea that we can create a world full of villains from the ground up. Spider-Man is what it looks like when a regular kid becomes a superhero, now we can [explore] what does it look like when regular guys start to become supervillains, which I think could be really cool.”
In any case, Marvel is bound to launch fans into overdrive speculating on how all the Spider-Man and MCU pieces might fit together. So, mission accomplished.
The Joke’s on Us
The film’s final scene, coming at the close of the credits scroll, puts a ribbon on a gag that runs through the movie. Although he remains on the down low following the events of Captain America: Civil War, Chris Evans‘s star-spangled superhero is a steady presence in Homecoming, appearing in a series of old-school PSAs played to tuned-out students by the film’s oblivious gym teacher, Coach Wilson (Hannibal Buress).
The PSAs provide comic relief and also serve as an Easter egg — not only referencing Cap’s stilted stint performing USO shows and shilling war bonds in The First Avenger but also paying tribute to the “educational” comics that Marvel has issued over the years featuring Cap warning kids about the dangers of drugs… and asthma.
Which brings us to the final scene, where Steve Rogers delivers a blow to… everyone who’s still in the theater!
“Hi, I’m Captain America, here to talk to you about one of the most valuable traits a soldier or a student can have: patience. Sometimes patience is the key to victory. Sometimes it leads to very little, seems like it’s not worth it,” he says in a bit that has echoes of Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (and Deadpool).
“You wonder why you waited so long for something so disappointing,” he continues, before turning off camera and asking, “How many more of these?”
Watch: ‘Spider-Man Homecoming’ Cast Offers Dramatic Reading of Classic Cartoon Theme:
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