One of the hallmarks of the MCU has been mid and post credits scenes, almost always because they tee up the next installment. But now that Marvel is spread across both movies and TV series, things have become murkier. For example, the WandaVision TV series ended up being a significant part of Doctor Strange 2. Television makes post-credit scenes less important, and also the shifting nature of release dates in the last few years means that they can be rendered nonsensical.
When the ‘Special Presentation’ movie Werewolf by Night landed on Disney Plus on October 7, some people were surprised that despite it being a movie (albeit a short one at 52 minutes), it had no post-credits scene.
Executive producer Brian Gay explained to The Direct why it didn’t have one [you may not want to continue reading if you want to remain spoiler-free]; “[That final campfire scene is] in the [same] spirit [as a normal post-credits scene]. We wanted to put, you know, a nice, I guess, button on the end of the special in a way to have it. But with this, we want it to be a contained story.
Gay continued; “And so anytime that there’s, you know, a tag, it’s always what’s next, what’s going on for these characters. [The Werewolf and Man-Thing] don’t know what’s happening next. They barely made it through this night alive. And so it always felt a little weird that we would return back to something when it’s ‘oh my gosh, you made it out.’ Just celebrate that moment, as opposed to carrying on [to the next thing].”
Werewolf by Night could be considered a pilot that is testing the waters for these characters in the MCU. Jack (Gael Garcia Bernal), Elsa Bloodstone (Laura Donnelly), and Man-Thing (Carey Jones) could all potentially turn up in the MCU in the future. And Werewolf by Night was probably a taster for the Midnight Sons, a band of darker supernatural anti-heroes including Blade and Ghost Rider. It is hoped that Moon Knight could potentially be involved, if Oscar Isaac was up for returning.
It looks and sounds as though Marvel don’t know what they’re doing with these characters yet, hence the lack of post-credits scene. While we wait to find out, check out our guide to Marvel’s Phase 5.