Warning: This post contains spoilers for Captain Marvel and the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
Ever since Nick Fury sent a cryptic message on a 90s-style pager during the end-credits of Avengers: Infinity War, fans of the Marvel Cinematic Universe have been eagerly awaiting the arrival of Captain Marvel.
Carol Danvers (a.k.a. Captain Marvel, played by Brie Larson) just made her big screen debut in her 90s-set origin story. But — as many suspected — the Captain Marvel post-credit scenes confirm that she will also play a role in the Infinity War follow-up, Avengers: Endgame, which hits theaters on April 26.
The first Captain Marvel end-credits scene shows Carol arriving at the Avengers’ New York headquarters and meeting Earth’s mightiest heroes for the first time. A second scene, in which Goose the cat spits up the Tesseract, may also hint at an Endgame plot point.
Here’s everything you need to know about the two scenes and what they mean for Avengers: Endgame.
Scene 1: Captain Marvel arrives at Avengers headquarters
This first Captain Marvel post-credits scene is likely pulled from Endgame. Captain America (Chris Evans), Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson), James Rhodes (Don Cheadle), and Bruce Banner (Mark Ruffalo) assess the damage that Infinity War baddie Thanos wrought when he destroyed half of all life in the universe.
The scene presumably takes place shortly after the snap: The Avengers are still processing what has happened. Captain America says, “This is a nightmare,” and Black Widow replies, “I’ve had better nightmares.” And even though many scenes in the Avengers: Endgame trailer show a clean-shaven Captain America, in this one he is sporting a beard, as he did in Infinity War, suggesting that only a few days (or a few hours) have passed since Thanos’ culling.
Two living Avengers are conspicuously missing from the scene: Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.), who is probably still stuck in space with Nebula (Karen Gillan), and Thor (Chris Hemsworth), who may have left earth on some sort of mission with Rocket (Bradley Cooper).
At the end of Captain Marvel, Carol Danvers tricked out a two-way pager for Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) so that he could message her across galaxies. And indeed in the post-credits scene for Avengers: Infinity War, Fury sent a message to the super-powered fighter pilot. In the Captain Marvel post-credits scene, the Avengers have recovered the pager.
Rhodes walks into the room and tells Captain America and Black Widow that the pager has stopped sending a signal. They agree to reboot the device. Banner points out that they don’t know who they are messaging in space. Black Widow retorts that Fury knew what he was doing and that she wants to know who is on the other side of that pager. She turns around and almost runs into Captain Marvel standing behind her.
“Where’s Fury?” Captain Marvel asks. She seems to have not aged a day, though it’s unclear why.
Given this set up, Captain Marvel probably arrives pretty early on in Endgame. She wields a ton of firepower: At the end of Captain Marvel, she singlehandedly destroys about a dozen warheads and scares off Ronan the Accuser (Lee Pace). If anyone can actually fight — and defeat — Thanos, it’s her.
But the Avengers have a bigger challenge ahead of them: Undoing Thanos’ snap. That will likely involve time travel and manipulation of the Quantum Realm. If Captain Marvel is traveling with them, it’s a lot more likely that they will succeed.
Scene 2: Goose spits up the Tesseract on Nick Fury’s desk
In a more humorous end-credits scene, Goose the cat (who turns out to be an alien called a Flerken, not an actual cat), walks onto Nick Fury’s desk. Goose spits up the Tesseract that he was storing in his belly.
This explains how Fury got his hands on the Tesseract in the first place. At the end of Thor, he reveals that he has been keeping it in S.H.I.E.L.D. headquarters for study. In Avengers, Loki steals the Tesseract from S.H.I.E.L.D., though Thor eventually takes it back.
While this may seem like a throwaway scene, it could play a pivotal role in Endgame. In that movie, the Avengers will presumably have to travel back in time in order to gather all the Infinity Stones before Thanos can get his hands on them. If they are able to reach the Tesseract either on Fury’s desk or inside Goose the cat before Loki steals the object — setting off the series of events that led Thanos to forcibly take the object from Thor and Loki in Infinity War — then they can prevent the apocalypse.
