‘Captain America: Brave New World’ post-credits scene explained

Warning: This story contains spoilers for Captain America: Brave New World.

Captain America: Brave New World marks a new beginning for the titular hero, as Anthony Mackie officially takes over the role for his first big screen mission carrying the shield. But he better get comfortable with the vibranium accessory fast because the post-credits scene teases his biggest battle(world) yet — and it’s coming sooner than he realizes.

Director Julius Onah’s brisk spy thriller ends with a win for Sam Wilson (Mackie) as he talks President Thaddeus Ross (Harrison Ford, taking over for the late William Hurt) down from his Red Hulk rage, effectively stopping the revenge plan of Samuel Sterns — a.k.a. the Leader (Tim Blake Nelson) — to wreck Ross’ legacy. While Ross ultimately lands in a cell in the Raft, an isolated supermax prison, he does so voluntarily to save the global treaty regarding the sharing of adamantium. He’s rewarded for his sacrifice with a tearful reunion with his estranged daughter Betty (Liv Tyler, returning for a cameo more than 17 years in the making).

All’s well that ends well, right? Sam certainly thinks so. But when he returns to the Raft in the post-credits scene to gloat to Sterns about beating him, he gets an ominous warning instead.

“You want to know what’s funny?” Sterns asks.

“I’m not in the mood for your jokes,” Sam responds. “You killed a lot of good men trying to get your revenge. Trust me, we don’t share the same sense of humor.”

“We share the same world, don’t we? This world you would die to save,” Sterns says. “It’s coming. I’ve seen it in the probabilities. Seen it plain as day. All you heroes protecting this world, do you think you’re the only ones? Do you think this is the only world? We’ll see what happens when you have to protect this place from the others.”

To casual viewers, this may just seem like the rantings of a madman who’s angry that his plans failed. But for comic book fans — and anyone paying attention to the future slate of Marvel Cinematic Universe films — it’s actually a tease of what’s coming in the next Avengers movies: Avengers: Doomsday and Avengers: Secret Wars.

The multiverse isn’t a new revelation at this point — we’re literally in the middle of the Multiverse Saga, after all — but most of the MCU characters are still unaware of its existence. Sterns is vaguely cluing in Sam to the fact that parallel universes exist — and they’re about to collide with his own. We’ve already seen similar incursions happen in the MCU (in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness and The Marvels), but they’re about to get a lot worse leading up to Secret Wars (based on the 2015 comic by writer Jonathan Hickman and artist Esad Ribic). And you know what else that means?

Battleworld!

In the comics, incursions ultimately destroy the multiverse, leaving only Battleworld, a “patchwork” planet created from pieces of dead universes by Doctor Doom using the power he stole from beings called the Beyonders. The surviving heroes of the multiverse’s collapse are dropped onto the chaotic, ruthless planet that’s always at war, and they must band together to stop Doom (ruling as “God Emperor”) and save the multiverse.