So what was going on at the End of Civil War?

MAJOR SPOILERS FOR CAPTAIN AMERICA: CIVIL WAR

You know I'm starting to think Marvel is getting lazy.

Seriously, Civil War follows Ant-Man's lead by having its post-credits stinger mostly wrap things up from the actual movie instead of teasing things from the next ones. If you saw the movie, there isn't really much for me to explain. It's almost like I don't have to do these anymore.

But whatever. A little clarity never hurt anyone so I will explain the nods to the comics in the stingers. And I'll draw on my own extensive comics knowledge to give you an idea of where things in the Marvel Cinematic Universe might go.

Last warning for spoilers and here we go...


Okay, we've got two stingers to unpack. The first really is just winding down some stuff from the main movie. You'll remember things ended with Bucky's name cleared and big bad Zemo captured but not everything was hunky-dory. Cap and most of the Avengers are still wanted for breaking the Sokovia Accords, even more so after Cap broke his buddies out of jail. The stinger picks up with Captain America and his best bud Bucky in a futuristic lab. Bucky decides to have himself re-frozen until his Hydra brainwashing can be completely undone (and presumably get himself another robot arm). Cap wishes him luck and watches the scientists put Bucky under. Then he looks out a window and is joined by King T'Challa, the Black Panther. Cap thanks T'Challa for harboring him & the Avengers, but warns him that this means people may try to attack. T'Challa just says to let them try. Then the camera pans out the window to show a misty jungle landscape overseen by a huge Panther statue.

The Panther God of Wakanda

This stinger's basically a softball as these things go. If you paid attention during the movie, you'll remember that Black Panther is the prince (later king) of the isolated African country called Wakanda which is known for its reserve of vibranium, the special metal Cap's shield is made of. It's also what Black Panther's claw are made of but that's not important right now. So what with the big panther and the fact that all the scientists in the futuristic lab are black, we can guess that Black Panther has given Cap & the other rogue Avengers unofficial asylum in Wakanda. Because he's king and all. And the reason Black Panther is incredulous at the idea of people coming for them is because, as the lab attests, Wakanda has super-advanced technology and is really good at keeping outsiders from getting into their country.

What does this mean besides Captain America probably making a cameo in the Black Panther movie? I'll get to that in a sec, but first I've got to talk about the other stinger.

This one comes after the credits crawl and is much simpler. We're back in New York, where Spider-Man is making up his excuse to Aunt May for how he got beat up while hanging out with Tony Stark. He hits something on the new web-shooters Iron Man made for him and a red light starts shooting out of it. After hiding it from Aunt May, Peter shines the red light onto his ceiling and we get to see what his web shooter is doing. It's projecting a red Spider-Man logo hologram.

The Spider-Signal spooking some crooks.

This one doesn't tease much but the reference is harder for non-comics people. This is the Spider-signal and if you don't know what that is I'm not surprised. It's never really been in any of the adaptations and even the comics really don't use it anymore, but back in his early days Spider-Man had an interesting gimmick. Whenever he came upon a group of criminals or broke into a villain's lair, he'd shine a big red light of his mask on the wall to announce his presence. Ostensibly this was meant to scare people. So yeah, Spider-Signal. Think Bat-signal but instead of a big spotlight it's a tiny flashlight. And instead of being used to summon the hero, the hero uses it to let people know he's there. Yeah, it was kind of a weird idea. I give the movie props though for putting the signal on his wrist web-shooters, which makes more sense, and not on Spider-Man's belt buckle like in the comics. Anyway, the main thing to take away from this stinger is that Spider-Man's going to keep hanging out with Iron Man and getting new toys.

And that's it. Like I said it's not much to go on but I have a guess as to how things will play out from here. Much like after the superhero civil war in the comics, we'll probably going to have two Avengers teams for a little while. Captain America's Avengers who are operating secretly out of Wakanda & Iron Man's Avengers operating openly out of the US. None of the coming movies focus on the characters in Civil War, but Iron Man's going to be in Spider-Man's movie and we can assume Cap will probably be in Black Panther's, so we'll only get hints of the conflicts between the two Avengers teams. Like we might hear about a clash between them or rumors about one of the teams while the new superheroes are having their adventures. Hell, maybe Iron Man or Captain America will show up at the end of Dr. Strange or Thor: Ragnarok trying to recruit new heroes to their respective teams. That will probably be the status quo until Thor & the Hulk come back from their space road trip next November and go, "Guys, come on. Get over your bullshit. There's a big purple guy in space who wants to kill everyone to impress his girlfriend. We've got bigger problems!" Laugh if you want, but I'd bet good money Infinity War Part 1 plays out something like that. If maybe more seriously.

Honestly, despite my comics knowledge your guess is as good as mine as to where the Marvel Cinematic Universe will go. Civil War has blown apart the status quo and it's clear we won't be going back to buddy-buddy days of the first Avengers movie. To make things worse, we won't be seeing a lot of the characters whose fates are up in the air for a good long while after this. 2018 at the earliest for some of them. Almost anything could happen at this point and I'll be just as surprised as you. Isn't that exciting?