Avengers: Endgame Encore Reignited My Marvel Mania

Welcome back to Marvel Maniac and MCU After Show. This is your host Eric Cicada, aka Mr. Honest, and I just got back from watching Avengers Endgame Encore. And what an encore it was! If you have been putting off like a rewatch of this movie like I have for some time, I've been like putting it off just so I could kind of have the most fresh Endgame experience while watching Encore. And I'd say it worked. I mean, it hadn't been too long, but it'd been a little while. So I gotta say, the movie impressed me not having. Expectations of what the movie was going to be, knowing where it went, and just being able to kick back, watch one of my favorite movies that somehow managed to come out almost like 6 and a half years ago, 7 years ago. Uh, I can't even believe that. That is mind-boggling in itself. And you know, there were moments in the movie where you laugh. There's a lot of like comedic moments, and there wasn't too much crowd reaction from the smaller crowd, but we all had our moments where we laughed at the movie. I had Complete chills going down my spine and my entire body during the portal scene. Maybe is and forever will be one of the most iconic scenes in the history of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. I mean, come on, that was powerful. And to just know a little bit more about where some of these characters go in the following seven years that we've watched them grow and develop and change character stories and move characters to different places, it's a very nostalgic watch. And that being said, there wasn't any extra footage.

Spoilers! Spoiler alert!

Spoiler alert right now and end credits and possibly scenes from Avengers Doomsday. Okay, so you have been warned. I'm gonna give it one, two, three, five seconds, four, five. All right, we're gonna talk. I'm not even gonna say exactly what the post credits were, but all I'll say is you didn't get one inch of new. Material until the very end at the post-credit scenes, but they did not. I repeat, they did not disappoint. They gave us just enough. They just— it's basically equaled another trailer, um, and there was maybe 4 actual post-credits, but like the movie ended differently too. That's the thing. Okay, so let's talk about Steve Rogers and Peggy Carter. Dancing at the end, and you know we leave them there in Avengers Endgame. Endgame Encore changes one thing. I said it didn't change anything about the actual movie, but it felt like a post credits. But there's a knock or a doorbell; I don't remember. And Loki shows up at their front door, and Peggy doesn't know what to say. So can I help you? And he says, "No, I can help you." And Steve is like kind of hiding and he turns over. I don't know why he's hiding, to be honest, but he says, I can help both of you. And that's it. I'm like, that could have been the whole post-credits scene, but it wasn't. It was the actual different ending. So Endgame Encore might canonically hold the, the purest watch of Avengers: Endgame. And to watch it so early and then imagine watching Endgame encore, and then use that as your original endgame. Then go on to WandaVision, you know Falcon and the Winter Soldier, Black Widow, and like all the way through the Multiverse Saga. Like you have all of these crazy teasers for what the Multiverse Saga is about to bring, and what Doomsday is about to bring. It reminded me very much of the post credits scene. Let's say we got it like Age of Ultron, where we got to see a little hint of Thanos on his way, and what what the next Avengers movie itself is going to be bringing us for post-credit scenes. And I mean, we could do a whole episode about Steve Rogers, Peggy Carter, and Loki and how that's going to play out in the movie itself. And I mean, okay, let's see. Let me just say this first. Again, I said a little bit about the Loki ending, but I haven't really told you what I think about one thing: required viewing. This is something that I made a whole episode about. Was it a cash grab or was it required viewing? I'm going to tell you from my perspective that I love this movie. So no matter what, I would have loved enjoying watching it. But, but objectively, you might not have needed to see this before you've seen Doomsday, because if what happens with Loki happens at the end of Endgame Encore, We're gonna probably see that again in Doomsday. And I'm not sure about the other 2 scenes, but they do seem like scenes taken directly out of Doomsday. And for the final one, there's just— we'll talk about it in a bit. It's a bit eerie, and that's kind of a cool tease of what's to come and what's to be mirrored in Doomsday. But required viewing, um, I don't know yet. We will know. In retrospect, when Avengers Doomsday comes out, and I'm probably going to be so stoked about that film at that time to even come back to Encore and and ask did we need to see these post credit scenes to see the new Avengers movie? And I can't give you a straight answer on that because I don't know if these scenes are even going to be in the movie or they're just completely integral to the movie. Hence, why would you need to see them as the post credit scene? It definitely wants us to build hype. It definitely wants to break the internet and show us a little bit more about what's to come, where certain, uh, players in the movie are going to be moving, like Peggy and Steve, what's going to happen with them and Loki. And I hear rumors of what's going to happen. I don't want to talk too many spoilers or leaks or whatever, you know.

I—

beyond respect to whoever wants to talk about that, you're— you know, we all enjoy the movie process in a different way. Um, and forgive me for being a little scatterbrained. I got very excited after I watched these post-credit scenes. I got really excited when I saw Loki walk in a frame to come talk to Captain America, Steve Rogers, and Peggy Carter. And I know something crazy is going to happen with that. And for that to happen at the end of Endgame Encore, uh, it's going to have huge implications on the next movie, especially since we know Steve is coming back. I truly do believe Loki is projecting himself into the, uh, you know, the multiverse or wherever he's like showing himself. He could still knock on doors and stuff. We've seen him do this. He could shapeshift into different versions of himself. I think he could put himself anywhere on the timeline if he wanted. Or he— maybe he was just dethroned and we don't even know it yet. Maybe the Steve Rogers thing doesn't come in until halfway through the movie of Doomsday. We don't know. And I'm not here to speculate as much as I am, or to tell you a little bit about it and give you an instant take on all of it because I still needed to process it. But I wanted to come back here and like I said I would and let you know what I thought of all this stuff. The next actual post-credits scene, we are live at the TVA. Miss Minutes shows up on screen to kind of show what they're doing with the multiverse in the TVA these days with Loki being at the center, God of Stories holding it all together still. There's even a picture on the wall of Loki saying Employee of All Time. That's so Adorable, but very smart. I love that because he's watching over time, and for all time always isn't the new the expression anymore. I doubt since Kang is gone, but employee of all time. I loved that alone, and that's not all we got. We got Mobius, O.B., and I think the other guy's name is Casey, and they are watching over the tree. It is absolutely a tree now. It's just as we left it, but expanded upon. It seems like the TVA is in pretty good working order until we see an incursion start happening. And they're pretty aware of like the incursions because they weren't completely surprised by it. Mobius— I was hoping we'd see Victor Timely in there. I was hoping maybe we'd see him like, oh, he's coming back to finish, you know, finish the job. But I understand, uh, he's probably not going to be in That's just doomsday. But, you know, Obi and Mobius in the post-credits scene, pretty sick and pretty exciting. And what's even more exciting and terrifying is the Earths start fighting each other and launching rockets at each other, and there's another incursion, and then another, and then another, and then there's hundreds, and then there's thousands of incursions. And the last line we hear from Obi is, the multiverse is falling apart. And like everyone's in disbelief. The TVA is in fucking shambles. I mean, sorry, forgive my language. I don't swear on this show very much, but the it was scary. You know, you can't have peace at the TVA for very long after all that Loki did. The timeline is proving that Kang was right in a sense where you can't manage all of that time. The incursions will eat everything up apparently, which is. Probably going to be shown in the movie. If they don't show the scene in the movie, how are they going to explain the incursions to the new audience? The walk-inners who people who said, "Hey, I've never seen an Avengers movie before.

I might as well just go see this one." The culmination of 20 years of storytelling.

I mean, they gotta make they gotta make it so anyone could really understand the basic premise of what's going on here in these movies to make them lifelong MCU fans. So they go back to the beginning. Get completely hooked, watch all the MCU, and then have their own take. It's, it's a phenomenon. By the way, on a side note, there's a guy in my theater— this guy was loving this movie, Avengers: Endgame Encore. Like, just the movie that we all seen. He was laughing, he was, he was, he was everything.

He was so great.

And I like, I'm like, you know what, he gave me like the comfortable, uh, acceptance to laugh a little bit about the Back to the Future jokes. And I always like when Tony tells Scott Lang, uh, that it's, it's laughable. The time heist is a— it's laughable. Like, I don't know, something about that makes me really giggle because it does sound crazy, a time heist, and it's exactly what they end up doing.

But this man, this, you know, you think he'd get the memo, sir. He, he left. He left before even one post-credits scene.

He saw the different Loki ending and then he got up and he trotted out of there happily and very fast. And I mean, I can't help but laugh a little bit.

I wanted to yell, sir, You're gonna miss more stuff. There's probably more stuff, sir. And he—

and I didn't do that because that would be really awkward. But anyway, he left happy. I mean, that's the magic of Marvel for you right there. That's where we left the Avengers, not just the MCU, but the Avengers. And there's, you know, the Russo Brothers want to tie things together. And if they worked on the last movie and they're making the next one, they want to put things that glue the movies together and make everything makes sense. And it really does seem personally like everything they did in Endgame to desperately bring back the people that were gone for 5 years actually maybe ended the multiverse and put everything up against each other. And we're not blaming Steve directly, but Steve, you know, there's no— there's no indication that Steve— it's Steve's fault. I do want to see him bring the stones back. What did he do with the Aether? Did he just find Jane and inject it back in her? What the heck did he do with the Time Stone when he saw Not the Time Stone, um, the Soul Stone, when he saw Red Skull? And did they have a funny little interaction? Was Red Skull just gone? How do you return something like the Soul Stone? Like, there's so many questions and there's so many things I want to talk about that I'll probably use as fuel until Vision Quest, and we'll come back to all these little ideas. But something about the Infinity Stones are alive.

They're—

they have living beings in them that will pro— the people, maybe the Celestials, that set them up or made a system for them. I mean, who— it's a very specific thing to have to sacrifice yourself for something, uh, called the Soul Stone on that mountain where the ma— there's clearly magic involved. So we know that we're gonna get a lot of Loki, we're gonna get a lot of the TVA. Miss Minutes, hopefully less terrifying in this version of her. The first, she seems to be like fine again. The 3rd and maybe most important post-credits scene, I'd say the TVA one was maybe as important, if anything, was Bruce Banner follow-up from Spider-Man: Brand New Day. Spoiler alert for that movie: 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, 0. Okay, this is after that. He's buried 2 miles underground in a lab. They're letting him experiment, but they're not letting him on the, on the surface world. And I think Bruce is such, uh, I think he's such a good guy that he Doesn't want to risk the Hulk hurting anyone either, so he probably just went along with this. In his mind, he's just doing the best thing to not hurt people. Figure out what's going on with Hulk. He's doing kind of a video diary, and he has a pretty gnarly beard. And he sits down at the computer to show us some of his research and what he's doing and what he's figuring out. It's pretty intriguing. I don't know how relevant to everything multiverse related it is, but it gets completely interrupted by Doctor Doom himself off screen, and he needs. He needs the Hulk for something. He needs Bruce Banner for something, and he steals him away. And we we we hear his very strong Victor Van Doom voice, and that probably doesn't sound like him. Best you know, best I'm gonna do for now till I see the movie and get a little more. You know, we get to see the movie and get to talk more like Victor Van Doom. You can see I'm very animated tonight. The Avengers just this is why I do the podcast. This is why. I mean, the Avengers just gets me hyped. Uh, and man, powerful movie followed by powerful previews. So we are not going to be missing out on Bruce Banner slash the Hulk ideally in Doomsday. It seems like he's actually gonna have a major part to play, and big raging Hulk is back. So we have a Hulk again. We have a Hulk. And that's all I'll say on that for now. I'd like to know what you'd want me to expand on in episodes between now and Doomsday. Um, aside from Vision Quest, which is gonna take up a lot of the time of the podcast, but I think it's important. We've always covered the MCU shows, and I think Vision completely deserves to be followed and covered like we would have covered any other Marvel show. So that's pretty crazy that the Hulk got taken away by Victor Von Doom. And why this Hulk? What about the other Hulk variants? Lots of questions. Future answers will definitely hopefully come through in the movie. I don't know how they— I don't know how they're gonna explain this scene of Bruce Banner getting abducted, but maybe it is exclusive to Endgame Encore and he'll just be with Victor Von Doom and it'll be a passing line that I came and stole this Hulk because this is the only Hulk that was ever able to do this. And we don't know what, what it's gonna be. The final post-credit scene was very subtle. It was the one the true believers stayed for at the very end, with the Iron Man pounding the metal. Dong dong. You know, at the end of the regular Endgame seven years ago, that was Tony Stark in the cave building his armor for the first time. You know, time loops, time goes on, but we see something this time. And between every dong. We see a little dong bit of Dr. Doom. Oh yes, so Dr. Doom is coming, and he's coming to be—he's gonna be the the next Thanos in his own right. It's gonna be his story in Doomsday. I just feel it. Everyone's gonna be falling into the incursions, and Dr. Doom is gonna sneak by as a hero, kind of like Mysterio style, but on a bigger scale, and. I just, I just was so excited to see that they added that because I stayed till the end and I didn't want to feel like an idiot. And then I realized as the lights came up, many of the people stayed to that very end post-credits scene as well, except for that one gentleman who thoroughly enjoyed the movie but didn't know enough to stay or care enough to stay for the new footage that, that— I mean, let's Like some people just would have gone to see that movie just for. Like I said, I enjoyed the experience. I therapeutically freaking enjoyed that watching Endgame again on the big screen. It was powerful. It was fun. Maybe one of the funnest recent viewings of an MCU movie for me. It kind of reignited a place in my heart. Not that I ever have let go of the MCU and the love I have for it, but just watching Endgame again, it makes you remember. Oh. This is why I started a podcast called Marvel Maniac. I'm nuts about this stuff. It's the most off, unhinged episode yet. So we got Loki coming to see Steve and Peggy. We got the TVA announcing the end and collapse of the multiverse. We got Bruce Banner doing studies in a bunker two miles underground, maybe more, and getting abducted from that even though. how hard it is to get in or out of that place. The Hulk was safe down there and to not hurt anyone, and Doom got him out. And then we get the just pounding of the armor and we see a little bit of Doctor Doom. And that is where we're gonna leave it today. I wanted to give you the immediate react and I have done so. [email protected]. Let me know your thoughts. Let me know if you want to go into any more of this or just let the rest be a surprise and kind of just let this linger. I know a lot of you probably haven't seen the post-credit scenes, and I already know that they've leaked online plenty of places. And I wouldn't put it— I'm not going to advise that you look this up and find them. I'm not going to advise it. You could probably if you wanted to, but that's not what I would suggest. I can't say the word wink. Okay, anyway, fun night. I'm gonna let all this process. Maybe you'll get another episode out of me talking about some of this stuff, but I wanted to get the immediate reaction as I have always done as a you know couple years now. I come home, give you the first reaction, and it was a good time. Well worth the money spent on the ticket and required viewing possibly. We will come back to that on another on another day to be announced. There's a tip jar. In the notes section along with our Discord server, and you should join up and let's talk about all this. Make sure you put a spoiler alert tag if you want to talk about these post-credit scenes because some people might not want them spoiled. Maybe they got to wait a couple days to go see the Endgame Encore. So we'll be—I'll be careful with spoilers. And I mean, I should probably put a spoiler warning at the beginning of this episode, but I do say spoilers many times in this episode. This is a classic Marvel Maniac rant episode, and I haven't had one without, without building an outline first in a while. But, uh, you get it fresh here, folks. This has been Eric Cicada, your host, aka Mr. Honest. And until next time, Avengers, disassemble.