'Avengers: Endgame' Post-Credits Sound: Why It's Unlike Anything Before

After eleven years and 22 movies, Marvel is doing something different for Avengers: Endgame. The signature post-credits stinger is nothing like any of the bonus scenes fans have seen in previous movies. Rather, it’s a little echo of the movie that started this franchise so many years ago.

While the bonus material is not a “post-credits scene” per se, it is an homage to the beginning of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Fans who also waited for the credits of David Gordon Green’s Halloween sequel will be familiar with how Marvel approached its post-credits for Avengers: Endgame.

Minor spoilers for Avengers: Endgame ahead.

To put it simply, there are no post-credits scenes for Avengers: Endgame. While the next film in the billion-dollar franchise will be Spider-Man: Far From Home, which swings into theaters on July 5, Marvel didn’t tease that movie in the credits of Endgame. Nor did it tease any other future movie.

Black Widow? Nope. Doctor Strange 2? Nah. Black Panther 2? Captain Marvel 2? The Eternals? Shang-Chi? No, no, and noooope.

Marvel is serious when it says Avengers: Endgame is the end of an 11-year chapter. Yes, of course they will make more movies. But the empty, immediate aftermath of Endgame is a breather for audiences. Besides Spider-Man, fans are free from expecting anything new, at least for now.

So what’s in the post-credits of Avengers: Endgame? Hammering.

The sound of hammering bashing steel is mixed into Alan Silvestri’s composition for the film’s credits. There are no visuals; it’s all audio, like Michael Myers’ breathing in the “post-credits” of Halloween.

Why hammering? Because of Iron Man.

Remember that the beginning of this entire universe was through Robert Downey Jr.’s solo vehicle Iron Man, released in the summer of 2008. In that movie, Downey Jr. played Tony Stark as a billionaire weapons and arms industrialist who is kidnapped and held at ransom. Stuck in a dark cave, Stark forges the Mark I armor that allowed him to break free.

This, dear reader, is what started it all for Marvel Studios.

While superhero movies were already money-makers by 2008, Iron Man changed everything. Downey Jr.’s magnetic charisma and the alluring promise of an interconnected universe, which had never been done before outside comics (Marvel’s first post-credits scene with Nick Fury is still the benchmark it has frankly not matched since) cemented Iron Man as something more than just a superhero blockbuster. It was the start of something new.

Avengers: Endgame hits theaters on April 26.