Both of Captain Marvel's End Credits Scenes Are Important, but For Very Different Reasons

Not long after the credits for the film start scrolling, the midcredits scene begins. In it, we find ourselves in the top-secret lab in the Avengers compound that we've seen in past Marvel films, where Steve, Nat, Bruce, and Rhodey are dealing with the aftermath of Thanos's Avengers: Infinity War snap. While Captain Marvel takes place in 1995, this is clearly back in present day, and can't be much more than a day or two after the events of the snap.

Steve and Nat are staring in horrified shock at the screens around them, which are tallying the ever-growing number of people who turned to dust around the world. "This is a nightmare," Steve says, before Nat retorts, "I've had better nightmares." Obviously things aren't going so well for them. Fortunately, they do have a lead: Nick Fury's '90s-era pager.

Bruce alerts the pair that the device, which he's been monitoring since Fury's disappearance in New York, has stopped emitting the signal that it was initially, and they worry about what the pager is for or who it could be used to contact. But luckily, they don't have to wonder for long: Carol magically appears in her suit inside the lab, and asks the group, "Where is Fury?" So, yes: Captain Marvel can time travel, apparently? And infiltrate the Avengers compound without raising a single alarm? And do it all silently?

On top of that, her appearance is of note because it raises questions about when, exactly, it is — is her arrival before the footage we've seen thus far in Endgame trailers, or nah? And how will Steve incorporate Carol into his plan for the Avengers? We have to assume that she'll play a major role in helping the team defeat Thanos, if only so she can bring back her BFF Fury.

It all happens so fast that there's really not enough time to sufficiently ruminate on all the details of her hop forward in time, but it's exciting nonetheless.

If you finish watching this movie and don't rate Goose the Not-Actually-a-Cat-but-Basically-a-Cat your favorite character, then we suggest reevaluating your life immediately. The cuddly little guy is actually a deadly breed of alien called a "flerken", but just happens to appear on Earth in cat form. But whenever Goose decides his pals — Fury, especially — are in trouble, he can open his mouth incredibly wide to reveal a GIANT, gaping mouth filled with tentacles and razor-sharp teeth (so, not your usual house cat).

Over the course of the film, Goose drags a number of foes to their deaths and into his mouth, but he also happens to swallow something both familiar and important to fans of the MCU to keep it away from Yon-Rogg: the Tesseract. The immensely powerful glowing blue cube is what powers the light-speed engine that Mar-Vell (Annette Bening) is working on earlier in the film, and has popped up previously in plenty of MCU films.

Goose finally decides to release the Tesseract in the final postcredits scene, which is a lighthearted gag in the vein of Ant-Man and the Wasp's recent postcredits scene featuring the ant playing drums. In a lengthy, and hilarious, sequence, we watch as Goose climbs on top of Fury's desk (yes, the S.H.I.E.L.D. agent adopts him as his own pet), and slowly coughs up the mother of all fur balls, which happens to be the Tesseract. Goose then offers up an adorable little meow, and casually saunters off. Honestly, we couldn't have asked for a better ending.

There's not much to pick apart here since it's mostly for fun, unless you want to examine all the different reasons why we should stan Goose (the list is endless). To be fair, it does take place in the '90s, since the monitor on Fury's desk is an ancient model, which means it's decades before Thor ever gets his hands on the Tesseract in the first Avengers film (and long before Thanos destroys it in Infinity War so he can get the Space Stone for the Infinity Gauntlet).

Ah, simpler times.