I cannot stop thinking about the end credits scenes of Morbius. They might be the apex of what end credits scenes can be. From here? It’s all downhill. These scenes are magical. The scenes are terrible and, frankly, we love them for it. We’ve peaked and there’s no going back.
Morbius, the new Sony film set in the Spider-Man universe, was just released in theaters and, if you make it to the end, you’ll be rewarded with two of the most shocking end credit scenes in memory. But not because of how cool or exciting they are. No, nothing like that. These scenes have no idea what is going on. They make very little sense, acknowledge themselves as much, and were largely spoiled in marketing before release. Suffice to say, this was a very fun article to write.
We’re gonna drop a spoiler warning below, but again, the film’s director was already ruining these scenes before the film’s release, and one was teased in a recent trailer, you can probably read ahead without much worry.
As you may have read in our review, much of Morbius is about Dr. Michael Morbius (Jared Leto) trying to balance the need to keep his vampire powers, which keep him alive, with the desire to drink human blood. Ideally, he could stay a vampire and not kill anybody, but the film never lets us know how or if he finds that balance. Instead, after the final battle, it ends with a close-up of the good doctor flying through the air and goes right into the credits. The edit leads you to believe that the end credits scenes may, you know, wrap up the actual story of the movie. On the contrary.
Instead, after a few credits, scene one begins with a skyline and fracture in the sky. Fans who saw Spider-Man: No Way Home recognize this as the multiverses blending from the end of the film so, you’d imagine, shit’s about to go down. What actually goes down though is Adrian Toomes (Michael Keaton), last seen in Spider-Man: Homecoming, materializes in a jail cell. He looks confused for a half-second before being completely OK materializing in another universe where his wife and daughter don’t exist. He then says something cute along the lines of “I hope the food is better in this place.” Next, we see a news segment about how police are baffled that this man appeared out of nowhere in a jail cell and that they’re planning on letting him out as soon as possible.
In No Way Home, it was established that anyone who knew that any Peter Parker was Spider-Man was being drawn to the MCU dimension, and the only way to stop it was for everyone to forget Peter was Spider-Man, hence that movie’s bittersweet ending. But this ending doesn’t seem to fit in with that. Toomes is in fact one of the people who knows Peter Parker is Spider-Man but somehow he magically goes from the MCU dimension into another dimension instead of staying in his own and forgetting about Peter. The act makes zero sense, almost as if Doctor Strange’s spell didn’t work. At least it makes more sense that he’s not a criminal in this dimension and is let out of jail, setting up the second scene.
After a few more credits, we cut back for scene two. In it, we see Morbius himself driving to some random location way outside of the city. Before we get to that, it’s important to note that Morbius looks fine. Almost as if he’s solved his little problem about drinking human blood and is thriving, with plenty of time to drive into the middle of nowhere to meet random people. Does the movie care that this main storyline is not explained? Nope. Of course not. Nice work, team. A real bang-up job there.
Anyway, Morbius arrives at this random spot and sees something big flying toward him on the horizon: it’s Adrian Toomes in a version of the Vulture costume from Spider-Man: Homecoming. Before we get to what he says (aka the best part), let’s break the costume down. As far as we know, the Avengers don’t exist in this universe. So the Chituari don’t exist in this universe, or at least haven’t invaded New York. If that’s true, how the hell does Toomes piece together a version of the Vulture suit without the technology that made it possible in the first place? No one knows. No one cares.
We assume Toomes heard about Morbius on the news because he’s still a fugitive or something and wanted him to meet, but that seems like a whole other story we’re going to skip. Then comes true perfection. Toomes says something along the lines of “I don’t know why I’m here. I think it has something to do with Spider-Man. But I feel like guys like you and me should team up.” Morbius agrees.
Let’s step away for a second here and imagine a boardroom at Sony. Executives and writers are discussing an exciting end credits scene for Morbius that will tease a potential Sinister Six movie, the obvious implication here that does not need any kind of deeper thought. You’d imagine the consideration could have gone like this:
“Why is Toomes there?”
“I don’t know, something to do with Spider-Man?”
“Well, obviously, but what exactly?”
“I don’t know but someone can figure it out eventually.”
“But if we don’t know why he’s there, what’s he going to say?”
“How about he just literally says he doesn’t know why he’s there, that it has something to do with Spider-Man, and we leave it at that?”
“That’s a terrible idea.”
“Do you have a better one?”
The direct, literal, dumb nature of this scene might be the end of end credit scenes as we know them. We’ve gotten to the point where the characters can kind of just say “Hey, we don’t know what this means but we’re here on-screen” and expect the audience to care. We might as well see them sitting at a desk signing their contracts for Morbius 2. At least that would have been concrete. But no, instead it’s “I don’t know why I’m here, probably something to do with Spider-Man.” Genius.
Now, if you want to get all serious about it, based on dialogue in the film we can guess that Tom Hardy’s Venom, Jared Leto’s Morbius, and now Michael Keaton’s Vulture are all in this universe. The film also shows a few Daily Bugle headlines about a Chameleon also breaking out of somewhere (the above image also has Rhino and Black Cat but I’m not 100% sure that’s still in the movie.) That’s at least four villains. Aaron Taylor Johnson’s Kraven the Hunter is coming next. All of which, yes, seems to be pointing towards a Sinister Six movie.
But after this scene, short of beings as powerful as the Living Tribunal explaining why they made sure everyone forgot about Peter Parker except this one guy and funneled him and others into one specific dimension, there’s little chance a Sinister Six movie with these characters will fit as cleanly in the Marvel Cinematic Universe as Spider-Man: No Way Home did. And that’s not even mentioning that the existence of the Daily Bugle all but confirms there’s a Spider-Man out there too. Or there is about to be. Because why not just ruin a good thing even more?
And when the fuck does the opening scene of this movie take place? We’ve talked about the end credit scenes but in the opening of this movie, where Morbius goes to Costa Rica to do something with the bats... we never know what he’s doing, what the result is, or when in context to everything else it happens. That should have been the first clear sign at how this movie has zero cares about narrative clarity.
I digress. I’ve given this dumb movie way too much time. I’m going to make like Vulture and just literally say that I’ve written too much and am going to end here.
Morbius is now in theaters... if you dare.
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Morbius’ End Credits Scenes Defy Logical Explanation - Gizmodo
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