[Warning: This article contains Thunderbolts* spoilers.] The Fantastic Four have taken their first steps into the Marvel Cinematic Universe. There are four movie-ending reveals in Thunderbolts*, with the first being that the final film of Phase 5 is an Avengers movie after all. Thunderbolts* is actually titled *The New Avengers, the Thunderbolts are really the new Avengers in a trademark dispute with the other team of new Avengers being assembled by Anthony Mackie’s Captain America, and the upcoming The Fantastic Four: First Steps film apparently ends with Marvel’s First Family rocketing into the main MCU from their alternate, retro-futuristic version of the 1960s.
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In a post-credits scene set 14 months after Valentina Allegra de Fontaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) declares Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh), Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan), John Walker (Wyatt Russell), Alexei Shostakov (David Harbour), and Ava Starr (Hannah John-Kamen) to be the new Avengers, Earth’s mightiest heroes are alerted to a spaceship that has entered the atmosphere. Although the ship’s occupants are unrevealed, the Anthony and Joe Russo-directed scene ends with the New Avengers looking at the giant “4” logo emblazoned atop the spacecraft.
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As it turns out, the sequence cut an exchange between Stan’s Bucky and Russell’s John, who would have had an Abbott and Costello “Who’s on First?”-style exchange about the number 4.
“We had a very funny thing,” Stan told Rotten Tomatoes. “Because [Bucky] was looking at [the Fantastic Four’s spaceship] as it comes in, and I go, ‘What’s the number for?’”
“And [John] had to be like, ‘What’s the number for, or what’s the number four?’” Russell added. “And it turned into a Leslie Nielsen sketch.”
“I thought it was just genius,” Stan said. “I’m very sad it’s not there.” Russell, however, was “very happy it wasn’t there, because I think it might’ve made everybody want to murder my character immediately.”
The post-credits sequence sets up not only The Fantastic Four: First Steps, the first film of the MCU’s Phase 6, but next summer’s Avengers: Doomsday, which brings the Fab Four — Reed Richards/Mister Fantastic (Pedro Pascal), Susan Richards/the Invisible Woman (Vanessa Kirby), Johnny Storm/the Human Torch (Joseph Quinn), and Ben Grimm/Thing (Ebon Moss-Bachrach) — into the present-day MCU.
Thunderbolts* director Jake Schreier confirmed that the post-credits scene was recently filmed by the Russos during the currently-shooting Avengers: Doomsday, which doesn’t hit theaters until May 2026.
“I didn’t film that scene. I was there when it was filmed, and I can say that it comes from the set of a production that might be starting production right around now,” Schreier told ComicBook in April. “But I was so honored to have that happen. We always knew kind of the end moment, from the beginning, and then it was about building the story that led up to that [The New Avengers reveal].”
“The specifics of what those end credits scenes came to be, those came together quite late,” he added. “That only got filmed maybe [not] even a month ago at this point. It was very recent.”
Thunderbolts*/*The New Avengers is now playing in theaters, followed by Matt Shakman’s The Fantastic Four: First Steps on July 25 and the Russos’ Avengers: Doomsday on May 1, 2026.
