The Disney Plus side of Marvel as some making up to do following Secret Invasion‘s abject failure of a finale, which was so thoroughly trashed by critics and fans alike that it’s gone down as the worst-reviewed Marvel-made production bar none in the history of superhero content. Well, while we won’t get another live-action MCU series until Loki season two arrives in just under a month’s time, the franchise’s first new season since SI did just land on streaming this week, and confirmed the Nick Fury was a rogue element and not a sign of things to come in one major way.
First of all, among all its other flaws, Secret Invasion was also guilty of bringing an end to an unbroken tradition Marvel’s streaming series had inherited from the studio’s movies: the post-credits scene. Although most MCU Disney Plus episodes haven’t included something after the credits (unless we’re talking She-Hulk) every show has at least featured one somewhere, generally in either its penultimate chapter or finale. The Samuel L. Jackson vehicle, on the other hand, did no such thing, with not even a sneaky teaser for The Marvels tucked into the credits of its sixth episode.
Clearly, however, this was just a, um, blip as the just-released second season of I Am Groot returns to form. Even though each installment of the animated miniseries clocks in at hardly four minutes in length, without credits, one short still finds time to slot in a tag sequence that’s sure to please fans by featuring a cameo from a Guardians of the Galaxy favorite. The fact that I Am Groot managed to deliver on the one thing folks expect from each and every MCU release and SI didn’t is yet another black mark against it.
Thanks to I Am Groot, then, we can seemingly confirm that Marvel Studios has no plans to reduce its number of post-credits scenes across the board and is fully aware that Secret Invasion dropped the ball in that regard, as well as numerous others. Who could’ve that expected the adventures of Baby Groot would be a better mascot for the MCU than an adaptation of a seminal comic book storyline? The Multiverse Saga is wild, guys.