Did you sit through the end credits of the Hawkeye finale to see what was next for our heroes, only to be a little shocked by what was shown? You aren’t the only one. The episode’s director felt the same way.
End credits scenes have become a crucial part of the Marvel Studios DNA. With each and every film, fans sit through the credits expecting to see a tease of what’s to come for the future of the franchise. It’s a tradition that’s even continued into Marvel’s live-action Disney+ shows, with WandaVision, The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, and Loki all saving a little something extra for their respective finales. So everyone expected the same for Hawkeye and, well, what we got was rather untraditional.
The end credits of Hawkeye are interrupted by Marvel Studios wishing its fans “Happy Holidays,” followed by the entire production of “Save the City” from Rogers the Musical, which is glimpsed in parts during the show’s first episode. Here though we get the full song from beginning to end — and the decision to make it the end credits scene left the episode’s director, Rhys Thomas, a bit befuddled.
“I was not aware,” Thomas told Collider when asked about the scene. “It wasn’t planned that that was going to be the way that the show was going to close. I was actually a little in the dark too. I was curious, like, ‘Is this slot going to be reserved for teeing something else up, in the tradition that Marvel’s known for?’ I was waiting for what that was going to be. Yeah, they made the decision to put the musical at the end there, which honestly, I was slightly conflicted about because like a fan, I’m like, ‘The people, they want to see something, they want to know what’s coming next. Is this going to disappoint?’”
So Thomas, like fans, was expecting something a bit more narrative-driven, but he explained why that wasn’t the case.
“In all fairness again, to the team, it’s like, ‘No, no, no, it’s Christmas, it’s light. We’ve got so much blood in this episode, it’s just fun. It’s a fun release at the end, and it’s a nice way to send people off,’” he said. “That’s how that came about and in terms of what it was, that was part of… Obviously, when we shot it for episode one, we shot the entire thing, but obviously in episode one, the focus was Jeremy [Renner] and less of the performance. It was [an] evolution of that.”
It’s important to note that Marvel credits scenes aren’t always big stunning reveals. One of my personal favourites is the final one in Spider-Man: Homecoming, which is just Captain America teasing you for sitting through the credits. So there’s certainly precedent for something fun and cheeky, but with so many questions still unanswered about Kingpin, Clint, Kate, and the rest, it was a slightly surprising, but not unwelcome, decision.
Head over to Collider to read more from Thomas about the finale. It’s a great interview that dives into how much of the action was actually shot in Rockefeller Centre, the secrecy behind Kingpin, the banter between Kate and Yelena, and more.
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