Good news for viewers who like being the first one out of the parking lot: You won’t have to stay through the end credits of Avengers: Age Of Ultron. (Unless, of course, you want to acknowledge the hard work of the hundreds and hundreds of workers who put a ton of effort into the film you just enjoyed by watching their names scroll by for 10 minutes.) According to director Joss Whedon in EW, Ultron will not have a post-credits scene a la the classic shawarma-eating segment that closed out Whedon’s first Avengers.
Oh, don’t worry, this is a Marvel movie, so there will still be a mid-credits scene, presumably setting up one of the upcoming films in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. (My guess: Possibly something Ant-Man-related, more likely a tease of next year’s Captain America: Civil War.) Marvel president Kevin Feige clarifies that “there will be a tag... but there’s not a post-post credits scene.”
Whedon seems to be all about tempering expectations in the EW article, insisting that this is not a fake-out, and he doesn’t want fans who stay until the very end of the credits to be disappointed by a scene that isn’t there. He says the decision not to do a post-credit scene stems from the feeling that he couldn’t top the schawarma scene, and that he didn’t want to “try to hit the same highs, because people will sense it.”
Feige also does a little bit of expectation-dashing of his own in the EW article, debunking rumors that Carol Danvers, a.k.a. Captain Marvel, would get her introduction in Ultron, in advance of her own planned movie in 2018. (A possible debunking of Feige’s debunking: Captain Marvel is included in Disney’s new Avengers figurine set, alongside Paul Bettany’s Vision, who is in Age Of Ultron. ETA: The set has been pulled from the store in the time it took this article to post, which isn’t suspicious at all.) Feige says there is a “secret female character, but she may be familiar already.” If I had to wager a guess—which I don’t, but I will anyway—I’d say, assuming Feige isn’t just trying to get us off the scent of Captain Marvel, chances are good it’s a character from the TV series Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D., either Adrianne Palicki’s Bobbi Morse/Mockingbird, or Chloe Bennet’s Daisy “Skye” Johnson, who’s currently playing a big part in setting up Phase 3 of the MCU. There’s also the (very appealing) outside chance it could be Krysten Ritter debuting as Jessica Jones, a former superheroine (and briefly an Avenger) who will be heading up her own Netflix series later this year.
Whoever this mystery secret character is, Feige assures us, “It’s not a big deal. But it’s a good character.” Silly Feige. When it comes to MCU rumors, everything is a big deal, even the things we won’t see.