Let’s Talk About the End and Post Credit Scenes from ‘Captain America: The Winter Soldier’

Massive spoilers ahead so if you haven’t seen Captain America: The Winter Soldier or just want to know about the ending and post credit scenes read on….

By Damon Martin — Editor/Lead Writer

Before I even launch into my dissection of the end, the post credits scene and the post-post credits scene from Captain America: The Winter Soldier, make sure you’ve seen the movie already or at the very least understand you are about to read some serious spoilers. No excuses beyond this line, you know what you’re getting yourself into.

Also, don’t forget to check out the full review of Captain America: The Winter Soldier if you are planning on seeing it and want to know if it’s any good or not (it is really good actually), but now begin the massive, huge, gargantuan spoilers. If you read any further it’s on you!

THE END OF CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE WINTER SOLDIER

Captain America, Black Widow and a very much alive Nick Fury along with Falcon squash the plans of Alexander Pierce and the virus known as HYDRA that’s secretly been running SHIELD since its inception. Part of the rooting out process of finding out who was working for who revealed that HYDRA has had a hand in SHIELD since the very beginning, and Fury’s solution is to just gut the entire entity to eliminate any possibility of HYDRA still having some kind of stranglehold over the organization.

At the site of Nick Fury’s grave — side note did anyone else notice the grave stone? It said Nick Fury – Ezekiel 25:17 – the path of the righteous man – a nice homage to arguable Samuel L. Jackson’s most memorable role in Pulp Fiction — the entire group decides to go their separate ways in the wake of SHIELD’s dismantling. This also includes a group of SHIELD agents dispersed from their current jobs including Agent 13, Cap’s former neighbor, who at least based on the comic books would be Sharon Carter, niece of Peggy Carter, who everybody should remember from the first Captain America movie as well as the sequel. Agent Maria Hill was seen applying for a job at Stark Industries, obviously putting her in line to potentially appear in Avengers: Age of Ultron.

Captain America is going on a hunt to find his friend Bucky Barnes aka The Winter Soldier along with his new pal Sam Wilson aka The Falcon. Nick Fury is going to continue his hunt to find the secret head of HYDRA while Natasha Romanav testified before a Senate subcommittee before we presume she disappeared back into the black ops underground. Of course she has a major role in The Avengers 2, so that’s likely when she’ll pop back up next and hopefully rekindle her new spark with Cap after the latest movie flirtations.

Meanwhile, from the ashes of HYDRA’s infiltration of SHIELD we also met for the first time Brock Rumlow, who was one of the major baddies that kept popping up trying to stop Cap in whatever he was doing. He eventually did battle with The Falcon before his body was terribly burned towards the end of the movie. We did see him being carried out, still alive, which opens the door to his alter ego to appear in Captain America 3 (which we already know is being made). Actor Frank Grillo played him in the movie looking like this:

And assuming he is going to become the masked villain Crossbones in the next film, this is akin to his comic book outfit:

AGENTS OF SHIELD

One major factor that we might find out an answer to as early as Tuesday is what happens to ABC’s TV show Agents of SHIELD now that the entire organization has been dismantled from top to bottom? In theory there is no more SHIELD so how are there still agents globe trotting around trying to solve cases? Obviously the show knew this monkey wrench was being toss into the works, but it still creates an interesting scenario for a freshman show still waiting to get picked up for year two. How do you have an Agents of SHIELD if there is no SHIELD?

It was noticeable during Captain America that Agent Phil Coulson was missing in action, out taking care of business with his new team. His presence was still missed because Coulson idolized Cap as witnessed in The Avengers so it would have been nice for him to at least make an appearance.

INTRODUCING BARON VON STRUCKER, SCARLET WITCH AND QUICKSILVER

As per usual with every Marvel film these days, there’s a post credits scene that sets up a future movie, this time teasing The Avengers: Age of Ultron. Following the destruction of SHIELD and the HYDRA element secretly running things, we meet Baron Wolfgang von Strucker (the gentleman wearing the monicle in the post fight scene). He’s discussing how HYDRA still has plenty more to do before this battle is over, and that’s when he reveals a secret weapon being housed in their lair — it’s Loki’s scepter from The Avengers.

On top of that they have two people locked in glass cages that he calls ‘the twins’ — who we soon discover are Quicksilver (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) and his sister Scarlet Witch (Elizabeth Olsen). Quicksilver is running around his enclosed box of a space, bouncing off the walls with his super speed, while Scarlet Witch is using telepathy and telekinesis to toss around some children’s blocks using only her mind.

Baron von Strucker (played by Thomas Kretschmann picture below) leaves us with an ominous warning before we cut away from the scene:

“This isn’t the age of spies, this is not even the age of heroes. This is the age of miracles and there’s nothing more horrifying than a miracle”

For those unaware, Marvel may be able to use Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver in their movies, but in comic book lore these two are the children of super powered mutant Magneto and they themselves are also mutants. Because of the licensing rights of the entire mutant catalog owned by 20th Century FOX, the word ‘mutant’ can’t even be used in the Marvel movies. So it appears the way that Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver came to be is by ‘miracle’. My guess is this is either part of an elaborate HYDRA discovery to find these special children, or they are part of an experiment that HYDRA conducted using Loki’s staff and other mystical items to create these ‘miracle’ twins.

Either way, we see Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver, which will eventually lead to their appearance in The Avengers: Age of Ultron. Baron von Strucker is also set to appear in that movie, but no matter what his role, he will not be the main villain because that’s already taken care of by the homicidal madman robot known as Ultron. I’ve theorized for months that Ultron will be a product of Stark Industries and directly from Tony Stark and since Robert Downey Jr. always tends to be the scene stealer in these movies, it makes sense to give him the central role in the creation of the big bad for this upcoming film. Still, Baron von Strucker will play a role especially considering how Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver will both be a big part of the upcoming movie and at least for now, they are under his lock and key.

THE INFINITY GAUNTLET

I’m certainly not the first person to theorize this, but once again we see Loki’s scepter with the big blue gem glowing in the middle of it and after he zapped Hawkeye and numerous others with it in the first Avengers movie, it’s led just about everybody to believe that is the mind gem from the infamous infinity gauntlet. For those unaware what the infinity gauntlet represents — it’s a collection of six gems that when combined make the user virtually indestructible with limitless power. Thanos — the big purple badass who gave Loki the scepter in the first Avengers movie — is a power crazed Titan, who wants nothing more than to control the universe and in the comics he nearly achieves this when he wields the power of the infinity gauntlet. There are additional theories that we see another of the infinity gems in Thor: The Dark World and another idea is that the Tesseract was also an infinity gem. I’d keep a close eye on Guardians of the Galaxy coming out in August because I have a hard time believing that they won’t encounter one of the gems as well, and maybe even a brief fleeting appearance from Thanos himself.

This is all going to eventually lead to the ultimate showdown in The Avengers 3, but we’ve got a long time and a lot of films to go before that all comes together. For now, just keep your eyes out for big, bright shiny gems that pop up in the Marvel Universe of films and see if you can spot more of the infinity gauntlets. To give you an idea of what they are and what they do, here’s a list courtesy of Marvel:

Time Gem–Total control over past, present and future. Total control over all aspects of time including time travel; stop, slow down, or speed up flow of time; accelerate or slow down aging, see into past/future and can also be used as a weapon by trapping enemies or entire worlds in unending loops of time.

Space Gem–Travel through space, mostly through teleportation. Able to interfere with the motion of other objects. Allows the user to exist in any location (or all locations), move any object anywhere throughout the universe and warp or rearrange space.

Soul Gem–Observe, attack, steal, manipulate and alter souls, living or dead. The gem is the gateway to an idyllic, pocket-universe. Also used to devolve artificial organisms back into a primitive state.

Reality Gem–Alters reality to anything the user wishes.

Power Gem–Virtually limitless strength, durability, and energy manipulation. This gem contains access to all power and energy that ever has or will exist, and can back the other gems and boost their effects. It allows the user to duplicate almost any physical superhuman ability and become invincible

Mind Gem–Virtually limitless psionic abilities including telepathy and telekinesis. Backed by the Power Gem, it is possible to access all minds in existence simultaneously

THE POST-POST CREDITS SCENE

The final teaser to the next Captain America movie came at the very end of the credits where we find The Winter Soldier at the Captain America museum display when he catches the part of the monument with a tribute to Bucky Barnes. At one point during the movie when Cap says his name and tries to reach his old friend, The Winter Soldier hesitates and nearly starts to remember who he once was before Alexander Pierce has his mind wiped again and starts the project over to keep his perfect assassin. Following the battle with Cap to bring down the Insight program, The Winter Soldier pulled him from the drink where he was about to drown. Now it appears somewhere deep down, a part of Bucky Barnes remains and his good friend Steve Rogers is on the hunt to find him.