The following post contains SPOILERS for the post-credits scene for Ms. Marvel.
Marvel’s commitment to secrecy is wild. I’ve heard of supporting actors not getting entire scripts, or being kept in the dark about twists they didn’t need to know about. But the directors of a TV show not knowing about their own series’ final scene until they saw it during post-production? That’s pretty extreme.
But according to Ms. Marvel directors Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah, that’s exactly what happened on their show. In an interview with Collider they revealed that they were not involved with their show’s post-credits scene, which saw the series’ first and only appearance by Brie Larson’s Captain Marvel, leading into the character’s return (and team-up with Ms. Marvel) in the upcoming film The Marvels.
In fact, The Marvels director Nia DaCosta was the one who directed that scene. But Adil & Bilall says they were absolutely clueless about the sequence, or whether Captain Marvel would show up at all, until the episode was almost entirely complete.
Here’s El Arbi’s quote about that scene:
Nia DaCosta shot that while she was shooting The Marvels. She was on set with Brie Larson and Iman, and she didn’t know that scene was going to be used for the post-credit scene. Marvel is very good in separating all the things. So, we would always ask Kevin, ‘Yo, when’s Captain Marvel going to show up?’ And he would always tell us, ‘Don’t worry about it. You’ll see.’ Meanwhile, he has said to Nia DaCcosta, ‘Just shoot that scene. We need that. And you’ll see.’ All of a sudden, when we were calibrating the final episodes after the credits, we said, ‘Oh. There’s Captain Marvel.” So that was a big surprise for us, as well.
I just love the idea that the directors of this show asked Kevin Feige if a character was in the show — a character who’s pretty essential to the whole endeavor, since she’s Ms. Marvel’s favorite superhero and inspiration — and was like “Don’t worry about it.” And they accepted that answer!
The full season of Ms. Marvel is now available on Disney+. The Marvels is scheduled to open in theaters on July 28, 2023.
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