China loves Avengers: Endgame’s subtle after-credits moment

It’s no ordinary stinger, but there’s still something waiting at the end

Trending in China

Josh Ye

Published: 8:43pm, 26 Apr, 2019

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This article originally appeared on ABACUS

Does Avengers: Endgame have a post-credits scene?

(There are spoilers in this story, so don’t scroll past this picture if you don’t want to know more about Endgame!)

At first glance, it doesn’t appear to. That’s surprising given how almost every movie in the Marvel Cinematic Universe has a mid or post-credits scene. (The second Guardians of the Galaxy film had five!)

Diehard fans of the MCU in China say there’s a reason to stay. The topic #Avengers4hasanaftercredits is now going viral on the country’s social media platform Weibo.

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But it’s not a traditional scene, it’s an extremely subtle audio cue. For about five seconds, as the Marvel logo appears at the very end of the movie, you can hear the sound of metal clanging.

This appears to be a callback to when Tony Stark was forging his first Iron Man suit in a cave in Afghanistan all the way back in 2008. It’s an especially meaningful allusion for Avengers: Endgame given that Tony Stark died while saving the universe from annihilation at the hands (or gauntlet) of Thanos.

Check out Avengers: Endgame Deluxe Figurine set on Amazon

Iron Man has been the shepherd of the Avengers, and it all started with Tony Stark forging his first Iron Man suit in a cave in Afghanistan. (Picture: Marvel Studios)

Online it looks like Chinese MCU fans are charmed by the callback. The number of posts related to #Avengers4hasanaftercredits has reached over 48,000 in the past two days.

“It’s as if I heard the sound of my heart shattering,” one Weibo commenter said. “It’s been ten years. Farewell, my heroes.”

Some even more diehard MCU fans dug out the original footage from the first Iron Man movie and found an interesting tidbit: Tony hammered his Iron Man helmet exactly 11 times in the original film, which coincides with the number of years between Iron Man and Avengers: Endgame. While it might be a coincidence, some see it as deliberately planned with the foundation of the full MCU saga laid out more than a decade ago.

“Listening to this sound is harder than having a post-credit scene,” a Weibo user wrote. “This is the sound of where it all started as well as where it all ended… Marvel Studios is so detail-obsessed, I’m crying.”

Tony Stark isn’t the only character with callbacks to their previous films, of course. All the original Avengers have their moments, especially Captain America. But while this film is seen as a fond farewell for the original heroes, only Iron Man gets a nod at the end of the credits.

Avengers: Endgame is already huge in China. With the blockbuster hitting the country two days ahead of its US release, Earth's Mightiest Heroes shattered records for box office debuts in the country, topping out at around US$107 million in just one day.

Fans around the country are having emotional reactions to the end of the current era of the Avengers. In the most extreme case, one Chinese woman ended up howling uncontrollably at the cinema to the point that she was immediately hauled off to the emergency room after hyperventilating, according to Chinese media.

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