Shazam! Fury of the Gods’ post-credits scenes promise Shazam will return… somehow

A lot has happened since the release of 2019 Shazam! and the new sequel, Shazam! Anger of the gods. The Future of Warner Bros.’ DC Comics movies have changed radically, first of all, and I’m not talking about that Black Adam.

So what happens in the credits scenes of Anger of the gods? After all, that’s traditionally where a superhero movie refers to what lies ahead for its heroes’ futures. And Shazam! Anger of the gods is no different.

(Ed. remark: This post contains spoilers for Shazam! Anger of the gods.)

Shazam: Anger of the Gods! has two credits scenes and the first points straight to the wider DC Universe – or at least one version of it.

Shazam joins the Justice Society

Agents Harcourt and Economos from HBO Max’s Peacekeeper grumbling down a back road at an undisclosed backwoods location to meet their contact: Shazam, who amuses himself by popping empty bottles into a run-down gas station. They organized the meeting on behalf of Amanda Waller, who warned them that the Philly superhero is extremely powerful and “a little immature”, but she thinks he could be a good addition to “the team”. She even knows that Shazam and Billy Batson are the same person.

And a little later we find out which team she meant. Harcourt and Economos offer Billy the chance to join the Justice Society. He immediately agrees, even though he’s disappointed they didn’t mean the Justice League. What is the difference? The cops are sketchy. “The Justice Society differs from the Justice League because of the way words work,” snaps Harcourt.

One joke about how they should change the name to “the Avenger Society”, and we’re back to the actual credits – Shazam has joined the Justice Society, which made its live-action movie debut in Black Adam last year.

Unfortunately, there’s no real indication that we’ll ever actually do that to see him alongside Hawkman, Doctor Fate and the rest. There are no Justice Society or Shazam movies on Warner Bros.’ recently redesigned series of DC Comics movies, at the earliest in the second half of this decade, after that Superman: Legacy will hit theaters in 2025. The Closest Potential Home For Zachary Levi’s Shazam Is The Amanda Waller-Based Spin-Off TV Series Wallerstill in development and is expected to premiere just before that Superman: Legacy – and again, there’s no indication Shazam will be involved.

So despite the presence of Peacekeeper characters linking this scene to DC Films co-CEO James Gunn, there’s no clear indication of where this particular plot thread leads. And that’s pretty much the case for Anger of the godssecond credits scene as well.

Mister Mind is…still at it

Image: Warner Bros. Pictures

If you remember your Shazam! Lore, you may remember that in the closing credits scene of the 2019 film, the main villain, Mark Strong’s Doctor Sivana, was having a chat (literally) with Mister Mind. That is, the diabolical worm genius who, along with Sivana and Black Adam, is one of the greatest enemies of the superhero comic book. Mind promised he had a plan to take down Shazam once and for all.

So where was Mister Mind for all of them Anger of the gods? According to director David Sandberg and writer Henry Gayden, they just couldn’t make the character work in this movie.

“I started working on the sequel a few weeks after the first one came out,” Gayden tells Polygon via video chat, “and it started with Mister Mind and Sivana really trying to follow that story. great on the day, but at the end of the day, the whole movie felt like a rehash of the first movie, just with this Mister Mind character. It didn’t feel like it was lofty; it felt a little redundant.”

In that first draft of the script, says Sandberg, “It was actually Mister Mind who enabled the (Daughters of Atlas) to come to Earth, as part of a greater plan of his. But it was just too much story to tell and just didn’t fit.”

To for Anger of the gods to really highlight Billy’s core conflict – holding on to the family he has after not having one for so long – Sandberg and Gayden said they had to create original villains that could mirror his situation: another set of superpowered siblings that might have been given and taken away.

In that way, this second Mister Mind scene is a telling joke. It’s pretty much exactly the same scene as described Shazam!, but this time Sivana complains that Mister Mind still hasn’t carried out his evil plan! Mind tells him, well it’s very hard for him to get places fast! Because he’s just a little worm!

But they won’t have much longer to wait, he promises, as if he’s about to finally spill the beans on his machinations, and then… “One more thing I need to do,” he says, immediately squirming away. .

Where will we finally see Mister Mind’s nefarious plan come to fruition? Well, as explained above, there’s really no telling. This may be the last we’ve seen of the world’s worst worm.