Can we safely assume that you’ve seen Captain America: The Winter Soldier by now? Actually, can we safely assume that you’ve seen ALL of the Marvel movies by now? Yes? Good. Because if not, this is SPOILER CITY, Population: ALL of the Spoilers!

Marvel’s movies are now synonymous with the post-credit sequences, and now they’ve gone and spoiled us by sometimes dropping TWO little scenes to enjoy once the film is over. However, not all of them have been teaser-y gold, with a few of them totally not worth the time we wasted sitting through the endless end credits. Looking back over them all, from Iron Man right up to The Winter Soldier, we’ve ranked them from worst to best, so this is your last chance to look away if you haven’t seen them and don’t want them ruined for you.

12. CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE WINTER SOLDIER – MUSEUM VISIT

Yes, the most recent one is the worst one. This pops up right at the very, VERY end of the movie, with the titular Winter Soldier wandering through the Captain America museum exhibition, looking at his own eulogy. It’s probably supposed to be some kind foreshadowing, but of what, we’ve no idea. It was a go nowhere bit of fluffy nothing that was the dictionary definition of superfluous.

11. THOR: THE DARK WORLD – BACK ON EARTH

Natalie Portman is all “Woe, where’s Thor? I misssss hiiiiimmmmm!”, and everyone’s eating strategically placed product placement breakfasts, and then there’s a crack of thunder and Thor is on the balcony and they make out. Not that we don’t enjoy watching attractive people making out, but it was all a little “Is that it?” But then there’s a giant space monster running around the abandoned factory, which was kinda funny.

10. THE INCREDIBLE HULK – PUTTING A TEAM TOGETHER

General Ross is getting his drink on after watching two giant green monsters smack the shit out of each other, when Tony Stark arrives to poke fun at him. But then he mentions that he’s “putting a team together”, which was obviously teasing about The Avengers. Except if you think about it, it doesn’t make any sense, since Tony isn’t in a position to put that team together, and why would he be telling General Ross about it. See? No sense.

9. IRON MAN 3 – YOU WON’T LIKE ME WHEN I’M SLEEPY

Tony Stark is talking about his emotional, personal problems of BEING, y’know, Tony Stark to what we think is a therapist, until the camera turns and we see he’s talking to Bruce Banner, who is falling asleep. While it was a pretty funny scene, this was the movie that followed the awesome plot-forwarding end scene of The Avengers, so we expected a bit more, didn’t we? We did.

8. CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE FIRST AVENGER – TRYING TO SAVE THE WORLD

Having effectively spent the entire movie just getting into the modern world, Steve Rodgers is rightfully a little pissed off that everyone he’s ever known and loved is long dead. Taking out his frustration on a punching bag, Nick Fury walks into the room and propositions Rodgers to get back into the Saving The World game that he’s so obviously good at. And then we got a mini trailer for The Avengers. Think back to when this happened, before we thought The Avengers could even be pulled off. This was EXCITING.

 

7. THE AVENGERS – SHAWARMA TIME

 

This was unexpected, since we’d already gotten credits scene, but when all the heroes were sitting around a wrecked Shawarma restaurant, all obviously bruised and battered and exhausted, this was a nice little note to end the movie on. Would you say the restaurant owner charged them for the food? Man’s gotta make a living, right?

 

6. THOR: THE DARK WORLD – THE COLLECTOR

This is, by far, the WEIRDEST of the post-credits scenes. Everything about it just felt a bit … off. Sif and Volstagg visit The Collector, played by a tricked-out Benicio Del Toro, leaving him to take care of the Aether. “One down, five to go.” So we’re talking about the Infinity Stones, which the Aether is one of, as is the Tesseract, and The Collector wants them all so he can create the Infinity Gauntlet, which is a big deal. This is all leading into Guardians Of The Galaxy, which The Collector is one of the villains in, as well as a very big future plot. But it was all so weird, with all the creatures and naked people, and it felt like it was shot for a tenner in about an hour.

 

5. IRON MAN 2 – COULSON FINDS MJOLNIR

“Sir, we found it.” With that, we’re introduced to Thor, as we see a big ass hammer in the middle of a crater in New Mexico. We knew the God Of Thunder was coming, but this was the first hint of what the plot might involve, and it ties in nicely to actual plot of Thor, where he does indeed have Mjolnir taken away from him and put on Earth. Things were certainly beginning to come together.

 

4. IRON MAN – THE AVENGERS INITATIVE

The first of the Marvel movies, the first of the post-credits scenes, so we had no idea this was even coming. Oh My God, the film’s not over! There’s more! THERE’S MORE! Wait, who’s that? Is that… Sam Jackson?? Why is he here?? OHMYGOD HE’S NICK FURY!! What’s he saying? The what initiative? The WHAT initiative? Did he just say Avengers?? OHMYGODOHMYGODOHMYGOD!

 

3. CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE WINTER SOLDIER – THE TWINS

Yes, The Winter Soldier is burdened with one of the worst post credit scenes, but also one of the best! This is an information overload, so you really need to be paying attention. We discover that Hydra, or at least some new form of it, is still very much intact, and under the command of Baron Von Strucker (Thomas Kretschmann), and they’ve got a lot going on. Not only do they have Loki’s staff (which we’re guessing has yet another Infinity stone in it), but they’ve also got The Twins; Quicksilver (Aaron Taylor Johnson) and The Scarlet Witch (Elizabeth Olsen). We see the former running around his cell at high speed, bumping off the walls, and the latter using her powers to make stuff float, before exploderizing them into little bits. Von Strucker refers to it as “The Age Of Miracles”, which is just another word for “mutants”, without actually saying “mutants”, because they can’t because the X-Men universe owns the world “mutants”. Fact. Expect to see a lot more of these folk in The Avengers: Age Of Ultron.

 

2. THOR – THE TESSERACT

This was the last piece of the puzzle before we got to The Avengers, as plot strands from all over began tying together. Sam Jackson shows Stellan Skarsgard the Tesseract, which survived the fall in Captain America. Then we see Loki, who survived the fall earlier in Thor, to be mentally manipulating folk for his own evil gains. We knew something big was coming, and it was great knowing that Loki was still about, because we love that evil swine!

 

1. THE AVENGERS – HELLO, THANOS

We’re out in space, and that creepy faceless guy is telling someone in a big seat about how great we humans are at not being killed, and we see what looks like a very human hand. “To challenge them is to court death.” And the guy in the seat turns, and he’s got a big purple face (which doesn’t really go with that human hand, does it?), and he smiles, and cut to black. That was Thanos, the BIG BAD GUY of the Avengers universe, and the reason he smiles at the “court death” remark is because in the comics, Death is an actual character, and Thanos is in love with her. So courting death probably sounds like a good thing to him. All of this is widening up the Avengers universe massively, as what we’ve seen so far is only the tip of the iceberg. Exciting!