The Marvel Cinematic Universe: Eleven Years of Post-Credits Scenes

The Marvel Cinematic Universe began with Iron Man on May 2, 2008 — a gamble on a B-list superhero played by an actor Hollywood had mostly written off — and ended its first saga with Avengers: Endgame on April 26, 2019. In between, 22 films grossed a combined $22.5 billion and fundamentally rewired how Hollywood thinks about storytelling, franchise management, and audience investment. The genius was the interconnection: each film stood alone but also fed into a larger narrative, rewarding the obsessives who tracked every post-credits scene and Easter egg. The risk was enormous — one bad film could collapse audience trust in the whole enterprise — and yet the quality control held for over a decade. The MCU didn't just dominate the box office. It became the narrative framework through which a generation experienced cinema. Whether that was a golden age or the beginning of Hollywood's creative decline depends entirely on how you feel about post-credits scenes.