This article contains The Fantastic Four: First Steps spoilers.For fans of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the coming of The Fantastic Four: First Steps is as anticipated as the arrival of Galactus, the world-devourer himself. It’s not just that MCU fans have longed to see Marvel’s First Family done right, with a respect to the comics that the previous entries never showed (and with a budget that the infamous 1994 movie couldn’t match); fans also wondered about how First Steps would bridge the gap between its retro-futuristic 1960s setting on Earth-828 and the mainline Earth-616, where the team would join other heroes for Avengers: Doomsday.cnx.cmd.push(function() {cnx({playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530",}).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796");});After months of speculation, it turns out all the complicated theories about the team’s failure, or the quartet making a bold sacrifice that would cause the destruction of Earth-828, were wrong. All the FF really needed to do was shove Galactus really, really hard. By the time the credits roll, Galactus and the Silver Surfer have been pushed to the far side of the universe and the Fantastic Four are beloved once again. Even those who found that climax a bit disappointing can take hope, because First Steps is a Marvel movie and that means it actually ends with a couple of post-credit scenes, one of which leads directly into Avengers: Doomsday, no less. It’s Cartoon Time!Throughout First Steps, we see the breadth of the team’s popularity, launching merchandise, comics, and, of course, a cartoon show. The show gets referenced every time someone asks the curmudgeonly Ben Grimm to say his famous catchphrase, “It’s clobberin’ time,” but we don’t see the cartoon until the very end of the movie during the second post-credits scene. By intentional design, it is… less than fantastic. While it’s cool to get a look at some of the supervillains referenced in the movie, including John Malkovich’s deleted character Red Ghost, the show itself appears amusingly janky with its stilted animation and a cheesy song that echoes Michael Giacchino’s score.Cheesy Marvel cartoon series exist in our world as well, most famously the oft-memed Spider-Man series from 1967. The Fantastic Four had a cartoon show around the same time, releasing 20 episodes between 1967 and 1968. You might assume that the cartoon theme we see in the movie is a variation of that series, but it’s not. The opening to the 1967 series showed the FF’s origin and a few of its enemies, but didn’t include a catchy jingle with lyrics. Nor did the 1978 series, which just explained the team’s origin in voiceover.Instead the faux cartoon credits that end First Steps have more in common with a cartoon series that featured many Marvel heroes, but not the FF. Because in 1966, the company made its first foray into animation with The Marvel Super Heroes, a collection of shorts starring Captain America, Iron Man, and the Hulk. Even in an era of low-effort television animation, The Marvel Super Heroes felt janky, adding just the slightest bit of movement to Jack Kirby panels from the comics.However, the series did give each hero real ear-worm jingles, including a great tune about Captain America throwing his mighty shield. Sadly the FF never got their own song in this method, which makes Earth-828 slightly better than our reality.Doomsday EveThe most important post-credits moment midway through the names scroll, however, when First Steps catches up to the team four years later. We begin with Vanessa Kirby’s Sue reading a book to Franklin, now a precocious kid. The camera stays on Sue as she leaves the room to get a different book, and we see her power up when she hears a noise coming from Franklin’s direction. The camera then takes Sue’s perspective as she slowly turns the corner to see a figure in a green cloak kneeling next to Franklin, who softly holds his hand and appears to be touching his face.That is of course Doctor Victor Von Doom, the arch-enemy of the Fantastic Four and the primary villain of Avengers: Doomsday and Avengers: Secret Wars. Before this moment, First Steps hinted at Doom’s absence throughout the picture, passing by scenes of delegates at a United Nations conference to show an empty seat under the flag of Latveria, the fictional country ruled by Doom. But not even the mid-credits scene shows us Doom’s face, masked or unmasked, which means that we don’t see Robert Downey Jr., who has returned to the MCU to portray the Latverian despot. Instead we see wee little Franklin touching the unmasked face of a cloaked, kneeling figure. Given how notoriously shy Doom is of showing his face in the comics, this speaks volumes.While some might be disappointed that we don’t get a chance to see how RDJ interprets the classic baddie, the mid-credits scene does provide the clearest connection between First Steps and Doomsday. We know that Doomsday will involve the incursions that have been teased in the MCU since Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, instances in which Earths from across the Multiverse collide and destroy one another. As the Leader warned in the post-credits for Captain America: Brave New World, some of these worlds have their own heroes, and those heroes will certainly try to save their worlds by destroying Earth-616, something we saw in the comic book stories leading up to Secret Wars.Surely it must be this crisis that leads Doom to Franklin. As Galactus explained to Reed and Sue earlier in First Steps, Franklin has immeasurable power. In the pages of Marvel Comics, Franklin is a mutant with the ability to remake worlds at will. It seems likely that Doom will take Franklin with him to other worlds, including Earth-616. And it seems reasonable to assume that the FF will arrive in 616 to rescue their son. That still raises the question about if the FF will stay in the 616 and be part of the larger Marvel Cinematic Universe. But given Kevin Feige‘s recent comments about rebooting the MCU to some degree after Secret Wars, the question may be moot.As long as the solution doesn’t involve pushing Doom and the alternate Earths into another giant hole, we’ll be happy with whatever they need to do to fully integrate the Fantastic Four into the MCU.King KirbyFinally we should mention that right before the final credits roll, we see a quote about imagination from artist Jack Kirby, along with the suggestion that the designation Earth-828 comes from his birthday on 8/28. The quote is the most obvious of several nods to Kirby throughout the movie, including a shot of two creators at a comic book company (billed as Timely Employee #1 and 2) looking out their window when Galactus arrives. A clever nod since the original appeal of the Galactus Trilogy, according to Marvel Comics, was this is “the world outside your window!”While perhaps too little, too late for some, it is fitting that the Marvel Cinematic Universe takes time to acknowledge King Kirby in their most imaginative movie. While Kirby’s dynamic action and endless imagination can be seen in many early Marvel books, including Thor and The Incredible Hulk, it was in The Fantastic Four where he fleshed out his biggest ideas. Through that series, Kirby not only introduced the world to the lonesome Silver Surfer and the world-devourer Galactus, but also Black Panther and Wakanda, the Inhumans, and Annihlus of the Negative Zone.As the quotation points out, Kirby’s personality and creativity can be best understood by looking at his comic pages, pages so amazing that even Marvel Studios and all its millions still can’t match their grandeur.The Fantastic Four: First Steps is now playing in theaters.The post The Fantastic Four: First Steps Post-Credit Scenes Explained appeared first on Den of Geek.