While the post-credits scene was once a surprise specially afforded to those superfans with the dedication to sit through the final frames of a film, it’s now become par for the course, a de facto advertisement for whatever a franchise might have up its sleeve next. Marvel Studios has turned this into standard operating procedure, to the point where viewers expect nothing less than the cinematic equivalent of the delicious fries waiting for you at the bottom of your McDonald’s bag. How to continue taking audiences off-guard, then? Marvel could do no post-credit scene at all, that’d certainly throw people for a loop. Or ... they could do five.

A whole lot of stuff happens after Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 ends, and while we shall not reveal the specific nature of that stuff for fear of an eternity locked in the Disney Vault with the Disney Stretching Rack and the Disney Cattle Brands, director James Gunn has let all five cats out of their bag. The director confirmed that his new feature includes a whopping five (5!) Easter eggs, via Twitter:

That‘s a lot! So much, in fact, that it kind of calls the nature of the post-credit stinger scene into question. It used to be easy enough to define a post-credits scene as “the little bit of footage snuck in at the end,” but now the end keeps ending. The working definition would probably have to be “footage running after a segment of credits has rolled,” which would make every pre-1970s film running its full credits at the start made up entirely of post-credit scenes! Semantics are fun. But yeah, five post-credits scenes, get nice and comfy when Guardians 2 opens on May 5. You’re going to be sitting there for a while.

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