Fantastic Four: First Steps is the third Marvel movie to release in 2025, following Captain Avenger: Brave New World and Thunderbolts. It’s also the best-reviewed of the three.
I thought the new Captain America was a hot mess from start to finish, a confusing and convoluted “thriller” with a lame final showdown. I’m also not a fan of Anthony Mackie’s Sam Wilson as Captain America. It just doesn’t work for me. He’s the Falcon, not Cap.
I enjoyed Thunderbolts a lot more, largely thanks to the chemistry between the film’s leads, but it still sputtered out during the final act, the way so many superhero movies do.
Fantastic Four: First Steps is also the final MCU film – other than the “street level” Spider-Man: Brand New Day – before the highly-anticipated Avengers: Doomsday. The new Avengers film promises the return of Robert Downey Jr. though not as Tony Stark / Iron Man, but as the villain, Doctor Doom.
Fantastic Four: First Steps Post-Credits Scenes Explained
Since this is the last major MCU non-Spider-Man film before Doomsday, we should expect it to really set the stage for the next major Avengers outing. Some of this stage-setting will likely take place after the credits roll. Which brings us to the question posed above: Are there mid and post-credits scenes at the end of Fantastic Four: First Steps?
The answer is yes. There are two, one during the credits and one at the very end after the credits roll. I won’t spoil what takes place in these end-credits scenes. I will say that the first mid-credits scene is the more “serious” of the two. This one will give audiences a clear sense of where the MCU is headed following this movie.
The second scene, which takes place at the end, is more comedict, though it has enough Easter Eggs to keep the more passionate fans happy and buzzing. Stick around for both if your bladder can manage the wait.
What To Expect From Fantastic Four: First Steps
Fantastic Four: First Steps takes place in a different dimension from the one we normally see in the MCU films. This explains the funky, retrofuturistic aesthetic in the film, which looks a bit like how The Jetsons imagined the future. The titular “four” are astronauts who gained special powers: Super-scientist Reed Richards/Mr. Fantastic (Pedro Pascal) has gained elastic abilities; Sue Storm/Invisible Woman (Vanessa Kirby) can turn invisible and create force fields; brash young Johnny Storm/Human Torch (Joseph Quinn) can fly and light himself on fire; and stone-faced Ben Grimm/The Thing (Ebon Moss-Bachrach) has all the best one-liners.
This quad of superheroes has been protecting New York City and the globe from threats for years, until one day a new threat rears its ugly head in the form of the Silver Surfer (Julia Garner) who heralds the coming of Galactus (Ralph Ineson), a celestial entity known to devour planets. To put Galactus into perspective, he would absolutely clobber Thanos in a one-to-one fight, unless Thanos had the Infinity Gauntlet, which would put him at about the same power level. How our heroes deal with this threat, how this universe and ours come together and where Doctor Doom and other characters, such as Franklin Richards, the son of Reed Richards and Sue Storm, and one of the few characters in the Marvel pantheon as powerful as Galactus, end up remains to be seen.
Fantastic Four: First Steps lands in theaters today, July 24th for early previews and releases wide on Friday July 25th. It’s directed by Matt Shakman and currently holds an 87% Rotten Tomatoes score – just a few points higher than Superman (another superhero movie I was mostly disappointed by this year).
