What a ‘Captain Marvel’ Post-Credits Scene Says About the Philosophy of Marvel’s Anna Boden, Ryan Fleck & Genevra Robertson-Dworet

(Spoilers follow.)

Aside from making it commonplace in movies, the Marvel Cinematic Universe has made the post-credits scene have great interest. That is no different in “Captain Marvel,” where the Tesseract is revealed to be at-large in the universe. How that happened, though, was relatively unexpected: Captain Marvel’s cat coughs it up. Yes, as a cat coughs up a hairball.

We’re talking about the Tesseract here. This is the MacGuffin of a studio universe that has changed filmmaking. This is the container of one of just six stones that come before the universe and contain boundless energy. As we see the MCU, we very much see the Tesseract.

The Tesseract in “Avengers: Infinity War,” where Thanos obtains it to destroy half the universe. (Marvel Studios)

And it exists for the taking because a cat vomited it.

This is so subversive, it seems clear that Marvel screenwriters Anna Boden, Ryan Fleck and Genevra Robertson-Dworet gave the middle finger to the idea that the Tesseract should matter in telling MCU stories. (As the storytellers, screenwriters are responsible for plot devices and occurrences like these. (Boden and Fleck are also the film’s directors.) However, the film’s producer, Marvel President Kevin Feige, also might share these beliefs to have approved such…