Captain America: Brave New World director Julius Onah has explained why the film's divisive credit scene was added late to the movie.
The controversial scene, which has been dubbed the "worst" post-credit scene yet, sees Anthony Mackie's Sam Wilson pay a visit to Tim Blake Nelson's Samuel Sterns, aka The Leader, at a high-security prison named The Raft.
Sterns warns Wilson about an impending threat from another universe and some unnamed enemies, saying: "We'll see what happens when you have to protect this place from the others."
Related: Captain America: Brave New World credit scenes explained
Speaking to Collider, Onah explained that the post-credit scene wasn't added until after the WGA strike ended, giving Marvel enough time to line things up with future MCU projects.
"That was shot during our additional photography," Onah explained. "That's what I mean about all this is planned ahead of time. We didn't know what our post-credit scene was going to be just yet.
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"As you know, there was a massive writers' strike, so that meant it was pencils down not just on this movie, but pencils down on everything in film and TV."
He continued: "Nothing was happening. So, who knew what Thunderbolts was going to look like necessarily? Or the next Avengers was going to look like?
"So when we got out of that strike, and we were actually able to put pen to paper for Brave New World, and everybody else was able to put pen to paper for their movies, then that's when you can actually start to have a real conversation as to where things are going and what post-credits sequence is the appropriate one to tease. So, that's how it evolved."
Related: Captain America: Brave New World has a surprise cameo and Marvel fans are seriously divided
Elsewhere in the interview, Onah explained the decision to have just one post-credits scene unlike many other Marvel movies, saying: "This is about introducing Sam as our new Captain America.
"That was the overarching focus of this movie, so to start throwing in too many post-credit sequences just felt like it was going to stray away from that. Even the tease we have is still very Sam-centric."
Captain America: Brave New World is out now in cinemas.
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Harriet is a freelance news writer specialising in TV and movies at Digital Spy.
A horror enthusiast, she joined Digital Spy after working on her own horror website, reviewing films and focusing largely on feminism in the genre.
In her spare time, Harriet paints and produces mixed-media art. She graduated from the University of Kingston with a BA in fine art, where she specialised in painting. She also has an MA in journalism from Birkbeck University.
