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Spoilers for Thunderbolts* follow.

It turns out that the final scene of Marvel Studios’ Thunderbolts* might be better considered the first scene of 2026’s Avengers: Doomsday, given that it was directed by the Russo brothers and shot on the set of Doomsday just weeks before Thunderbolts*’ release. The cliffhanger post-credit scene is a great hook to get fans back for next year’s next Avengers installment — not to mention in theaters for July’s The Fantastic Four: First Steps — but we shouldn’t be too surprised; for fans of genre TV, it’s a formula that’s been working for one show for close to two decades now.

Fans of the BBC’s Doctor Who are familiar with the idea that a story rarely ends; since 2005’s revival of the series, each season has ended with a cliffhanger — and one that, on multiple occasions, is written and directed by the creative team responsible for future episodes. Specifically, the season finale almost always ends with a direct lead-in to that year’s Christmas Special episode in some way, and often with a regeneration scene that introduces a new incarnation of the Doctor, written and in many cases directed, uncredited, by the creators of the next episode.

While these scenes all happen inside the primary body of the show — which is to say, they’re not post-credit scenes as Marvel has popularized them — they serve exactly the same purpose as Marvel’s post-credit sequences: to remind viewers that, although this particular adventure is over, the story continues and they should come back for the next outing. And, by allowing incoming showrunners to write the first scene featuring their own Doctors “early” — Steven Moffat, Chris Chibnall, and the returning Russell T. Davies all started their tenures as showrunners earlier than advertised in uncredited regeneration scenes — it establishes that the characters and the series is the primary appeal of the show, not any one writer or director… just as Marvel Studios has used post-credit scenes to establish the MCU as the primary selling point of all MCU movies.

Of course, some might point out, the Doctor Who holiday specials don’t end with cliffhanger scenes to bring audiences back for the following season, they do feature trailers for the next season… just as Captain America: The First Avenger featured an extended trailer for The Avengers, instead of the traditional post-credit scene, as Marvel was still crystalizing its own formula.

So: did Doctor Who accidentally invent the Marvel post-credit scene? That’s impossible to say for sure, but by the time Iron Man reached theaters in summer 2008, Doctor Who had played with this formula successfully no less than three times, to a growing audience of fans in the UK and internationally…

Consider this a meta post-credits scene for Marvel fans - the four key articles you need to read next to continue the thrills:

• How to watch the Marvel Cinematic Universe in release or chronological order
• The best Marvel Comics stories of all time
• All the MCU movies ranked from best to worst
• Our weekly Marvel insider's column, Marvel Matters