‘Spider-Man: No Way Home’ Post-Credits Scene Ties Into ‘WandaVision’ and ‘What If…?’

If you’re wondering whether you should sit through the credits of Spider-Man: No Way Home? Well, yes. Obviously. This is a Marvel movie, so naturally there’s not only a mid-credits scene, but a post-credits scene (of sorts) as well. While the mid-credits is a mostly a goof with some potential ramifications for the future of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), the second one is the jaw-dropper. Spoilers past this point, but not only is the Spider-Man: No Way Home post-credits scene an early teaser trailer for Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, it also ties into WandaVision — and potentially What If…?

Here’s the gist of what goes down, in case you ran out for the bathroom before the credits wrapped up, and why it’s a big deal not just for Marvel movies, but Marvel television, too.

In No Way Home, Doctor Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) introduced Spider-Man (Tom Holland) to the concept of the multiverse, an infinite array of dimensions that contain every variation of our own. We’ve seen this play out before in the MCU, particularly in Loki, which ended by reintroducing the multiverse to continuity through the actions of Loki (Tom Hiddleston) and Sylvie (Sophia Di Martino). That was followed by What If…? which explored a few riffs on the known Marvel universe. Also of note, the concept was actually introduced in Spider-Man: Far From Home by Mysterio (Jake Gyllenhaal), but he was lying, so whatever.

Anyway, at the end of No Way Home, Strange manages to fix some massive fissures in the multiverse that are about to suck every villain, hero, or regular person who knows Peter Parker is Spider-Man into the main MCU. He does this through a big sacrifice from Spidey: Peter Parker is entirely erased from everyone’s memory. That means he essentially doesn’t exist, down to his girlfriend MJ (Zendaya) and best friend Ned (Jacob Batalon) not recognizing him in one of the movie’s final scenes.

So the multiverse is fixed, right? Well, yes and also probably not exactly. The events of No Way Home are done with for the moment (more on that in a second), but the multiverse still exists and there are a number of other factors that have been messing with it in other MCU properties. Specifically, a lot of speculation surrounding WandaVision, the show that kicked off Marvel’s Disney+ slate of series, ended with Wanda Maximoff (Elizabeth Olsen) seemingly combing through the multiverse to find the location of her kids, who she, uh, erased from existence.

More importantly, there were a couple of dangling threads from What If…?, particularly Strange Supreme, a dark version of Doctor Strange who nearly destroyed everything in order to bring the love of his life Christine (Rachel McAdams) back from the dead when she was killed in the car crash that, in the main MCU, destroyed Strange’s hands instead.

That’s a lot of lead in for a two minute long teaser trailer, but it’s important to set up that the events of Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness don’t seem to be a direct result of No Way Home… But they do seem to be a direct result of What If…? in particular, instantly making the animated series far more important than Marvel fans might have originally realized.

In the teaser, we hear Strange and Wong (Benedict Wong) talking about a dangerous spell that seems to have wrecked havoc with the universe. The implication, at first, is that our Strange did this; and given the dialogue, it might be the spell that Strange cast in No Way Home. Just a guess given what unrolls over the next 120 seconds, but that’s a trick, and it’s not the No Way Home spell. Still, it seems like everything from water rushing into Strange’s Sanctum Sanctorum, to New York seemingly leaking away into black goop are all his fault.

A couple of quick shots follow, with Christine in a wedding dress marrying Strange, an extremely brief look at a new hero named America Chavez (Xochitl Gomez), and something very bad happening to Wong.

…But that’s where things start to get even more interesting. Fans have been speculating since the end of WandaVision that Wanda would be the villain of the movie, tearing her way through the multiverse to find her children. Instead, we get a scene of Wanda in a field of flowering trees, when Strange approaches her. She immediately thinks it’s because of what happened in Westview on WandaVision, but he explains that something has gone wrong with the multiverse, and he needs her help.

Obviously there can be a twist here, and this is only a two minute look, but what happens next seems to show Mordo (Chiwetel Ejiofor) attacking Strange and Wong, because, as he explains, “the greatest threat to our universe… Is you.”

The final reveal is a darker, more unhinged version of Strange, who says ominously, “Things just got out of hand.”

So what’s happening here? Again, this is just a two minute long look at some scenes in the movie, but there’s a big clue that this evil Strange is the one breaking the multiverse, and it may in fact be Strange Supreme from What If…?, or some similar multiverse riff on him. The big clue? In the trailer we see a giant eyeball with tentacles attacking Doctor Strange. That creature is called Shuma Gorath, and in What If…? Strange Supreme consumed the creature to power himself up, so he could bring Christine back to life. That connection does seem to clearly indicate that What If…? was teasing this showdown between two times the Cumberbatch in Multiverse of Madness.

That said, when we last left Strange Supreme in What If…?, he was inside a small bubble outside the multiverse, watching over an Infinity Stone powered Ultron who had tried to destroy the multiverse himself. So will he escape that and terrorize the live action Doctor Strange? Is Wanda going to make up for her sins in Westview, or double down on them? Does this all connect to the spell in No Way Home, or is it about a different spell entirely? We’ll just have to wait until Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness is released on May 6, 2022 to find out.

Where to watch Doctor Strange

Where to watch What If...?

Where to watch WandaVision