The finale of Shazam! Fury of the Gods was both a beginning and an ending. An ending in that the film is clearly sunsetting this era of DC, but a beginning in that the story of Billy Batson (Asher Angel, Zachary Levi) and the Shazam Family is not over yet. With Billy Batson brought back from the dead by Wonder Woman’s (Gal Gadot) god powers, that surely means DC Studios has more plans in store for Earth’s Champion.
But with James Gunn’s DC Universe set to wipe the slate clean, Shazam! Fury of the Gods sits in a strange place. Does it try to set up a future in an extended universe that’s all but dead? Or does it try to sidle its way into the new DCU that’s been shepherded by Gunn and Peter Safran? With its two credits scenes, the sequel to David F. Sandberg’s 2019 Shazam! essentially asks: why not both?
The Mid-Credits Scene: And Justice for All
Fury of the Gods’ mid-credits scene opens with two characters who will very likely be sticking around in James Gunn’s DCU: Steve Agee’s John Economos and Jennifer Holland’s Emilia Harcourt, the A.R.G.U.S. agents who appeared in both Gunn’s The Suicide Squad and Peacemaker. The two grumble as they walk through a wooded path, toward their newest recruit. John hopes the guy is worth it, and Emilia assures him that they’ve got intel that “he’s strong, if a little immature.”
Smash cut to none other than Billy, in Shazam form, zapping bottles and cans with his powers of electricity at an abandoned gas station. He’s having so much fun that he doesn’t notice John and Emilia at first, and jumps when they introduce themselves. He also jumps to say yes to their proposal — until he learns that they’re recruiting him for the Justice Society, not the Justice League. He really just wanted to be in the same team that Wonder Woman was in.
The Justice Society is another remnant of a dead DCEU property: Black Adam. The team — which included Hawkman (Aldis Hodge), Doctor Fate (Pierce Brosnan), Cyclone (Quintessa Swindell), and Atom Smasher (Noah Centineo) — was introduced as a sort of pseudo-militaristic strike team deployed by Amanda Waller (Viola Davis) to contain the threat of Black Adam (Dwayne Johnson). With Black Adam 2 no longer happening, it’s likely that this iteration of the Justice Society will no longer exist too. But maybe Gunn will want to keep around his Suicide Squad and Peacemaker characters for the DCU. And in that case, perhaps a new Justice Society could be built around Shazam. Maybe then Billy can get Wonder Woman to call him back.
The Post-Credits Scene: Mister Mind’s Master Plan
Remember that weird post-credits scene from the first Shazam? Well, it turns out Mister Mind is slow to move on his master plan, in which he was going to enlist Dr. Sivana (Mark Strong). Two years later, Sivana is still stuck in that prison cell, whose walls are now covered in symbols and hieroglyphs. He’s gotten no closer to summoning a doorway to the Rock of Eternity, and the talking worm he met in the Shazam! post-credits scene is no closer to revealing how he plans to form his Monster Society of Evil with Sivana. To be fair, Mister Mind says, it takes him a long time to get anywhere — he doesn’t have any legs. And just as he’s about to tell Sivana his next move, he crawls away. It looks like Shazam won’t have to worry about this evil duo anytime soon.
This final stinger is more of a gag than a real tease — it exists mostly to explain why the sequel never picked up on this plot point. And with the future of Shazam! in flux, we probably never will find out what Mister Mind has in store.
