After the disappointing box office performance of Justice League, there were no doubt some long and serious meetings at Warner Bros. over the matter of what’s to become of the DCEU, with many already announced projects having their futures cast into doubt. But a better idea of where things are headed from here might come in the form of Aquaman, which seems to be pointing the way with a post-credits sequence.
Justice League might have failed to give this burgeoning cinematic universe its Avengers moment, but that doesn’t mean that the studio’s about to give up all attempts to emulate the MCU. And though the tag at the end of the credits of James Wan’s aquatic adventure doesn’t necessarily reference anything outside of Arthur Curry’s world, it does provide a hint of where his saga’s headed next.
We know this because the scene in question has now leaked online for your viewing pleasure. We won’t embed it here (you can watch it via the link below), but it features Black Manta awakening in a hospital of sorts, with Dr. Shin seeing him and recognizing his armor as Atlantean. He seems quite interested in it, too, and Manta says that he’ll tell him how he got it if the Doctor brings him to Aquaman. It apparently ends there, and though it may not reveal a whole lot, this brief moment does at least tee Black Manta up as the sequel’s villain, which we kind of assumed would be the case anyways.
I mean, given that we know Manta won’t be the primary antagonist of Aquaman – that designation belongs to Arthur Curry’s brother Orm, played by Patrick Wilson – it only makes sense for Wan to use the post-credits scene to tease more of a role for Yahya Abdul-Mateen II in the sequel, kind of like Doctor Strange did with Chiwetel Ejiofor’s Mordo.
It remains to be seen if this is the only tag after the credits or if there’s something else as well, but there’s no doubt much to look forward to in James Wan’s Aquaman and we’ll finally get a chance to lay eyes on it in all its glory on December 21st.
