Aquaman 2 Has A Post-Credits Scene - But It's Not The Ending DCEU Fans Deserve
Contains spoilers for "Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom"
We had some good times, right, DCEU? There was that killer "Wonder Woman" theme that followed Gal Gadot everywhere, as well as Ben Affleck's explosive warehouse brawl as Batman and Henry Cavill's first flight as Superman. You'd think then that regardless of where audiences stand on the DCEU, there'd be some fanfare, no matter how small, in "Aquaman and The Lost Kingdom" to send it and the DCEU off into the depths. Instead, your regular wait for a mid-credits scene is met with crickets. Well, cockroaches, actually.
Following a brief cut to black after the title card, we're reunited with Patrick Wilson's Orm, who gets a taste of the surface dwellers' world through a beer and a burger on his brother's advice. We'd already seen him take a bite in the film's closing moments only to look pretty nonplussed about what was on the menu. However, in our quick reunion, Orm spots a cockroach on his table (that restaurant is not up to code, surely) and adds it to his burger as some extra filling. It's a callback to Arthur (Jason Momoa) playing a prank earlier on Orm's naivety about the surface world's delicacies.
The DCEU ends not with a bang but with a titter
While fans might be upset to see the last entry of the Snyderverse/DCEU roll out with a laugh, it feels like that was the safest route in the grand scheme of things. This franchise has been stripped for parts, with even its biggest stars no longer involved. To even include the silhouetted stand-in cameos as in "Peacemaker" or heroes missing a head like Superman in "Shazam" would highlight precisely where the DCEU faltered. Perhaps we could have gotten a tease of Arthur's future adventures, but why? No one is going to see them.
Instead, the only thing to do now is keep our fingers crossed that James Gunn's new DC Universe will be a stronger and more cohesive collection of stories than the ones we got. While it might seem a shame that this is the last time we'll see Jason Momoa in this world as one of its only remaining successful heroes, there's a chance that, if rumors are to be believed, he'll be turning up in the new DCU anyway. The talk of him landing the role of Lobo has been rocking around the rumor mill for some time, so it would be nice to see him play hero again, albeit a foul-mouthed one with murderous tendencies. For now, though, we'll always have Aquaman and a drum-playing octopus to look back on.