The post-credits scene is a fan-beloved Marvel tradition. Some of the comics behemoth’s best (and, admittedly, worst) work is in the moments after the screen first fades to black. Thus the decision to forego one in the new Disney+ series Agatha All Along, which just dropped its finale episodes on October 30, is an unorthodox choice. Then again, Kathryn Hahn’s Agatha Harkness is an unorthodox character.
According to a new interview with Variety, Agatha showrunner Jac Schaeffer has a simple reason for why the post-credits scene is missing: “That’s a Marvel decision. I know nothing more than that.”
Schaeffer continued, revealing that she wrote “a number of” potential post-credits “tags” for the series, but that none of them made the final cut. “I think some of my best writing is in the tags that were never made,” she said. “They’re so fun to write, because you’re writing the promise without having to deliver on anything. They’re the best. But there are so many things that factor into those. And I was told that we weren’t going to do a tag on this show. That doesn’t affect my work, or my vision for the show.”
Let’s read between the lines here—and to do that, we’ll need to get into a few spoilers, so beware if you haven’t watched Agatha All Along, Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness, or other recent Marvel projects.
From what Schaeffer is saying above, it would seem that the tightlipped Marvel bigwigs didn’t want Agatha All Along hinting toward a future Marvel project, or setting up any sort of connection between Agatha and the future of Marvel. That could be for any number of reasons, but one possibility is this: Marvel has not yet confirmed if Elizabeth Olsen’s Wanda Maximoff/Scarlet Witch will return on screens, following her character’s death in Multiverse of Madness. Nor has Marvel announced if a Young Avengers project is officially in the works.
Agatha All Along is a spin-off series from 2021’s WandaVision, itself a Disney+ series centered around Wanda and her relationship with Paul Bettany’s Vision. Although Wanda doesn’t make an appearance in Agatha—likely owing to her recent demise—her son, Billy (Joe Locke), does. In the Marvel comics upon which many of these films and TV series are based, Billy is also known as Wiccan, one of the Young Avengers. And in a number of recent Marvel projects, the other Young Avengers members have begun popping up one by one: Among them are Hailee Steinfeld as Kate Bishop (Hawkeye and The Marvels), Xochitl Gomez as America Chavez (Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness), Elijah Richardson as Eli Bradley (The Falcon and the Winter Soldier), Iman Vellani as Kamala Khan (Ms. Marvel and The Marvels), and Kathryn Newton as Cassie Lang (the Ant-Man films and Avengers: Endgame).
But because an on-screen team-up is not yet official, Marvel might have wished to avoid giving fans too much hope too early. That doesn’t mean we won’t see Billy, Agatha, Wanda, or any of their counterparts again. It simply implies that Marvel is keeping their cards close to the vest this time—and as their game expands over outward, that’s not a bad strategy.
Lauren Puckett-Pope is a staff culture writer at ELLE, where she primarily covers film, television and books. She was previously an associate editor at ELLE.