Posted in: Aquaman, Movies, Warner Bros | Tagged: aquaman and the lost kingdom, dc studios, DC Universe

Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom Ends DCEU With A Trivial Mid-Credit Scene

Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom features a mid-credits scene that is both pointless while also perfectly summing up the last decade of the DC Universe.

Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom finally made its way to the big screen five years after the first film made over a billion at the worldwide box office. The new film is somehow managing to underperform compared to the small estimates it was shooting for, and critics are not loving it either. 2023 has been the Zack Snyder era of the DCEU slowly drowning one film at a time, and while we got a moment of respite from Blue Beetle, there truly wasn't any saving this. You would think with everyone knowing this was the end, there wouldn't be any mid or post-credits scenes, but there was one, and it was both incredibly pointless and somehow poignant about this era of filmmaking in its entirety. However, to get into it, we are going to need some level of spoilers, so consider this your spoiler warning. If you don't want to know anything more, don't look beyond this image of the best part of the entire movie, also known as Patrick Wilson. 

Aquaman and the Gross-Out Mid-Credits Scene

And hey, this moment includes Wilson as well, so it's on theme. During the film, while Arthur (Jason Momoa) and Orm (Wilson) are going around and trying to find out where Manta is, they have a discussion about the surface world. We find out that Orm has never bothered to eat anything from the surface world and Arthur decides that trolling his little brother is the way to go and tells him we eat cockroaches. There is one on a tree, and Arthur convinces Orm to eat it right there. Nothing else comes from the scene aside from a brief gross-out joke, and Orm never finds out that he's the butt of the joke.

At the end of Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom, they allow Orm to go free, and in the mid-credits scene, we see him getting that beer and burger combo that Arthur gave him such a hard time that he hadn't ever tried. However, as he is sitting there, a roach crawls across the table. Orm picks up the bug, puts it on his burger, and takes a big bite. He seems to enjoy it and the crunch, and the film ends with actor Patrick Wilson enjoying a cockroach burger. That is the final scene of this era of the DC Universe.

This era of the DC Universe won't be remembered that fondly aside from a few small bright moments and a fan movement that somehow managed to raise a ton of money for charity while also sending a ton of death threats to people. It was built on the broken foundation of Man of Steel and Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice combined with Warner Bros. higher-ups thinking you can course correct mid-production and everything will work out fine. To this day, it's still amazing to think that the Justice League was a non-event, yet that is the reality that we are living in.

For this era to end with that scene feels like it somehow perfectly summarizes everything that has happened in the last decade of filmmaking while also saying nothing at all. Since 2013, Warner Bros. and DC have been frantically trying to catch up to Marvel Studios, from the strange structure choices to the sometimes weird jokes to hiring the director who made the Avengers, there was taking inspiration, and then there was copying homework. If there is a one-to-one comparison for the cockroach burger scene, it might be the shwarma scene at the end of Avengers, but that scene wasn't the end of anything. It came after the film teased more on the horizon and was a way to send the audience home with a smile. Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom wasn't ending anything, and it wasn't teasing anything more; it was just a gross-out joke that added nothing.

None Of This Had To Happen

It was already sad that this era of the DC Universe seemed to be going out on a low note, with three of the four movies being critical failures and all four underperforming at the box office, but this final scene seems like more of a slap in the face than anything else that director James Wan or anyone else could have used as the final scene. It wasn't funny, it added nothing, and all it did was show that none of these movies ever had any idea of what they wanted to be or what direction they should take, aside from a few exceptions.

None of this needed to happen. Warner Bros. didn't have to try and course-correct mid-journey with Justice League and they could have tried to fix any perceived wrongs with Snyder's version of the DC Universe down the line. Soft and hard reboots are common in comic books, but there wasn't anyone familiar with comics at the helm who could tell the people in charge that they didn't have to panic. There were other ways to try and figure all of this out, but that isn't what happened. Now it all comes to an end with a film that is likely going to be knocked out of the top spot in its second week and forgotten with the echos of a cockroach burger by the time the clocks ring in the new year.

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