Warning: Spoilers for Shazam! are in play. If you haven't seen the film yet, say the magic word and fly off to another page. You can come back once you're current.
With any good origin story like Shazam!, there’s always going to be a tease as to which direction a potential franchise would more than likely take. And while in the past, DC Comics films have mostly shied away from the post credits scene treatment, Shazam! dove head first into the practice with a pretty interesting hook for future films to work off of. If you haven’t seen the film yet, or missed this scene and would rather witness it for yourself, you’ve officially been warned to turn back. Otherwise, it’s time to go into what happens at the end of Shazam!, and what it means for its potential sequels.
What Happens
After the climactic fight at Chilladelphia, a now de-powered Dr. Sivana is apprehended and locked away in a local mental facility. Obsessed as ever, Sivana is seen going back to his old behaviors, scrawling runes on all of the walls in his cell, in hopes of finding himself back in the lair of Shazam. He’s tasted what it’s like to have super powers, and he wants them back now. Lucky for him, a bargain is about to be struck that could give him just that.
Out of nowhere, disembodied laughter starts to enter the room, and we find that it’s coming from a taunty little caterpillar. More specifically, that caterpillar just happens to be classic Shazam! villain Mister Mind, who comes to tell Dr. Sivana that there are other ways, besides runescaping, that can grant someone powers. After all, it was Mister Mind who gave power to the gods, and he's willing to give them to Dr. Sivana, if he'll join him. With the deal hanging in the air, we cut back to the closing credits, and get a quick joke that includes a dig at Aquaman, at the very end of the credits.
Now before we move to quickly, it should also be noted that we actually saw Mister Mind earlier in Shazam!, as a prisoner of Djimon Honsou’s incarnation of the wizard. The cosmic bug was in a glass case, looking rather frozen in place, so it initially looked like he was just an interesting choice in decoration. However, it looks like once the seven sins possessed Dr. Sivana, and all hell broke loose with crumbling rocks and quaking ground, this prison was shattered, and Mister Mind was allowed to escape.
With all of that knowledge in mind, let’s take a look at what this potentially means for the future of Shazam!, and the DC Comics film canon.
What It Means
Mister Mind has been around for a long, long time in the Shazam! universe, as he first appeared in 1943, and has made recurring appearances in the DC Comics universe up to this very day. A Venusian worm, he requires a talk box to speak, and can spin extremely strong silk faster than the human eye can comprehend. More importantly, he can use mind control and telepathy as some of his other stocks in trade. If you could put a genocidal maniac into the body of a worm, and give it some impressive powers, you’d have Mister Mind in a nutshell.
Perhaps the greatest piece of sequel baiting that Mister Mind brings to the table is the fact that he’s traditionally the head of the Monster Society of Evil: a group that’s included everyone from Dr. Sivana himself to every leader of the Axis powers during World War II. Hitler was literally part of the Monster Society of Evil, so you know this organization is pretty damned foul to begin with.
On the surface, it looks like Mister Mind will form, or has already formed, that Monster Society of Evil, and Dr. Sivana will join up as he’s done in previous comic history. We’d get more of Mark Strong’s comic book villainy, and Shazam! 2 might just open things up to a whole mess of DC villains that can make appearances throughout the films to come. With Mister Mind now in the picture, he and Sivana can start to plot evil deeds that will eventually be thwarted by Billy Batson and his foster family of heroes, just as anyone would expect. But looking into some of the previous rosters for the Monster Society of Evil, there’s one particular member that could very easily be used as some added muscle, and if what we’re thinking is correct, it’s about time.
One of the members of the Monster Society of Evil is totally Black Adam, a villain we’ve been promised in the DC Universe for what seems like forever, as the role has been cast with Dwayne Johnson set to play it. While the DC Comics film canon has been undergoing some changes, both in which films are headed down the pike, and the cast members who will be participating in the future, it’s a safe bet that Johnson isn’t going anywhere anytime soon, (he was actually one of the producers of Shazam!, so he's clearly invested in this franchise). If that’s the case, we might get to see one of two things happen: Dwayne Johnson gets his Black Adam solo flick, in order to spice thing up and set up the Monster Society of Evil further for its eventual return in Shazam! 2, or he starts off as a supporting character of that very sequel, and gets to branch off into taking Superman on for sport after the fact.
In either scenario, the likelihood is that Mister Mind’s appearance in Shazam! is, as most superhero movies love to employ, the door to a greater world. A lot of new and exciting possibilities are laid out with his debut, and the consensus is that his band of eclectic ne’er-do-wells will present a bigger threat to our newly empowered heroes, and open the story up to all sorts of villainous possibilities. Though, if this could lead to a live action adaptation of Superman/Shazam! The Return of Black Adam, that would work pretty well in our eyes. For now we’ll keep our eyes on the skies, in order to see whatever malfeasance Mister Mind has on his brain.
Shazam! is in theaters now, so if you continued to read on without watching the film, we hope we’ve helped you make up your mind as to whether or not that’s in the cards for your weekend.
