Does ‘Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom’ Have a Post-Credits Scene?

Warning: This post contains spoilers about Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom, hitting theaters on Dec. 22.

Since the dawn of cinema — or, at least, since 2008, when Samuel L. Jackson's Nick Fury popped up at the end of Iron Man — audiences have been trained to stick around through the credits at the end of superhero movies for a little tease of what's to come.

It's a time-honored tradition, but it always comes at a cost. There's a good chance we slurped down an enormous container of soda, and really need to hit the latrine. What's a person to do?

Luckily, we here at The Messenger are here to help. We've already seen Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom (and enjoyed it, more or less), so we know the answer to the question of whether or not it has a post-credits scene.

The answer is: no. Hooray! You do not have to stay through to the very end and listen to the not-particularly-memorable score composed by Rupert Gregson-Williams.

However! There is what some call a mid-credits gag (though it is more like the 1/5th-of-the-way-through than "mid") which we'll ruin for you here.

The best parts of Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom are the buddy cop aspects between brothers Arthur (Jason Momoa) and Orm (Patrick Wilson). During one part of the adventure, they have to go to a Skull Island-esque volcanic atoll in which there are giant insects and man-eating plants. As such, they must run for their lives, but Orm, the former Ocean Master, doesn't really know what he's doing when he's on dry land. (The guy can't figure out what to do with his arms when he runs.)

Part of Arthur's schtick is trying to get Orm (and other Atlanteans) to build a bridge to the dry-landers. He attempts to get Orm excited about the food — like tacos and tequila, and greasy burgers and beer. His brother is skeptical, and that's when Arthur sees a giant cockroach walking by. He picks it up and decides to play a trick — he calls it a delicacy, like the shrimp of the surface.

Patrick Wilson chomps into it and makes a "not bad!" face.

Okay, so at the end of the movie, Arthur is speaking before the United Nations, blabbing on about unity and whatnot. We cut to the rest of the world watching him on television screens and thinking, "Right on!" Except for Orm ... Orm is at an outdoor pub eating a burger "extra greasy like you asked for" and drinking a beer.

When the movie ends, we see the cast's name beside some cool illustrations of their characters (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II gets the best one because Black Manta has those thick red laser beams shooting from his eyes) and then we cut back to Orm. He's still chomping his burger but sees a cockroach on the table. He picks it up, slips it into the sandwich, bites and thinks, "Even better!"

And that's how the DCEU, a zillion-dollar franchise launched with Zack Snyder's Man of Steel, concludes. James Gunn and Peter Safran are relaunching the DC films in 2025 with Superman: Legacy. But until that day, the last image is of Patrick Wilson eating a gigantic bug.