41 Greatest Moments In The Marvel Cinematic Universe

20. Iron Man 2 – Agent Coulson finds a familiar looking hammer

It’s hard to remember now, but at one point, the whole idea of a connected Marvel film universe was still mostly theoretical by the time we got to Iron Man 2. Sure, we already heard about the idea of the Avengers, and Tony Stark made a cameo in The Incredible Hulk, but that was it. We knew about the other movies coming down the pike, but it took another post-credits scene to really hammer them home — pun fully intended.

The sequence is well done too, focusing first on a wide shot of the desert as a lone vehicle makes its way across. A man in a suit gets out, and it’s a character who is just becoming a fan favorite at this point, SHIELD Agent Phil Coulson.

He looks down on what appears to be an archeological dig site, removing his sunglasses in dramatic fashion. Turing around, he simply says, “Sir, we found it.”  I’m thinking it’s Nick Fury on the other end of this particular call.

The camera pulls out, and … holy crap, that’s Mjolnir! Yep, the hammer of Thor is right in front of us. This is really happening.

An underrated part of this scene is that it actually takes place partway through Thor, so it’s the first real example of the Marvel movies being interwoven with each other instead of being told strictly in chronological fashion. The seeds for the Marvel Cinematic Universe had already been planted, but you can consider this the time when they first started to sprout.

(Write-up by Nick Tylwalk, Bam Smack Pow editor)

Next: No. 19: A small but important difference