• Warning: Major spoilers ahead for "The Fantastic Four: First Steps."
• Sue Storm (Vanessa Kirby) is part of a thrilling ending to the movie.
• The movie also teases how The Fantastic Four will be part of "Avengers: Doomsday."

"The Fantastic Four: First Steps" follows superheroes Reed Richards (Pedro Pascal), his wife Sue Storm (Vanessa Kirby), her brother Johnny Storm (Joseph Quinn), and their friend Ben Grimm (Ebon Moss-Bachrach) as they take on their biggest adversary yet, Galactus (voiced by Ralph Ineson).

With several versions of "The Fantastic Four" told over the decades, director Matt Shakman skips the origins of how the foursome gained their superpowers and dives right into the action, which is heightened by the fact that Sue Storm is also pregnant.

That news complicates things by the middle of the movie, when The Fantastic Four learn that Galactus wants to destroy Earth after a visit from his herald the Silver Surfer (Julia Garner). The heroes travel lightyears to bargain with Galactus, but the villainous devourer of worlds learns of the child and its powers, which are still unknown to Sue and Reed. Galactus tells The Fantastic Four that if they give him the child, he will spare Earth.

They refuse, escape Galactus and Silver Surfer to return to Earth (the baby Franklin is born during all the madness), and race against the clock to figure out a way to save Earth before Galactus travels there.

Sue Storm risks it all to save her child

After Richards' plan to teleport the entire planet somewhere else in space fails, the movie ends with The Fantastic Four using Franklin as bait in Times Square. All Galactus has to do is get near a portal Richards has created, and he will be sucked to another part of the universe.

Everything goes according to plan until right when Galactus gets near the portal and figures out The Fantastic Four moved Franklin. After the heroes battle Galactus but aren't able to stop him, he looks to have finally won, as he has the baby.

But Sue Storm uses all of her powers to force Galactus into the portal, with a final push from The Silver Surfer, who turns out to only be working with Galactus so she could spare her own planet from being destroyed by him. Earth is saved, but Sue looks to be dead.

Richards tries to revive her but is unsuccessful. Franklin is crying and is reaching out to his mother. Richards lays Franklin on her chest. Suddenly, Franklin revives Sue by putting his hands on her. Sue's eyes glow, and then she begins to breathe. She later tells Richards that their child is much more powerful than they are.

The movie's mid-credits scene reveals how The Fantastic Four could be involved in 'Avengers: Doomsday'

It's clear that Franklin will be a major focus in future "Fantastic Four" movies and the MCU as a whole.

The movie's mid-credits scene jumps to four years later, when Franklin is now a toddler and Sue is reading him a book. She walks away from him to get another book to read, and when she returns, she sees a person in a green cloak holding a mask while leaning over Franklin. The boy is touching his face, which is blocked by the hood he has on.

It's clear that this is Doctor Doom. The screen then cuts to black, and text appears that says, "'The Fantastic Four' will return in 'Avengers: Doomsday,'" which hits theaters in December 2026.

The biggest jump Marvel Studios will have to make is getting The Fantastic Four, who are living in 1960s Earth-828, to where all the "Avengers" action takes place, which is Earth-616.

This tease may be a clue as to how that's done.

It seems, just like Galactus, Doctor Doom (who will be played by Robert Downey Jr. in "Doomsday"), can sense Franklin's powers. It's possible he may trick The Fantastic Four into building something that will transport him to Earth-616. We'll have to wait until "Avengers: Doomsday" to find out for sure.

• When you see a movie or a TV show, do you think about where it was made?
• Lots of people in Hollywood do — they're seeing more and more productions move outside the US.
• Donald Trump says he wants to reverse that. But his proposal is hard to understand.

There are many stories out right now about Donald Trump's call for a "100% Tariff on any and all Movies coming into our Country that are produced in Foreign Lands."

But let's give the concision award to Variety, which noted that Trump's Sunday night announcement generated many questions in Hollywood, "starting with: Huh?"

Let's also note that Trump frequently changes his mind about things, and most definitely about his tariff policies. So it's entirely possible his Hollywood tariff post leads to nada.

While we're throat clearing, let's also note that, unlike some of Trump's other tariff pushes, this one doesn't imagine a world where work that left the US long ago comes back to the country. Movie (and TV) production remains a huge business in the US, employing millions of people.

And lastly, Trump is correct in noting that film (and TV) production has been leaving Hollywood for years. Sometimes it has gone to other places in the US: Disney has made more than a dozen Marvel movies in Georgia. "Sinners," one of the year's biggest movies, was made in Louisiana.

But there's a clear trend in international production, driven by lower labor costs and tax incentives. Production spending in the US fell by 28% between 2021 and 2024, but rose just about everywhere else. "Thunderbolts," Marvel's most recent movie, is also set to be the last one filmed in Georgia for the foreseeable future — most of Marvel's production has moved to London.

So what would Trump's plan do to correct that? No one seems to have any clue.

"Hollywood studio executives scrambled Sunday night to determine what the announcement would mean for their business," The Wall Street Journal reports. "As is often the case with Mr. Trump's declarations on social media, it was not entirely clear what he was talking about," The New York Times deadpans. Stocks of studios and streamers like Netflix and Warner Bros. Discovery were down Monday morning.

If you take Trump's post at face value, it does indeed pose all kinds of questions. Like: Would the tariffs apply to American-owned/produced movies, or to movies from studios all over the world? Would it apply to American productions that are mostly filmed in the US but have some scenes shot in other countries? What about movies where some postproduction work, like visual effects, is handled outside the US?

And at the most basic: How, exactly, do you tariff a movie or TV show? They don't arrive in this country via cargo ships or planes. US Customs and Border Protection doesn't sign off on their import.

My sneaking suspicion is that Trump doesn't know, either. It's just that he seems to think tariffs are the solution to just about any problem.

Otherwise, if Trump were truly concerned about encouraging more domestic film (and TV) production, he might go about it the way just about everyone else does: with tax breaks and other financial incentives.

Which, it turns out, is exactly the pitch Trump heard from the actor Jon Voight and his manager, Steven Paul, this weekend, per Bloomberg. Voight — one of three actors Trump said earlier this year would be his "special ambassadors" to bring back work to Hollywood — and Paul spent time with Trump at Mar-a-Lago, and suggested a pretty normal plan, Bloomberg says: "more federal tax incentives for US film and TV production," which involves "expanding existing tax credits and bringing back ones that have expired."

Voight and Paul didn't propose tariffs, Bloomberg reports. But Trump did. So here we are. Let's see if it goes anywhere.