10 Big MCU Revelations That Didn’t Come From The Movies

At the end of The Avengers, Loki is defeated, the Chitauri ship has been blown up, and the sky portal is closed. Loki's scepter - which was a crucial part of his plan - can be seen in the hands of Black Widow, which presumably meant that it would be carefully safeguarded and kept out of the wrong hands.

But the next time we see it, it's randomly in the possession of Wolfgang von Strucker - one of Hydra's top-tier big-bads - during the mid-credits scene of Captain America: The Winter Soldier.

So what happened to the scepter between those two movies?

The answer lies in Avengers: Age Of Ultron's prelude, This Scepter'd Isle. In the comic, the scepter is being studied by SHIELD scientists Nicholas Cooper and Mark Smith. However, Mark hates his position and becomes disgruntled with SHIELD's higher-ups, which gives him a motive to turn against them.

Hydra gets to Mark and exploits this motive, persuading him to kill Nicholas and steal the scepter, which is then delivered to Strucker at the Hydra base in Sokovia.

At the end of the comic, we see The Winter Soldier's mid-credits scene re-created on the page, which leads directly into Age Of Ultron.