As the latest entry into the Marvel Cinematic Universe, “Thor: Ragnarok” isn’t a standalone movie. It’s another cog in a giant story machine that each new Marvel superhero film adds to, in order to tell a big, overarching tale.
While “Thor: Ragnarok” has direct callbacks to movies like “Thor: The Dark World” and the “Avengers” saga, it also teases things that’ll be a part of future films. The Marvel Cinematic Universe is known for its post-credits scenes that often give hints about where the story is headed next. And the last entry into the MCU, “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2,” had not just one, but five post-credits scenes.
So should you hang around after the end of “Thor: Ragnarok” to catch a clue about where the MCU is headed next?
The answer is, most definitely, yes. “Thor: Ragnarok” includes two scenes that pop up during the credits, and you’ll want to stay in your seat until the very end to see everything the movie has to offer.
Warning! Spoilers beyond this point!
The first scene pops up in the middle of the credits and seems to tie directly into “Avengers: Infinity War,” the culmination of the MCU’s story threads so far.
During that scene, Thor (Chris Hemsworth) and Loki (Tom Hiddleston) find themselves on the bridge of the ship they used to leave Asgard at the end of the film, discussing whether Loki can go with Thor when he returns to Earth. As they’re talking, they find a huge ship looming over theirs, before the scene cuts to black.
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That ship was Sanctuary II, the vessel belonging to series big bad Thanos. We’ve seen Thanos continuously orchestrating things from behind the scenes during several of the MCU movies, and we know his ultimate goal. Thanos is the bad guy of “Infinity War,” and he’s been trying to gather up the various Infinity Stones from around the galaxy.
Thanos capturing Thor’s ship, along with Thor and Loki, has two big implications. First, it’s heavily implied that during the course of “Thor: Ragnarok,” Loki stole back the blue cube known as the Tesseract. That powerful device is what he used to nearly take over Earth in “The Avengers,” and what powered the portal he opened to let an army of Chitauri aliens loose on New York. We now know that, during that movie, Loki was working for Thanos.
We also know that the Tesseract actually houses an Infinity Stone — the Space stone. Up to now, Thanos has tried to get hold of the Infinity Stones by sending lacky villains (like Loki and Ronan from the first “Guardians of the Galaxy”) to retrieve them. From the Marvel Comics, we know that Thanos will eventually unite all the stones together in a golden glove called the Infinity Gauntlet. So fans have been waiting to see how Thanos actually gets ahold of all the stones, and the “Ragnarok” post-credits scene looks very likely to be how he retrieves the first one.
The second implication from the scene dovetails with footage from “Avengers: Infinity War” Marvel has shown at conventions this year. In the footage, Thor’s body is seen floating through space. It actually collides with the ship belonging to the Guardians of the Galaxy, and they bring the unconscious Thor on board to revive him. That seems to be how “Infinity War” will bring the Guardians and the Avengers together (along with just about everyone else in the MCU).
So Thor’s spaceship getting nabbed by Thanos and Thor’s body found later floating through space follows pretty nicely. The “Ragnarok” post-credits scene seems like the direct setup for this aspect of “Infinity War.”
There’s one more post-credits scene that comes right at the end, and while it’s a fun one, it doesn’t do much to advance the story. It catches up with the Grandmaster (Jeff Goldblum) back on Sakaar, where Thor and his pals kicked off an uprising. The Grandmaster’s ship has crashed and he finds himself among his people. He congratulates them on a successful uprising, as well as himself, since they couldn’t have an uprising without a leader to overthrow.