Warning: Full spoilers for Thor: Love and Thunder follow. Do you want to know if there is a scene after the credits in the movie? We’ll tell you right here: There are two post-credits scenes in Thor: Love and Thunder. Scroll down to read all about them!
My sweet child! Thor: Love and Thunder shows that there is life after Ragnarok and all is fair in Love and Thor. And this time, Odinson and Stormbreaker are joined by Mjolnir-wielding Dr. Jane Foster, aka Mighty Thor. Directed by Taika Waititi, the fourth God of Thunder solo film pits both Thors against Gorr, whose job title is literally “God Butcher.” What can go wrong?
So let’s break it all down – how Thor: Love and Thunder ends, what’s the deal with those end-credits and mid-credits scenes, and all the easter eggs we found… And when you’re done here, read our Thor: Love review and Thunder!
A visual history of Thor
Thor: The End of Love and Thunder Explained
Here’s the plot of the movie in a nutshell: Jane Foster (Natalie Portman) returns as the Mighty Thor thanks to Mjolnir, who is also back in action. Thor (Chris Hemsworth) gets his groove back, sheds all the weight of Endgame, and gives up the Asgardians of the Galaxy so they can finish their trilogy. Horus, the butcher god kidnaps a group of children from New Asgard to lure Thor and Stormbreaker into a trap, so Thor, Mighty Thor and King Valkyrie (Tessa Thompson) team up to get the children back. This leads them to the easter-egg-filled city of Omnipotence, where Thor hurls Zeus’s (Russell Crowe) own lightning bolt into his chest. The Thors make it to the Shadow Realm to fight Gor, but not before he reaches the wish-granting Eternity and brings his dead daughter back to life (before he himself dies). Jane also dies, sacrificing herself to stop Gor. Thor adopts Gor’s orphan and takes her superheroing around the universe as the titular Love and Thunder. The ending (except for the post-credits – scroll down for those!).
So to venture into that end a little closer, Gorr needs Thor’s trusty ax Stormbreaker and its freezing capabilities to open a door to Eternity. That’s why he kidnapped the children – to lure Thor to him. When Thor and Mighty Thor arrive to rescue the children, Thor tells them to prepare for battle. As they pick up random junk lying around – or squeeze their animals – he endows them with his own powers “for a limited time only”. A bunch of god-mode kids then proceed to beat the crap out of Gor’s horde of Lovecraftian nightmarish shadow creatures to the tune of the best part of November Rain.
Jane, recently suffering from cancer, practically sacrifices herself to save the children. Earlier in the film, she tells Thor that every time she becomes the Mighty Thor, it takes away more of her power as Jane Foster. Jane still chooses to use Mjolnir in the final battle, despite the fact that she knows it will kill her…and it does.
As the Mighty Thor, she manages to use Mjolnir to break Gor’s Necrosword, which appears to be draining his powers. But despite all this, he reaches Eternity and as such can wish for anything. The Thors follow him as he goes through the portal to meet Eternity, but Jane’s cancer has caught up with her and she dies in Thor’s arms. Thor convinces Gor not to use his desire for revenge as originally planned, but to choose love instead. Coincidentally, Love is apparently the name (or nickname) of his dead daughter, and so Gor chooses to resurrect her instead of killing all the gods everywhere as he had originally planned.
Dying after doing this, Gore is able to hug and kiss his little girl before passing away. So, it’s a bittersweet ending. Jane is gone (we see her immortalized as Mighty Thor, aka Dr. Jane Foster, in statue form in New Asgard), but actually Thor already has a daughter and they’re doing a superhero thing around the galaxy.
Does Thor: Love and Thunder have a post-credits scene?
Yes, Thor: Love and Thunder has a post-credits and mid-credits scene.
Marvel’s Hercules: An Incredible Journey from Myth to Avenger
We get Hercules in the middle of the credits. It opens with Zeus putting a lightning bolt-sized hole in his sternum and muttering about what literally just happened in Omnipotence City. It’s clear he’s talking to someone – you know how these things wait until the last shot in the scene reveals what we want to see. Here it’s a live-action Hercules played by Ted Lasso’s Brett Goldstein (Roy Kent).
We only get one shot of him, but it’s pretty clear that Zeus is upset about having his chest pierced by his own weapon, and he sends his boy Hercules – who was mentioned earlier in the film – to deliver some sort of divine vengeance on the God of Thunder .
Hercules first appeared in Marvel Comics in The Avengers #10 in 1964, where he was summoned by the villain Immortus to mix him up with Thor. But it wasn’t really Hercules.
It’s a long story, but check out ours Hercules in love and thunder explainer for all the details.
Here’s a question: Is Loki in Valhalla too?
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As for the post-credits scene, we find Jane Foster’s spirit reawakening in Valhalla. Valhalla is the afterlife of the Norse gods, and this movie talks a lot about it. As Jane shows up, none other than Idris Elba’s Heimdall (who died in Avengers: Endgame ) is right there to greet her.
And that’s about it. The credits end, a card on the screen says that Thor will return, and that’s the end of the movie. The scene in Valhalla is a heart-warming bookend to Jane’s story, after she dies heroically, sacrificing herself to save the children. Jane definitely died a hero, but the Valhalla scene explains that yes, she’s as dead as Heimdall, but at least her passing isn’t really the end of her story. Since death no longer works in the MCU, it seems…
Jane and Heimdall’s appearance in Valhalla is most likely just a farewell to both characters, but if Gor was able to resurrect his daughter by reaching Eternity, it might not be out of the question for Thor to eventually do the same. Realistically, though, this was probably just an excuse to give Jane a proper send-off in a better movie than Thor: The Dark World.
But here’s a question: Is Loki in Valhalla too? Not the 2012 Loki who is currently roaming around with TVA variants, but rather the Loki Prime who died in Avengers: Infinity War. He died in battle, which according to this movie is a requirement to enter Valhalla. And this is after he helped Thor save the Asgardians in Ragnarok. His recent actions were valiant, and based on the basic rules of Valhalla laid out there in Love and Thunder, we think he’s probably there too.
What’s next for Thor (and Chris Hemsworth) in the Marvel movies
Whenever a new MCU movie or Disney+ show comes out, we always have to try to extrapolate where things will go next, and when it comes to Thor… well, the door is still wide open.
Thor’s story is still perfectly viable for more movies. At the end of Avengers: Endgame, he headed into space for adventures with the Asgardians of the Galaxy. He kind of ends this movie the same way, only instead of a ship full of holes, he’s having fun with Love, Gor’s resurrected daughter. So maybe the duo will go on all kinds of fun space adventures and the next Thor movie could actually be a literal Love and Thunder movie.
Note that at this point the Avengers don’t actually exist. Tony is dead, Cap is old and Nat is dead too. But at some point, an existential threat needs to happen that needs a group of gifted individuals to work together, and Thor seems like a likely candidate to join the fun.
Right now, with all the threats the MCU has put on the table since Endgame, the most likely candidate for that existential-level threat still has to be Kang the Conqueror. Featured in Loki, Kang is also set to appear in Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania in 2023. And since Kang was one of the villains in the original Avengers comic, if a new version of Earth’s Mightiest Heroes reunites to confronted this boy, Thor would almost certainly be involved.
But at the end of the day, all we know for sure right now is what was said on screen at the end of Love and Thunder: Thor will be back.
Thor: Love and Thunder Easter Eggs
Let’s go through all the Easter eggs we found in the movie:
- There were many in Omnipotence City, but we’ll start with the big ones. Several Celestials appear throughout the film, most notably in Omnipotence City and where Gorr builds the portal to Eternity…but there’s still no mention of the massive Celestial head and arm sticking out of Earth since Eternals came out.
- Ra, the most powerful member of Egyptian pantheon (or Ennead as Moon Knight calls him) is also part of the Omnipotence City gang.
- The Necrosword that chooses Gorr is slightly different in the comics, where All-Black the Necrosword is actually a symbiote – yes, a Venom-style symbiote. Knull, the majestic god and creator of all symbiotes, also created All-Black. The weapon is especially strong against divine. The main comic book characters are: Knull, Gorr the God Butcher, and yes… All-Father Thor (though he later destroys it).
Marvel Cinematic Universe: Every upcoming movie and TV show
- When Thor imbues the children of New Asgard with his power, it spreads among them in the form of Yggdrasil, the sacred tree central to Norse mythology and several Thor legends.
- There are several statues in the portal to the chamber of Eternity, including the three-headed Living Tribunal from the Loki series, Watu the Watcher, who was a major player in What If…?, and what appears to be Lady Death – the character comics – Thanos did her whole thing “destroy half the universe”.
- Jane Foster references Interstellar, explaining the wormhole theory from it with a piece of paper and a pencil. She also thought the film was clear and easy to understand, so…
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