Warning: This article contains SPOILERS for Loki season 2 episode 6
Summary
- Loki Season 2 breaks the trend of including post-credits scenes, following the example set by Avengers: Endgame, emphasizing conclusions and finality.
- The ending of Loki Season 2 pays tribute to the character’s journey and ultimate sacrifice, highlighting the significance of his role in the MCU.
- By forgoing a post-credits scene, Loki Season 2 prioritizes the storytelling and message of the season, demonstrating that sometimes silence about future events is more impactful.
Marvel’s Loki season 2 made a bold post-credits scene choice that secretly hints the MCU is finally learning one of the most important lessons of Avengers: Endgame.
Despite Loki being at the heart of the Multiverse Saga and directly setting up the upcoming Avengers: The Kang Dynasty, the final moments of season 2 are not dedicated to looking to what’s next. Despite the no-doubt irresistible urge to tease what Loki’s decision at the end of “Glorious Purpose” actually means to the rest of the MCU, the finale ends on an emotional note of finality. And crucially, while Loki season 2 has no post-credits scene, and that might disappoint some viewers, it’s the perfect pay-off of a lesson introduced 4 years ago.
Loki Season 2 Is 1 Of Only 3 Major Releases Without A Post-Credits Scene
Avengers: Endgame originally broke the trend of MCU releases always having a post-credits scene. Marvel’s shared universe has always been built on the idea of narrative progress, and even the biggest stories quickly make way for something grander. A bigger threat; even more appealing new characters; even starrier new cast additions. When Endgame ignored the rule (other than a brief audio tribute to Robert Downey Jr’s slain Iron Man), it was done for effect, and it worked magnificently well.
4 years later, Secret Invasion broke the trend again, becoming only the second major MCU release (Werewolf By Night didn’t have one, but as a Special Presentation avoids the “major” label here). In that case, a post-credits scene felt like an oversight, given the way Secret Invasion’s ending teed up other MCU events. Loki season 2’s ending, on the other hand, makes a more deliberate narrative choice not to include a post-credits scene that echoes the intent of Endgame.
Loki Proves The MCU Finally Learned Endgame’s Lesson
The choice to ignore the eternal draw of the MCU post-credits scene was a conscious one for Avengers: Endgame. After Tony Stark sacrificed himself to save the universe, it would have been inappropriate to immediately turn attention to the stories that would replace him. Endgame’s ending was about conclusions and finality, and giving Stark’s death (and everything else in that ending) space to really land was an inspired move. As Anthony Russo explained it:
“The reason why there’s no end credits is because our goal on this movie was simply to bring to a conclusion the 22 movies now that comprise the MCU for these 10 years of storytelling. I think one of the great creative upsides for Joe and I, as story tellers on this movie, was that this is the first MCU movie we got to tell where we weren’t thinking about the future. We were simply thinking about the past, the journey that we’ve all been on together since that first Iron Man movie. And how do we bring the most epic sense of closure to that journey that we can possibly do. So that was our goal, and that was really why we had no tag.”
In the same way, Loki season 2 brings an end to one of the longest-running stories in the entire MCU. Tom Hiddleston’s fan-favorite God of Mischief debuted in 2011’s Thor, proved so popular that he survived being killed in Thor: The Dark World, and has proved himself a banner brand for the franchise ever since. Death was never big enough for Loki, and his ultimate sacrifice at the end of Loki season 2 is even more important than if he’d given his life. At his end, Loki is an MCU constant, just as his presence has been since 2011, and the reverent tribute of ending Loki season 2 on the shot of him keeping the entire multiverse together was the right choice.
The MCU will continue, of course, but “Glorious Purpose” was about delivering on the promise to let Loki tell his own story. To introduce a post-credits scene after that sacrifice would have been a betrayal of the character and of the season’s entire message. Like Endgame before it, Loki season 2 ignored the obligation to sell something else, and it feels like Marvel Studios finally learned the lesson that sometimes saying nothing about what’s next is better,.
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