I don’t know who had “Disney’s Musical Sequel.” Moana 2 “Basically reveals a Thanos at the end” on their 2024 bingo card, but it sure wasn’t me. The teaser isn’t 100% verbatim (in this age of endless multiverse crossovers, we need to make that clear), but it’s surprisingly close. After the big musical finale, after the obligatory happy ending, Moana 2 uses an old MCU trick, complete with images that are sure to look familiar The Avengers and other MCU films.

(Ed. Note: Some Moana 2 Spoilers ahead.)

Does Moana 2 have a post-credits scene?

No, there’s nothing at the very end of the credits, but Moana 2 has a mid-credits scene that spans the entire MCU. After a reprise of the soundtrack keystone “Beyond,” a scene plays that shifts the focus from this film’s story to theoretically build anticipation for an ongoing franchise.

The film’s big villain is Nalo (Tofiga Fepulea’i), the god of storms, who sank the mystical island of Motufetū into the sea in an attack on the people of the Pacific islands. Nalo is never seen in the actual film – his face is hinted at in storms and seen in dramatic artistic renderings, but he is never physically present and the heroes never meet him in person. The end credits scene introduces him as a big, crazy guy sitting up in the clouds, screaming about how Moana just ruined his grand plan.

He’s there to confront Matangi (Awhimai Fraser, the voice of Elsa in the Māori edition of). Frozen), the seemingly threatening but actually seemingly helpful bat woman who sings Moana 2is the fiery banger “Get Lost”. Nalo has discovered that Matangi helped Moana and her friends find their way to Motufetū, and he is angry at what he sees as a betrayal. He binds Matangi with lightning shackles and threatens her with a classic villain line: “This isn’t over yet… No, we’re just getting started!”

Oh, and then Tamatoa the crab shows up.

The crab with the voice of Jemaine Clement, who originally sings the David Bowie-inspired number “Shiny”. Moanano longer shines. Its shell, previously covered in gold and jewels, is now covered in barnacles and bones. He’s trying to sell Nalo on his new song “Funky Crab Legs,” a silly little a cappella song about ten legs. Nalo is too annoyed to sing, and he casually throws a bolt of lightning at Tamatoa, destroying his new goth suit and causing him to retreat into his shell.

Tamatoa’s presence is mostly a brief gag, but it serves a purpose – to illustrate the greatness of Matangi and Nalo in this scene. Tamatoa is a gigantic human-scale monster that can easily devour Maui or Moana in a single bite. But compared to Nalo and Matangi, he is only the size of a small crab. (By the way, Tamatoa is canonically a coconut crab, and those things are huge compared to invertebrates – but compared to these two supernatural figures, he looks more like a fiddler crab or something equally tiny.)

Moana 2 The film famously started out as a Disney Plus TV series that was eventually adapted into a theatrical release, and that’s reflected in the plot to some extent: the film introduces a lot of quirky new characters that are meant to drive different types of comedy of storylines, including the cranky older farm master Kele (David Fane), the hyperactive young engineer Loto (Rose Matafeo), the myth-obsessed knowledge keeper Moni (Hualālai Chung) and Moana’s demanding little sister Simea (Khaleesi Lambert-Tsuda).

Writers Jared Bush and Dana Ledoux Miller try to give each of these new characters a purpose in the story and a moment to shine, but they’re still mostly pretty superfluous to the plot. They seem like preparations for a series that is still waiting to be published.

Likewise, Nalo never showed up in person during the main action of Moana 2while promising that he’s about to get serious – this suggests either a direct sequel or that Disney is still planning an episodic TV series in which Nalo comes up with a new plan every week against Moana and her newly formed coalition of Pacific Islanders could appear. His motives as described in Moana 2 are pretty tired and simple: “People are too powerful, I’m jealous, and I’ll use my storm powers to divide them,” similar to Plato symposium or Stephen Trask’s musical Hedwig and the angry customs. A series or sequel would provide plenty of room to make him more of a character and go into more detail about what he wants and why.

But given that Moana 2 Since Disney was already breaking box office records before its release, it’s likely that Disney would at least consider making another film Moana film in front of you Moana TV series, especially if the early box office hit is confirmed. Either way, Moana 2The mid-credits scene obviously and openly announces further Moana adventures in some form.

And in this way, the mid-credits scene feels like a standard MCU tease, a “get ready for the next movie” promise meant to leave the audience hanging. Nalo spending the entire film off-screen and then appearing at the end – notably sitting on a throne, in an abstract divine realm – initially feels a lot like the various Thanos credits scene teasers The Avengerswhere he similarly throws an unruly servant on the carpet for deserting him, and what results Avengers: Age of Ultronwhere he takes his big purple ass off his throne and promises to take matters into his own hands.

While we wait for Nalo to follow suit in a new Moana movie or TV show, we can look forward to Disney’s live-action remake Moanawhich is currently being filmed in Hawaii and is scheduled to hit theaters on July 10, 2026.