Warning: Spoilers for Sinners are ahead.
There’s no question about it: everyone is talking about Sinners.
The Ryan Coogler-directed Southern vampire thriller took over the holiday weekend box office this week thanks to a massive word-of-mouth campaign that instantly sold out screenings everywhere. The story—written by Coogler himself—follows the story of the Smoke-Stack Twins, two gangster brothers (both portrayed by Michael B. Jordan) who return home to Mississippi after spending years working with the mob in Chicago. The brothers are working to open up their own juke joint in order to maintain consistent income and to own something for themselves amid the Jim Crow-era South. On their opening night, a few unfamiliar faces show up at the doorstep of their juke joint who just happen to be an Irish immigrant vampire and his two freshly converted Klu-Klux-Klan adjacent newborns. You can imagine what happens from this point on. Describing what’s to come as a bloodbath is a bit of an understatement.
Coogler, who has also directed blockbusters like the Creed franchise and both Black Panther movies, nodded to his Marvel roots by incorporating not one, but two post-credit scenes into Sinners. In case you left the theater before the final credits were finished, we’ve got you covered. Here’s what happened at the true end of Sinners.
Post-Credits Scene #1:
In the first post-credits scene, audiences get a closer look at what happened to the character of Sammie who we learn is the sole survivor of the juke joint vampire massacre. Going against his pastor father’s wishes, Sam refuses to give up playing blues music even though his soulful voice and passionate musicianship quite literally conjures the likes of vampires and other evil spirits to Earth. Sammie ends up moving up north to Chicago and becoming a lifelong musician and performer (portrayed by real-life blues legend Buddy Guy). Fast forward to the 1990s and following one of his nightly shows, Sam receives two special visitors who paid off the bouncer at the door. Stack (Michael B. Jordan) and Mary (Hailee Steinfeld), who are still together in their new lives as vampires, reunite with Sammie and offer to turn him into one as well so he can continue to play music and tour for eternity. Viewers seeing Stack and Mary once more also confirms that Smoke did not choose to murder Stack during the juke joint massacre and instead let him free. Stack also reveals that Smoke made him promise that he would never hunt or harm Sam. Understandably, Sammie turns down their offer for immortality. Stack and Mary respect his decision, sit down to listen to him play guitar once more, and then head back off into the night.
Post-Credits Scene #2:
The second post-credits scene is simple, but meaningful. A young Sam is sitting in his father’s church strumming his guitar and singing to himself a version of “This Little Light of Mine”—with no one else inside of the church but himself. While Coogler leaves the scene up to interpretation, viewers might assume that the clip symbolizes Sammie in the afterlife and escaping the fate of of being in a vampire’s body forever.
