Let's make this simple: You want to know if there are any post- or mid-credits scenes in Sinners. The answer is yes, in a big way, since it has one of both.
Full spoilers for the movie follow!
Set in 1932, writer-director Ryan Coogler’s Sinners (review) involves twin brothers Smoke and Stack (both played by Michael B. Jordan) returning home to the town of Clarksdale, Mississippi, after seven years away in Chicago. World War I veterans who then made a living as criminals – it’s mentioned they worked for Al Capone – the two are now opening a juke joint in an old sawmill they bought from a local named Hogwood (David Maldonado).
Sinners: The Plot (and a Vampire Plot)
Hastily gathering everything they need in the hours before opening night, while reuniting with those they left behind, the two enlist their talented young musician cousin, Sammie (Miles Caton), and local legend Delta Slim (Delroy Lindo) to provide music at the club; their friend Cornbread (Omar Benson Miller) to work the door as security; and a healer Annie (Wunmi Mosaku) to make food. Smoke and Annie have a romantic history but also the painful shared connection of the baby they had together who died tragically young. In the meantime, Stack has an unplanned reunion with Mary (Hailee Steinfeld), who still is angered by him leaving her with little notice seven years before, though, still drawn to him, she decides to go to the club.
Others of note at the club are Pearline (Jayme Lawson), a singer eventually convinced to join Sammie and Slim onstage – who also makes some private, physical “music” with Sammie behind closed doors – and married grocery store owners Grace (Li Jun Li) and Bo (Yao), with Grace hired to make a sign for the juke joint and then sticking around to help tend bar while Bo plays cards.
Everyone is having a blast until the arrival of the vampire Remmick (Jack O’Connell) and two others he recently turned. Though they keep their true nature hidden, everyone is worried why three white people are trying to go to a Black juke joint in Jim Crow-era Mississippi, fearing things could easily go bad. They are denied entry as a result, but when Mary – who has a half-black grandfather but is white-passing – offers to go outside to speak to the still loitering trio to discern if they mean any harm or perhaps should be allowed to come in and spend their money, she is attacked and bitten by Remmick. Now transformed into a vampire, she gets an unaware Cornbread to invite her back in, before seducing Stack into a back room, where she bites him in turn.
The discovery of Mary biting Stack, and then seeing her survive multiple gunshots from a distraught Smoke as she flees back outside, are enough for the knowledgeable Annie to quickly realize they are dealing with vampires. Soon, Stack has risen from the dead as a vampire himself, joining Remick outside alongside a now disturbingly large group of fellow vampires, with many more having been grabbed and turned when the club was abruptly closed in the wake of Stack’s death. Their numbers also quickly come to include Cornbread and Bo, who both were outside and unaware of the true nature of the threat they faced.
We learn these vampires share a hive mind of sorts and are able to access each other’s memories. Having discarded petty human grievances like racism, they all act blissfully happy - and Remmick seems to perhaps mean it when he says he wishes to spread fellowship and love. You just have to die first to get it.
Sinners Ending Explained
These vampires are pretty traditional when it comes to the rules, with garlic harming them, wooden stakes killing them, and an inability to enter a building unless they are invited in. Gearing up with guns, which can at least temporarily slow a vampire down, and wooden stakes to kill them at close range, Smoke, Annie, Sammie, Grace, Slim and Pearline all each eat a clove of garlic to prove they are human. They then plan to simply wait out the night until the vampires have to leave when the sun rises - until Remmick and the now-vampired Bo insinuate through the door that they will go find Grace and Bo’s teenage daughter, Lisa (Helena Hu), if they’re not let in.
Deciding to try to protect her daughter at all costs, Grace, against the wishes of the others, purposely screams to the vampires to come in, intending to force a last stand that she hopes will kill the vampires and save Lisa, no matter what else happens to those in the club, herself included. In the ensuing mayhem, as the vampires storm the juke joint, Grace is killed, burning to death alongside a vampire, while Pearline and Annie are both bitten. Pearline is turned as a result, but keeping an earlier promise that he wouldn’t allow her to become a vampire, Smoke stakes Annie through the heart before her human body fully perishes - causing legitimate anguish for both Stack and Mary, signifying that they truly wanted their friends and family to join them as vampires.
'Just vampirism wasn't enough. There had to be other supernatural elements to this.' -Ryan CooglerWe recently asked Ryan Coogler about Remmick’s desire to unite everyone… even if it’s by vampiric means. “I love this character,” he said. “I love him presenting as one thing. Not just in terms of the vampirism, but presenting as one thing and being something completely different. Their fear of him being this racist guy, and learning that his view on race is the opposite. That, to me, was very powerful if he actually identifies with these people. These are the people he wants to hang out with.”
Remmick’s main target is Sammie, who has a rare ability to pierce the veil of time through the music he creates. This was vividly depicted earlier in the film in a manner we in the audience and Remmick could see, but not the humans inside the club, as musicians from across time joined Sammie as he played.
Coogler also spoke to IGN about the significance of this moment. “Just vampirism wasn't enough, he said. “There had to be other supernatural elements to this. … Why did juke joint culture develop in the 1930s? It's because these people were denied this. And they were born at a time where they weren't going to see more freedom. That was their luck. This is what they got. Maybe their grandkids will. And how cool would it be if they can party with those grandkids. That concept was how we built that scene, man.”
Now, Remmick wants to turn Sammie, believing he can help Remmick see his own ancestors again. When Sammie flees outside, desperately wading through a nearby pond, Remmick follows. Meanwhile, inside the club, Smoke and Stack fight, with Smoke finally getting the better of his brother, pinning him down and holding a stake above him for the killing blow.
Trying to escape through the water, Sammie smashes his guitar into Remmick’s head, slowing him down, but Remmick then overpowers him and is about to bite him when he’s staked from behind, through his back, by Smoke. Remmick screams in anguish, only to then realize he’s lost track of time and the sun is rising. The other vampires, who’d gathered to watch Remmick turn Sammie, all scream as they try and fail to run back indoors to safety, but instead all explode into flames before a startled Smoke and Sammie.
Settling a Score
With only Smoke and Sammie left alive, Smoke tells his cousin to go home, saying he’s going to stay behind to take care of some unfinished business. Earlier, Remmick had told Smoke and Stack how, thanks to the shared memories he has with those he’d turned – including Hogwood’s nephew – he now knew that Hogwood was actually a Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard who, after selling the brothers the old sawmill, intended to return with his men and betray and kill the pair along with anyone else they found.
Preparing for Hogwood’s arrival, Smoke opens a trunk he’d mentioned earlier, which turns out to contain weapons - both military ones representing the brothers’ time in the army and a tommy gun representing their time with Capone. When Hogwood and his men show up, Smoke is lying in ambush and kills them all, though he is shot in the gut in the battle.
When he walks over to a wounded but still alive Hogwood, he demands a cigarette from him, and then lights it and begins to smoke it, only to fall to the ground, clearly close to death himself from his own gunshot. He then sees a vision – or perhaps their true spirits, from beyond – of Annie sitting next to him on the ground, nursing their baby boy. He asks to hold the baby, and she tells him to put out the cigarette first. When the rage-filled Hogwood interrupts this to scream one last litany of racist hatred at Smoke, Smoke unloads the rest of his ammo into Hogwood, killing him.
He then turns back to Annie and the baby, puts out the cigarette, and takes his son in his arms to hold, enjoying his time with his family as his life on Earth comes to an end.
We then pick up where the film’s prologue began, with a battered, bruised and bloody Sammie (who has four long claw marks on his face now thanks to Remmick) wandering into his father’s church in the middle of service, still clutching his guitar handle - the only part of his instrument he still has. His father tells the shocked parishioners to leave. Uncertain of what his son has gone through, he tells him to let go of the guitar handle, having always felt his son’s love of the Blues would lead him down a dark path. Instead, we cut to sometime later, and see Sammie is driving away, leaving Clarksdale behind, with his guitar handle on the car seat next to him.
'I think that the music is an affirmation of humanity.' -Ryan CooglerWe asked Coogler about the importance of Blues in the film. “I think that the music is an affirmation of humanity,” said the filmmaker. “It's a rebellion against the situation that these people were in. And had been in generationally. But it's also a celebration of that beauty. It's the full dose, the full human condition. Whereas the church is somewhat edited, the bad parts cut out. And there's an inherent room for the accusation of hypocrisy there when you cutting out the bad, and not acknowledging the bad. There's no hypocrisy in the blues as it was. It accepts you.”
We then cut to a Blues club looking decidedly different and more modern than anything we’ve seen in the film, as onscreen text tells us it’s 1992 Chicago. A band performs on stage and the old man playing the guitar has several large scars on his face, letting us know this is Sammie and that he kept playing music for the rest of his life. And the closing credits begin…
Does Sinners Have a Mid- or Post-Credit Scene?
It sure does! In fact, the film has one of those mid-credit scenes that actually feels like the proper final scene of the movie itself rather than just a fun bonus. To use a comparison from Ryan Coogler’s pals at Marvel Studios, where he learned a thing or two about credits scenes, this is like the one in Spider-Man: Far From Home with J. Jonah Jameson’s news report, where it would be a genuine shame to miss if you leapt out of your seat immediately. Coogler does his best to let you know to stick around though, intercutting the initial closing credits with additional shots of the older Sammie (Buddy Guy) playing his guitar on stage.
But then the credits pause, as we move to after Sammie’s show, where he sits at the now empty bar with a drink. An employee tells him that a couple of people asked to meet him and he says sure. And when the door opens, in walks… Stack and Mary! They’re now sporting their 1992 finest, with her in black, wearing sunglasses, and Stack showing off a bright, colorful shirt and a flattop haircut. The bartender at first is smitten by Mary, then backs off in fear over the look she gives him and leaves the room.
A stunned Sammie asks them how this is possible and Stack explains that Smoke hesitated to stake his own brother, but then made Stack vow to leave Sammie alone if Smoke spared him. As for Mary, she fled down the road after seeing Annie killed, and was gone before the sun rose on Remmick and the others. Stack tells Sammie that he and Mary have kept track of him from afar the past 60 years, admiring his music and the albums he’s put out - though Stack isn’t a fan of his more recent electric-infused songs. Getting close and smelling Sammie, Stack tells the old man he doesn’t have much time left to live, and offers to turn him, but Sammie tells him no.
They ask Sammie to play for them and he obliges, playing “Travelin’,” the same song he once impressed Stack with when the two were driving together early in the film. When he finishes, Stack and Mary tell him that his song was beautiful and get up to leave.
Before they go, Sammie stops them, telling them at least once a week he dreams about that terrible night… but that before it all went to hell, he had the best day of his life. He asks Stack if it’s the same for him and Stack agrees, telling him that was the last day he saw his brother and the last day he saw the sun. The two vampires depart, leaving an introspective Sammie sitting alone.
There is a post-credit scene as well, and though it’s not another plot-heavy one like the mid-credit scene, its final, dialogue-free focus just on music is key to Sinners’ themes. Here, we are back in 1932, watching the young Sammie sit alone in his father’s church. It’s clearly before that fateful day, because he doesn’t have the scars on his face. He sits singing and playing “This Little Light of Mine” on his guitar, a song we heard earlier in the film sung in this same location by churchgoers, but this time Sammie’s performing it in a heavy Blues style his father would no doubt reject.
Coogler has said Sinners was heavily influenced by his late uncle, who was from Missisispi and had a great love for the Blues. He elaborated to IGN, “That's why he loved it - because it reminded him of his past in Mississippi, but also reminded him of his humanity. When that art is at its highest form, it reminds you of the greatness that human creativity is capable of.”
But what did you think of Sinners? And should we get a Sinners 2 with Stack and Mary in the 1990s? Let’s discuss in the comments!
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