Moana 2’s post-credits scene pretty much brings Thanos into Moana 3

I don’t know who had “Disney’s musical sequel Moana 2 basically a Thanos reveal at the end” on their 2024 bingo card, but that was definitely not me. The tease isn’t 100% literal (in these days of endless multiverse crossovers, we have to specify that), but it’s surprisingly close. After the grand musical finale, after the obligatory happy ending, Moana 2 pulls an old MCU trick, complete with visuals that will definitely look familiar The Avengers and other MCU movies.

(Oath. note: Some Moana 2 spoilers ahead.)

Does Moana 2 have a post-credits scene?

No, there is nothing at the end of the lyrics, but Moana 2 has a mid-credits scene that goes full MCU. After a repeat of the soundtrack’s keystone “Beyond”, a scene plays that shifts the focus away from this film’s story to, in theory, build anticipation for a continued franchise.

The film’s big villain is Nalo (Tofiga Fepulea’i), the storm god who sank the mysterious island of Motufetū under the sea in an attack on the people of the Pacific Islands. Nalo is not seen at any point during the film itself – his face is hinted at in storms and seen in dramatic artistic representations, but he is never physically present and the heroes never meet him in person. The mid-credits scene introduces him as just a big, crazy guy sitting up in the clouds steaming about how Moana just regrets her big plan.

He is there to confront Matangi (Awhimai Fraser, the voice of Elsa in the Māori version of Frozen), the seemingly menacing but actually seemingly helpful Batwoman who sings Moana 2his fiery banger “Get Lost.” Nalo has found out that Matangi helped Moana and her friends figure out how to navigate to Motufetū, and is furious at what he sees as a betrayal. He shackles Matangi with zip ties and threatens her with a classic villain line: “This isn’t over… No, we’re just getting started!”

Oh, and then the crab Tamatoa shows up.

The Jemaine Clement-voiced crab singing the David Bowie-inflected track “Shiny” in the original Moanais no longer shiny. His shell, previously covered in gold and jewels, is now covered in jewelry and bones. He’s trying to sell Nalo on his new song, “Funky Crab Legs,” a silly little a cappella song about having 10 legs. Too annoyed to sing, Nalo accidentally throws a bolt of lightning from Tamatoa, destroying his new goth coating and causing him to retreat into his shell.

Tamatoa’s presence is mostly a brief gag, but it serves one purpose – to establish the scope of Matangi and Nalo in this scene. Tamatoa is a gigantic, human-scale monster, easily capable of devouring Maui or Moana in a single bite. But he is just the size of a small crab compared to Nalo and Matangi. (By the way, Tamatoa is canonically a coconut crab, and those things are huge on the invertebrate scale – but against these two supernatural figures he looks more like a fiddler crab or something equally small.)

Moana 2 famous started as a Disney Plus TV series which was eventually turned into a theatrical release, and it shows to some degree in the plot: the film introduces a bunch of quirky new characters meant to drive different kinds of comedy and different kinds of plots, including fussy, elderly farmmaster Kele (David Fane), hyperactive young engineer Loto (Rose Matafeo), myth-obsessed lore holder 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 pretty superfluous to the plot most of the time. They feel like a setup for a series still waiting to happen.

Likewise, Nalo never appears in person during the main action Moana 2while promising that he’s getting serious – that suggests either a direct sequel, or like Disney is still planning an episodic TV series where Nalo could pop up with a new plot against Moana and her newfound Pacific Islander coalition every week . His motives as described in Moana 2 are pretty threadbare and basic: “Humans are too powerful, I’m jealous, and I’ll use my storm powers to split them up,” much like in Plato’s Symposium or Stephen Trask’s musical Hedwig and the Angry Inch. A series or sequel would have a lot of room to make him more of a character and flesh out what he wants and why.

But given that Moana 2 was already breaking box office records before its releaseit seems likely that Disney would at least consider another Moana movie before one Moana TV shows, especially if the early surge in ticket sales shows. Regardless, Moana 2The mid-credits scene clearly and openly teases more Moana adventures to come in one form or another.

And in that way, the mid-credits scene feels like a standard issue MCU tease, a “get ready for the next movie” promise designed to leave audiences hanging. Nalo spending the entire movie off screen and then appearing at the end – specifically sitting on a throne, in an abstract god realm – feels so much like the various Thanos credits scene teasers starting with The Avengerswhere he similarly calls a recalcitrant minion to the carpet for failing himand until Avengers: Age of Ultronwhere he gets his big purple bum 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 series, however, we can anticipate Disney’s live-action remake of Moanaat the moment filming in Hawaii and is expected to hit theaters on July 10, 2026.