This article contains major spoilers for the ending of Ragnarok Season 3 Episode 6.
Netflix’s Norwegian YA drama Ragnarok certainly has its fans, and one must apologize to all of them for the scandalously terrible climax delivered here in Ragnarok Season 3.
It’s not my fault, obviously, but even as I sit here unpacking it, I feel bad for how deeply disappointing this ending is. I can imagine droves of fans drifting here in complete confusion, asking the obvious question in the hopes of receiving a better answer than the one they got.
Is that really it?
And yes, that was really it.
Ragnarok Season 3 Ending Explained
The whole thing begins with an ending of a sort. Peace has descended over Edda. The fighting has ended. Thor has laid the hammer down and is settling into the mundane routine and responsibilities of teenage life. Saxa is working with activists and investors to curb the pollution of Jutul Industries, paying off the show’s underlying climate-crisis message.
Warning bells start ringing when Magne, having passed his exams and graduated, discovers some Thor comics and a plastic Mjolnir. Uh-oh.
Does Ragnarok occur?
Ragnarok, the Norse end of days which entails the deaths of various Gods and the burning and subsequent submerging of the entire world, has obviously been teased since the very beginning of a show named after the event. But does Ragnarok occur here in the Season 3 finale? No, it does not.
One of the precipitating events of Ragnarok is the death of Baldur, the Norse God of Light and the son of Odin and Freya. This is what Magne believes he sees at the high school graduation ceremony: Jens, aka Baldur, being shot with an arrow by Hod. However, nobody else seems especially concerned.
It becomes obvious, eventually, that Magne is imagining these scenarios. His mighty battles give way to him standing alone in the school auditorium, and Signy, who has been giving him the cold shoulder, rather mundanely offering to be his girlfriend if he can just promise to do his best to be there for her.
The show is deliberate in displaying how these events still roughly line up with the prophecy of Ragnarok, of Thor’s death and rebirth in the new world, but… it was all a dream?
Was everything really just a dream?
Oh, boy, Ragnarok is going to get some stick for this. But, yes, the implication is that all three seasons of Ragnarok have just been a fantasy imagined by Magne, who is a paranoid schizophrenic.
Magne found solace in his Thor comic books, his grand imaginings being a coping mechanism for losing Isolde. As someone prone to flights of fantasy and recontextualizing reality, the idea is that Magne has reinvented his life as a cosmic conflict.
At least, though, there’s something resembling a happy ending. While the actual mythological events might not have been real, Magne’s growth as an individual seems to have stuck. Heavy-handed details like him throwing away his comics, and seeing the spectre of Isolde gradually fade away, imply that Magne has gone some way towards healing himself, coming to terms with his actual reality rather than the magical one he invented in his own mind.
This personal payoff notwithstanding, though, this is a deeply terrible climax to a series, almost daringly bad in its embrace of the ridiculous “it was all a dream” cliché.
You can stream Ragnarok Season 3 Episode 6 exclusively on Netflix. What did you think of the ending of Ragnarok Season 3? Let us know in the comments.
