Ragnarok Season 3 not only gave a fictional ending to fantasy literature but also a realistic ending to a show that had been a fantasy for a long time. Yes, it is confusing, and so is the end of Ragnarok season 3, which depicts two possible scenarios: something that should have happened and something that actually happened. In the end, Ragnarok‘s central conflict became the struggle to differentiate between what took place in reality and what was concocted inside Magne’s troubled mind.
Spoiler Alert
Our protagonist, Magne, was going through a moral conflict and questioned quite often whether it was important to kill a person to end evil. In the old days, the gods used to kill the giants to end the chaos, but Magne had been living in a new world where it was the responsibility of the law to maintain order. But do these things work? It was Magne who asked this question because he had lost faith in the system as it failed to find out the truth about Isolde Eidsvoll’s death. For Magne, she was killed by the rich and powerful Vidar Jutul, who owned half of the town. However, for the investigators, Isolde died in a paragliding accident, and, therefore, that chapter was closed. Magne failed to come to terms with it and, therefore, stepped in to solve Isolde’s death, eventually becoming obsessed with it. There is really no end to the imagination of the human mind. In Magne’s case, we believe he re-imagined the entire Norse mythology, seeking closure for his demons. However, let’s not get ahead of ourselves and break down all the important events of Ragnarok Season 3 bit by bit instead.
How Did Magne Rewrite His Destiny?
A major chunk of Ragnarok Season 3 follows Magne’s transformation into an arrogant and ignorant lad who starts to feel that he is invincible. He became a narcissistic god in the truest sense and threatened the Jutuls with his hammer. At one point, we believe Magne became envious of Jutuls’ lavish lifestyle and wanted it all for himself. He even started dating Saxa for the money, which hurt Signy’s feelings because she failed to see Magne as the all-mighty Thor. Wotan or Odin finally brought Magne to his senses and revealed to him that the hammer had been controlling his mind, and it should be the other way around. He told Magne that the weapon should serve a greater purpose. One who yields to it had a responsibility towards others and cannot succumb to his own selfishness. Wotan finally reminded Magne why he had started this war: to get justice for Isolde, and he shouldn’t get distracted with worldly pleasures.
After some counseling, Magne finally started acting like a true leader and led the war against the giants. He proposed to the remaining giants, Ran, Fjor, and Saxa, that they fight in an abandoned warehouse and put an end to it once and for all. The gods had already outnumbered the giants, but the giants had old weapons capable of killing the gods. But these details don’t matter, as Ragnarok never actually happened in Magne’s world.
Before the battle even started, Magne had a change of heart, and he tossed away his hammer. Other gods and giants followed. Magne didn’t want to kill anyone. It was the same thing he felt when he accidentally killed Vidar in Season 2. Therefore, Magne’s moral conflict came into play again, and he convinced the giants to put the fight behind them. It wasn’t how it was written in Norse mythology, but Magne knew that they could rewrite their own future. The Giants had been struggling with some “human” problems of their own, and therefore, they decided to live in peace and harmony instead of spilling each other’s blood.
In the end, Saxa got what she wanted. She became the first woman to head the company, thereby underscoring the fact that the giants were now following a new world order and had made amends to catch up with the future. Fjor, on the other hand, started dating his own secretary, with whom he had fallen in love after Gry left town. Workwise, I don’t think he would have much to do. Saxa was taking care of the company and putting in her best efforts to minimize industrial waste, which had been the conflict of the series since the beginning. Ran, too, found closure in life, as she had been struggling with mental health issues after Vidar’s death, and we believe she might date the school psychiatrist Sindre if he gathered enough courage to ask his boss out on a date. Meanwhile, the gods, who were mostly students, went on to finish their exams so that they could plan a better future for themselves.
Did Ragnarok Finally Take Place in Edda?
In the above-mentioned scenario, Magne achieved all he wanted: to maintain peace and order in the world without spilling blood. But with this ending, Magne didn’t get the closure he had been seeking all along. The gods and giants might have locked away their weapons, but their powers were still intact. It troubled Magne a lot that he was still the God of Thunder, but now it doesn’t mean anything to him or anyone else. He wanted to put an end to his other personality so he could enjoy being a normal college boy once again.
In the original text, Ragnarok was the end of it all, but it never took place in Magne’s reality, so he started imagining a fictional battle between the gods and giants of his world. During the school graduation ceremony, Magne imagined the death of Baldr, the incident that kicked off Ragnarok, and from there, Magne became a part of the fierce battle between the gods and the giants, where all the gods perished. During the final clash between Magne and the Midgard Serpent, Magne was able to kill the chaos monster with his hammer, but during the scuffle, he got poisoned, which led to his death. The Thor inside Magne’s head took nine steps in the world before he finally succumbed to his death, like the way it all happened in Norse mythology or the comics.
Magne’s troubled mind was finally able to put an end to the eternal struggle between the gods and the giants, and therefore, as Thor died in the battle of Ragnarok, Magne was reborn in the New World. He finally fell to his knees and sought forgiveness from Signy, wishing to give their relationship one more chance. After the battle, Magne finally dumped all his comic books in the bin, implying that he was done with the stories of Thor and Ragnarok and was ready to move on to a better life.
Did ‘Ragnarok’ Happen In Magne’s head?
We want to entertain a second possibility where we believe everything happened in Magne’s mind, and it all started with the arrival of Magne in Edda, in Ragnarok Season 1. Magne’s mother, Turid, mentioned in her speech that Magne didn’t want to come back to Edda after his father’s tragic death in an accident. Perhaps losing a loved one left a scar on a young boy’s mind who got obsessed with comic books and superheroes. He escaped to the world of fantasy to run away from the painful reality and, in time, forgot to differentiate between reality and fiction.
The moment Magne stepped into Edda, he saw an old woman named Wenche, who acted as the sorceress in Magne’s story and gave him the powers he wanted. It was the exact same scene that Magne had read about in his comic books, so it could be possible that the scene never actually happened in reality but only in Magne’s imagination.
Later, Magne found it difficult to settle in at the new school, and the only person who showed a bit of interest was Isolde, whom Magne considered his only friend. Things were fine until Isolde died under unusual circumstances, and Magne wasn’t able to accept the second most tragic loss of his life. He forced himself to believe that Isolde was murdered and that the monster behind it all was the industrial giant Vidar Jutul, who had been polluting the entire town. As young-blooded people, we all consider ourselves heroes of our own stories and want to bring justice to an unjust society. Maybe Magne, too, gave himself a mission to seek justice for Isolde when, in reality, her death was actually an accident.
Now, after this point, it’s hard to say what all was reality and what all was figments of his imagination, but we can say that Vidar died a natural death. He might have had a cardiac arrest, or maybe Magne really killed him in a scuffle without involving old weapons and things. Things might have happened as we saw in the three seasons, removing the fantasy bits, or maybe nothing of the sort actually happened. We cannot say with certainty what actually took place in reality, as we saw the entire story through Magne’s perspective, and he had become an unreliable narrator as we came close to the conclusion.
Why Did Magne Become Thor?
Throughout the show, we can see two distinctive personalities in Magne. One is a college boy with a strong conscience who wants to do the right thing in the right way. But this Magne is not strong enough to put up a fight against the “giant” industrials who have absolute power in Edda. So, he imagined a Magne who is more powerful than the rich people, which is a god. Comic books, novels, or any kind of fantasy literature can be seen as a tool to create a reality that suits our best interests. In Magne’s case, he started to imagine himself as Young Thor, like the superhero that he read about in his comic books.
After Magne got obsessed with investigating Isolde’s death, Turid took him for a psychiatric evaluation, where the doctor diagnosed him with schizophrenia. Magne, struggling with a sense of purpose in life, told the doctor that the world was about to go under and that it was Magne’s duty to save the world from annihilation. The doctor prescribed some medication for Magne, which he refused to take for three long seasons, and thus, we got a Netflix fantasy show called Ragnarok.
The only thing that cancels the theory that everything happened inside Magne’s head is Magne’s relationship with his glasses. He stopped wearing them soon after he attained powers, implying that these powers had cured his physical defects. However, he started wearing them again in the middle of Season 2, when Heaven took away his powers. So, the absence of glasses suggested the presence of power in Magne’s body. But again, at the end of Ragnarok season 3, we don’t see Magne wearing his spectacles, implying that he still has his powers. Or maybe he started wearing contact lenses somewhere in the middle of the show, which we are not aware of. It is also possible that the creators want to leave some room for speculation so that we cannot say anything with exact certainty.
Is Magne really cured?
During the ending of Ragnarok Season 3, Magne joins his school friends in a cafe, where he re-imagines Isolde sitting near Saxa. For those who don’t remember, Isolde had a huge crush on Saxa and had her picture in her diary, which Magne had seen in Season 1. We are not sure, but was he trying to fulfill Isolde’s fantasy by dating Saxa in Season 3? It could be the case. Nevertheless, the vision of Isolde at this point suggests one thing: Magne hasn’t overcome her death. It may torment his mind again in the future, but this is the end of Ragnarok, so maybe the creators want to suggest that you can never really cure mental health issues. It is an ongoing battle, and therefore, we need to work on it each and every day.
What will eventually happen to others?
Laurits had moved out of their mother’s house and planned to start a new life with Jens. We believe the couple will have a beautiful life together and will cherish each moment that life has to offer. Turid, on the other hand, had already married Magne’s history professor, Erik. Both Turid and Erik had lost loved ones, and as a couple, they were able to ease each other’s pain, and we believe they will be spending the rest of their lives together. Magne chose to stay at his mother’s house but has made amends with Signy, so we believe the couple will perhaps get married in the future and fight against injustice together. The Jutuls, too, had moved on with their lives, while Harry and Iman became a popular athlete and a famous influencer, respectively.
The entity in question here is the Midgard Serpent. What happened to it in the end? If we entertain the possibility that it does exist in Magne’s world, then it might have traveled to the bigger ocean, where it can grow and flourish far from the human eye. The Earth’s oceans hide a lot of such monsters and secrets, and the Midgard Serpent may live there until eternity without getting into a conflict with humans. However, if we believe that the chaos monster was also a figment of Magne’s imagination, then perhaps it will disappear as Magne’s mental health improves over time. It wouldn’t be wrong to say that Signy is going to play an important role in helping Magne get over his demons, and with her love and support, he might be able to really overcome the loss of his father and Isolde. He might be able to lead a normal life again like his mother wants him to, and that will be the happy ending we want.
