God of War 2: Ragnarok just had its reveal trailer, with a release date set for some time in 2021. The new teaser leaves fans with a lot of questions about the upcoming PS5 exclusive, but the announcement of Ragnarok will not come as a huge surprise to many players who reached the end of the last game.
Though the God of War 2: Ragnarok teaser trailer is very short, there are still a lot of details that confirm certain theories about the upcoming game. Not only that, but there are dangling plot-threads from the end of the previous game that will likely be realized in the sequel to the acclaimed 2018 reboot.
The End of Fimbulwinter
The last God of War ended with the beginning of the end times. Mimir warns Kratos and Atreus – now revealed to be Loki – that the three years of Fimbulwinter that proceed Ragnarok have begun one hundred years early thanks to the death of Baldur, which is the first prophesied event in the build up to Ragnarok. In the secret ending to God of War, Atreus has a vision that Thor will arrive at their cabin at the end of Fimbulwinter.
There are a few important details hinted at in the new God of War teaser trailer. The symbol shown in the trailer is similar to the logo used for God of War in 2018, but the symbols representing each of the Nine Realms have been replaced with Futhark runes spelling out “Ragnarok” instead, tying it into the prophecy that the Nine Realms will come to an end in the next game.
Another one of those prophecies is that the surprisingly friendly World Serpent that Kratos and Atreus meet on their journey in the 2018 game will kill Thor with its venom during Ragnarok. Mimir mentions that the Serpent and Thor “have a bit of an unpleasant history between them, or they will anyway,” meaning this event will likely feature in the next game. Whether or not the snake is so big that he wraps around the whole world is an “exaggeration” as Kratos says remains to be seen.
The music that plays in the trailer is the same music that plays during the last God of War game when Kratos is forced to take up the Blades of Chaos that took everything from him in the original God of War trilogy in order to save Atreus. Many fans of God of War hope that Kratos will wield his blades once more in Ragnarok, and the choice of music makes it seem very likely.
Remaining Ragnarok Prophecies
In the trailer Kratos addresses someone with “you must prepare yourself,” almost certainly Atreus. Groa’s prophecy for Ragnarok makes one big change from the actual mythology, placing both Kratos and Atreus at the center of events. In Norse mythology, Loki dies during Ragnarok, but it remains to be seen what fate awaits Atreus in the new game.
If Thor is destined to die by the World Serpent, that could put Kratos and Atreus/Loki in serious trouble if the next game picks up with Atreus’ vision of Thor confronting them at the end of Fimbulwinter coming true. However, there are far more events prophesied that fans can expect to see in the next game. Here are the main ones:
- Skoll and Hati mark the start of Ragnarok by eating the Sun and Moon.
- Asgard will be burnt to the ground by Sutr, but Thor and Odin will kill him.
- Fenrir and Odin will kill each other.
- Kratos and Atreus will intervene during Thor’s fight with the World Serpent, and it appears that Kratos will die.
How many of these individual prophecies come true and which are subverted or avoiding in the next game remains to be seen, but with Kratos’ ties to fate already made clear with the return of his blades, fans can likely expect most of the prophecies to come true in some form in God of War 2: Ragnarok.