WARNING: THIS ARTICLE CONTAINS MAJOR SPOILERS
Troll was extremely popular for Netflix, which means the entire franchise is now cursed. You can tell from the ending of Troll 2, which seems conclusive on the face of things, but can’t resist teeing up yet another sequel nobody asked for in a post-credits scene. This is the world we live in now. Whether you like it or not, we’ll be getting trolls until we can’t stand the sight of them, irrespective of whether the movies around them are any good.
Troll 2 isn’t that bad, to be fair, but it’s already a case of diminishing returns, and you can feel the strain of it trying to justify its own existence. The plot, which sees Nora Tidemann (Ine Marie Wilmann), Andreas Isaksen (Kim Falck), and Kristoffer Holm (Mads Pettersen) all returning in their previous roles a while on from the ending of the first film, mostly just springs to life out of nowhere. But we’ll do our best to break it all down regardless, especially those final moments that form the outline of a third movie.
Introducing Megatroll
The only way to build on what is fundamentally a kaiju film is to go bigger, so Troll 2 boasts two trolls, one of which is a “Megatroll”, even bigger and more aggressive than the one from the first movie. Nora is introduced to it by Andreas, who turns up to interrupt her steady transformation into her own late father to bring her to a government black site in the Vemork power station, where the Megatroll is being kept on ice.
The script reworks the quite famous World War II mission to destroy a Norwegian factory producing the heavy water necessary for the construction of an atomic bomb to be intimately tied to the Norse mythology underpinning the narrative. But no sooner has Nora arrived than the Megatroll has woken from its hibernation and broken loose, causing untold carnage on its way to some mysterious objective.
The Megatroll is awakened by Nora, who possesses the curious ability to commune with the creatures. A research team led by Professor Marion Auryn Rhadani (Sara Khorami) was studying the creature to determine the kind of threat it might pose to humanity, but Nora was brought in when it fell asleep (and to get the plot moving, obviously.)
Beautiful Monsters
In case you need a reminder, the first movie revealed that the troll king was lured out of Norway by Christian settlers who used his kidnapped son as bait. The king survived the ambush, though not the events of the first movie, but the son was never found. He was presumed dead, but without a body, Nora never bought it.
Discovering the kid in a cave in the Dovre Mountains, Nora once again displays her ability to communicate with the creatures. She names the troll king’s son “Beautiful” and earns his trust through empathy and listening. And, of course, the very vaguely defined but plot-useful fact that she can talk to him.
In Beautiful, Nora also finds a potential ally who can not only communicate with the Megatroll but also fight him toe-to-toe when he inevitably doesn’t listen.
The Christians Are the Bad Guys
Megatroll isn’t inclined to listen to reason since he has a pretty decent reason for wanting revenge on all of Norway. His kind were wiped out during the spread of Christianity across the country, an initiative spearheaded by Saint Olaf, whose tomb is supposedly hidden in the Nidaros Cathedral in Trondheim, which is where Megatroll is heading.
Despite the tomb being hidden for thousands of years, Nora and the gang, which now includes historian Esther Johanne Tiller (Anne Krigsvoll), manage to find it in about ten minutes. But with Olaf’s corpse, the gang also finds a missing section of the king’s decree, which reveals that Olaf went against the church and attempted to protect the trolls from extermination. He was killed for his betrayal, since the church is pretty famously intolerant of not getting its own way.
Water Fight
The centrepiece of Troll 2’s ending is the big smackdown as the team tries to take down Megatroll before he ransacks Trondheim. According to some folkloric caveats, like how trolls are susceptible to the ringing of church bells and the holy water from Olaf’s spring, Megatroll doesn’t get things entirely his own way, but there’s not enough of the water to stop him completely.
Luckily, Beautiful arrives to take on Megatroll himself, though he’s not really a match for him either. But he’s able to distract Megatroll for long enough that Marion comes up with another solution. Based on her studies of the creatures, she knows that he has an internal ecosystem, with a heart that pumps everything around his body. Thus, it stands to reason that if a bomb full of holy water can be dropped directly into his gaping maw, he’ll be defeated.
But this means dropping the bomb into his mouth from above, and since it needs to be detonated manually, we need a heroic self-sacrifice. Enter Andreas.
Andreas’s Heroic Death
Andreas volunteers himself to leap out of the helicopter – being piloted by Kris – with the bomb in hand and set it off manually, which will, of course, mean his own death. He has to justify this to Siggy, which he characteristically does in Star Trek terms – the needs of the many outweigh the few. Eventually, she gets it.
I’ll grant you that I thought for a moment the movie wouldn’t commit to killing off the comic relief sidekick, but here we are. Andreas’s sacrifice dooms Megatroll, and Beautiful finishes him off by ripping his heart out, which is a nice visual. This also means that the day is saved for everyone, and we get a montage to confirm it. Siggy gives birth to a daughter, fittingly named Uhura (also from Star Trek), and Nora settles into a nice life in the mountains with Beautiful not far away.
Troll 2 Post-Credits Scene Explained
Like the first movie, Troll 2 has a post-credits scene setting up a sequel. In it, Professor Møller (Jon Ketil Johnsen), one of the researchers from Vemork, reports on the progress of a “specimen” he saved to an interlocutor he refers to as simply “General”. We saw him retrieve the specimen earlier – a little bit of Megatroll recovered during his escape from captivity.
In a small box, a small troll is growing. It’s liable to get much, much bigger. It might take another three years for us to see the outcome of that, of course, but if this sequel is half as successful as the first movie, then I’m sure we’ll catch up with the critter eventually.