There is a scene at the very end of “Sinners” that I’m still trying to figure out. After we see the aftermath of the horrific events that happened on the night The Juke opens, and the mid-credits epilogue that shows an older Sammie (played by Buddy Guy) reunite with Michael B. Jordan’s Stack (who looks like he was an extra in “New Jack City”) and Hailee Steinfield’s Mary, we see a young Sammie playing his guitar in a church. The scene ends and he looks up. That’s it. No dialogue. No action. No vampires.
I wondered what that scene was all about. Why did Coogler include it? It would make sense to have it earlier in the film if they wanted to show Sammi’s musical talent, but why put it at the end? I did not understand why that was included, but after watching Coogler discuss Robert Johnson in an interview about the film, I might know what’s going on.
Mississippi-born Robert Johnson is known as the King of the Delta Blues. Legend has it that he was a decent musician until he met the Devil at the Crossroads and sold his soul. After that, he became a legendarily great blues man. Some think that’s what is going on with Sammie.
There is another way to view the end of the film. While popular culture says it was the Devil Johnson met, Coogler is right when he complicates the story. Black folks who originally told that story did not mean a red wearing, horn having Lucifer from the Bible. Instead, they meant Papa Legba, a West African and Caribbean Voodoo deity who watches over the Crossroads, a place where the spirit realm meets the human world. Legba can facilitate communication between the two realms…and this brings us to that scene at the end of the film.
Sammie plays “This Little Light of Mine” on the guitar with a blues flourish. He finishes the song, and then he looks up. We don’t see what he is looking at. The camera only looks at his face, so what he sees is a mystery to us. After a beat, he smiles like someone he has been waiting to show up walks through the door.
Nothing in the film is accidental. The film is jam packed with ideas (maybe too many), but Coogler has does not done so thoughtlessly. As I said before, he clearly has a franchise on his mind. So, this could be a set up for a story about how Sammie has an encounter with Papa Legba and makes a deal with him. Maybe he sells his soul if you want to believe in a dark outcome. Or perhaps he just gets access to a world beyond what we can see, and it enhances his ability to play the blues.
The fact that the mid-credits scene reads more like a meeting between old friends than a confrontation with an evil vampire gives this theory a bit more weight if you’re looking for it. Either way. something more than Sammie simply playing the guitar is happening in that final scene.
Some think it could be Papa Legba showing up and inviting him to visit the same Crossroads that Robert Johnson made famous. Others think it could be the devil. Only Ryan Coogler knows the answer to that question…and he ain’t saying.