Street Fighter (2026) Post-credits Scene Explained: The Final Boss Is Revealed

Paramount Pictures

The following post contains spoilers for "Street Fighter."

"Street Fighter" is a colorful romp, an engaging and attractive film that calls back to the great and cheesy action films of the 1990s, with competent action, plenty of jokes, and some legitimately stunning 2D, hand-drawn animated sequences that evoke the violent direct-to-video anime of the '90s.

The movie follows Ryu (Andrew Koji) and Ken Masters (Noah Centineo) who are recruited to join a world martial arts tournament that's actually a ruse by the dictator M. Bison (David Dastmalchian), who plans to harness the special Psycho Power to become all-powerful. Of course, it's all an excuse to pit some video game characters together in a big tournament — even if we barely see anything from the actual tournament — and have them brawl it out.

This is a bit of a frustrating experience, although "Street Fighter" is a far cry from the worst video game movie adaptations, which tend to be ashamed of their source material. Here, the movie embraces not only the cartoony character designs, but the power-sets and one-liners from the games, replicating the games' tongue-in-cheek tone. And yet, much like "Mortal Kombat," this movie is barely about the tournament.

In case you decided to leave the theater before credits rolled on "Street Fighter," or didn't even bother seeing the movie and are just wondering what happens after credits rolled, don't fret. We're here to explain that big post credits scene.

Paramount Pictures

"Street Fighter" ends with M. Bison having escaped, with the unconscious Akuma (Joe Anoa'i) as a prisoner, and Ryu and Ken Masters on the road to hunt Bison down.

Then we get the post-credits scene, which relocates to what looks like a beach or jungle landscape. A man with an eyepatch and a big scar across his chest is being visited by Bison and his lieutenants. That man is none other than Sagat, who we saw at the start of the film when Ryu defeated him in the first World Warrior tournament back in 1987. This means a potential "Street Fighter" sequel would have Ryu and Ken have to face off against both M. Bison and Sagat together.

If you're not up to date on your "Street Fighter" lore, you might be wondering who Sagat is and why he'd be important considering the only thing we saw of him was him losing miserably in the film's opening minutes.

Sagat was introduced as the final opponent of the very first "Street Fighter" game back in 1987, the first boss fight in the franchise. He'd return in future games as a rival to Ryu, with the scar on his chest being caused by Ryu's Shoryuken, which inspired Sagat to develop a similar move — the Tiger Uppercut.

Sagat's relationship with Bison is, well, complicated. Originally, Sagat was portrayed as one of Bison's top enforcers in "Street Fighter II," but when Bison corrupts Ryu with Psycho Power and makes the rivals fight, Sagat leaves his master.

Paramount Pictures

As much fun as the new "Street Fighter" movie is, it feels weirdly incomplete and messy when it comes to its villain and its abrupt ending. Though we are told that M. Bison is the big bad, a villain everyone should be paying attention to, the movie instead focuses on the threat of Akuma for most of the runtime. Sure, Bison is fun to watch, and Dastmalchian has a nice tribute to Raul Julia's portrayal of Bison, but the movie very much treats him like a secondary villain.

So, when the climax arrives and Ryu fights Akuma, it feels like the movie ends ... but it doesn't. Bison just takes away with Akuma and rides into the sunset, signaling one more fight before the end of the film. Except, that doesn't happen either. Instead we get Ryu, Ken, Callina Liang's Chun-Li, and Andrew Schulz' Dan hitching a ride with Cody Rhodes' Guile and Vidyut Jammwal's Dhalsim to go after Bison. Then we roll credits and the story ends in a huge cliffhanger.

It's clear that, if "Street Fighter" becomes the box office hit that "Mortal Kombat II" wasn't, the sequel would finally portray M. Bison as the big bad he's meant to be. After all, Bison now has supernatural powers thanks to harnessing Ryu's powers, and he also has Akuma. Including Sagat as a lieutenant would only mean Bison is an even bigger threat, one that would require a whole team to defeat them.