Let's make this easy. You want to know if there are any post-credits or mid-credits scenes in Jurassic World Rebirth.
Well, we'll tell you right here: There are not.
Spoilers follow for Jurassic World Rebirth.
Life finds a way, and so does the Jurassic franchise, thanks to the seventh film in the series, Jurassic World Rebirth. But with the adventure on Ile Saint-Hubert in the rearview mirror, is this film setting up a new trilogy, or is it a standalone movie? The answer is “maybe” to the first question, and “maybe” to the second one. A lot, you may not be surprised to hear, depends on how well the movie does this week/weekend at the box office. But if you’re looking for an explanation of the ending of the movie, and how it could set up a sequel – or even a new trilogy – look no further.
Jurassic World Rebirth Ending Explained
In the film, Martin Krebs (Rupert Friend), a representative for the pharmaceutical company ParkerGenix, has hired a group of mercenaries (despite some protests about what they are to the contrary) as well as a paleontologist named Dr. Henry Loomis (Jonathan Bailey) to head to not Isla Nublar (aka where the first Jurassic Park was set) or Isla Sorna (where The Lost World was set), but a secret, third island nobody has previously talked about.
PlayKrebs has hired them to head to Ile Saint-Hubert to get DNA samples from three dinosaurs: one on land, one in the sea, and one in the air. Does this sound like a video game to you? If so, you would not be wrong. Anyway, while tracking down a Mosasaurus to complete the sea questline, they hear a distress signal from the Delgado family, whose sailboat has been overturned by the Mosasaurus. They rescue them, but everyone ends up in more danger when they crash on the island. While the Delgados try to survive on their own, the mercs go after the land sample and the air sample, before they all reconvene in an abandoned research facility where they hope to be picked up by a helicopter.
It doesn’t work out that way, of course, because the island is home to the off-brand rejects too gross for Jurassic Park. That includes mutadons, which are a combination of raptors and pterosaurs, and the massive Distortus rex, a rude name if we’ve ever heard one. He? It? Whatever, the enormous six-limbed monstrosity is “kind of like if the T-Rex was designed by H.R. Giger, and then that whole thing had sex with a Rancor,” per director Gareth Edwards, which is almost definitely some sort of fan fiction on AO3 already.
The dinos attack, and then later there’s the running and screaming (to paraphrase Jeff Goldblum’s Ian Malcolm from The Lost World)... But pretty much everyone survives the trip, and the end of the movie finds merc Zora (Scarlett Johansson) making a big decision: to release the DNA samples open-source. To whom, exactly? “Everyone,” says Zora, proving she’s never seen a Jurassic movie because this is possibly the most bonkers decision a human being could ever make.
We’ll get to why in a second, but first let’s talk about the body count.
Who Dies in Jurassic World Rebirth?
Despite the series’ reputation, the main characters generally survive until the end of a Jurassic movie, and this one is no different. As noted, Zora Bennett decides to stop crying alone on a boat while staring into the middle distance and instead wreck the world with dino DNA, so she is very much alive. Similarly, she’s having a convo with Loomis, a dino-lover who studied under Alan Grant (Sam Neill), so he’s also alive.
The entire Delgado family survives, including father Reuben (Manuel Garcia-Rulfo), teen daughter Teresa (Luna Blaise), youngest daughter and licorice lover Isabella (Audrina Miranda), and even Teresa’s epically annoying boyfriend Xavier Dobbs (David Iacono). They also take home a baby dinosaur named Dolores, who is in the movie for the very important purpose of selling toys.
The most inexplicably still alive character? Duncan Kincaid (Mahershala Ali), who sacrifices himself to draw the D-rex away from the group. We see him luring it away with a flare and a bunch of shouting, the D-rex gets all up in his face like the xenomorph with Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) in Alien 3, and from the safety of a boat, the rest of the group sees his literal light snuffed out. RIP Duncan, right? Except nope, he’s somehow snuck away to an entirely different area of the island, shoots off a flare (that does not attract the D-rex???), and the folks on the boat, who barely escaped, head back to pick him up. And then they all leave while watching dolphins swim next to the boat in a scene explicitly homaging the flock of pelicans from the end of the first Jurassic Park movie.
That’s all well and good, but we demand a blood sacrifice. And don’t worry, there are some deaths in Rebirth. True to form, crusty Mr. Krebs loves money, so he turns on the group, tries to escape the island in another direct homage to Dennis Nedry’s (Wayne Knight) misguided escape in the original, and ends up getting eaten by the D-rex, leaving only his arm and a hard case filled with the dino DNA samples behind.
The rest of Zora’s team also gets eaten by dinos… Bobby Atwater (Ed Skrein) is the first to go, eaten during an attack on the boat right after they get the Mosasaurus sample. Nina (Philippine Velge) is next, getting chomped on by a Spinosaurus on the beach (not to be confused with the Death Stranding sequel). Leclerc (Bechir Sylvain) is the last of the crew to kick the bucket, swallowed whole. There are also some doomed scientists in the intro to the island at the beginning of the movie.
But as for the main characters, they’re all alive to appear in a potential sequel. So… What could happen in that sequel, or “squeakquel” if you will.
A Jurassic World Rebirth Sequel Would Likely Deal With Open-Source Dino DNA
Rebirth is designed to be a standalone sequel. It’s the first movie in the franchise to not include returning characters, though it takes place in the same world. There’s the Alan Grant name-drop, the movie takes place five years after Jurassic World Dominion, as, per the official language from Universal, “the planet’s ecology has proven largely inhospitable to dinosaurs. Those remaining exist in isolated equatorial environments with climates resembling the one in which they once thrived.” So it’s not ignoring events that have happened in the previous movies.
PlayBut as far as has been reported, Johnasson, Ali, and Bailey have not signed up for three movies or anything, just the one. It would be a shocker if there wasn’t a clause in their contracts for more, but at least publicly, they’re only in Rebirth.
But come on, they’re going to make more, because of course they are. Whether those will include Zora, Duncan, and Henry is TBD, but there’s a pretty dangling plotline at the end, which is the release of the dino DNA.
Technically, the stated goal here is to create a super-drug that could cure heart disease, among nearly any other disease known to man. Henry and Zora decide to open-source it rather than let ParkerGenix craft the drug and then upcharge everyone for a miracle drug that could save lives.
That’s nice in theory, but the Jurassic series is based on chaos theory. The basic idea of the franchise is that man shouldn’t mess with nature like this. And every time they do, human nature and corporations get in the way, and they all get eaten by dinosaurs. We’ve already seen this happen (quick check) six times, and then a seventh time in Rebirth, where there was an island filled with even worse than usual dinosaurs. More specifically, the end of Fallen Kingdom released dinosaurs into the world, and when we picked up in Dominion, people all over the world had used dino DNA to create warrior dinosaurs, fighting pit dinosaurs, and probably more depraved things we haven’t seen (see above re: AO3).
If Zora and Henry do indeed open-source the DNA they collected, this is an obvious point, but they are not limiting it to people who will do no harm. That DNA is now available to everyone in the entire world to experiment on and use as they see fit. So sure, you might see revolutionary heart disease medicine readily available on the market. But you could also see someone make things worse than mutadons and the D-rex.
That’s good news for us, the viewers of Jurassic movies. But it’s bad news for everyone in the Jurassic universe (and related: dinosaurs in space, when?). All apologies to Zora, but it’s ridiculously naive for a mercenary who, up to this point, has only cared about money to think everyone will play nice with their new genetic toy.
Would a sequel see Zora and Henry dealing with the ramifications of their decision? Or perhaps there’s an even more secret, even more deadly fourth island out there somewhere, with even grosser dinosaurs. Only time, and Universal Pictures, will tell.
Does Jurassic World Rebirth Have a Mid- or End-Credits Scene?
Nope! After the final shot, there are just credits for the movie. You should always hang out to pay tribute to the awesome folks who worked on a film, but if you’re wondering whether Blue pops up for a last-second surprise, or Mr. D.N.A. is back for revenge, you’ll have to wait for Jurassic World Rebirth 2: Reborn Again.
What did you think of Jurassic World Rebirth? Let’s discuss in the comments!
Note: This story was updated with full spoilers for Jurassic World Rebirth on July 2. It was originally published on July 1.
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