Jumanji: The Next Level’s Credits Scene Sets Up A Proper Sequel To The Original

Jumanji: The Next Level‘s mid-credits scene sets up the next movie in a way that connects directly back to the original film. The two newest Jumanji movies haven’t been shy about forging their own paths as adventures in the world of Jumanji. These new films center exclusively on entirely new characters, in the process using both the 1995 movie and the original Chris Van Allsburg children’s book as mostly a springboard for their own standalone tales. However, a mid-credits scene for Jumanji: The Next Level indicates that wherever the franchise goes next, it’s a place that will look mighty familiar to those who are ardent fans of the original incarnation of Jumanji.

Said mid-credits scene of Jumanji 3 depicts a “heater guy” that’s been mentioned throughout the movie finally showing up to the house belonging to the mother of Spencer Gilpin (Alex Wolff). Played by Game Night’s Lamorne Morris, the heater repairman walks down to the basement of the house where he spies the busted Jumanji game cartridge. Despite the insistence of Spencer’s Mom that he leave the game alone, the repairman begins to touch the glowing cartridge. A moment later, we cut to the cafe where Spencer and his three friends are sharing dinner. The quiet snowy night outside is interrupted by a pack of ostriches charging by the cafe, creatures that seem to have come from the Jumanji video game.

The idea of the Jumanji video game coming to the real world is a direct about-face from the central conceit of the 21st-century Jumanji movies so far. In these new Jumanji movies, the plots are all about characters from the real-world going into the realm of a video game and having to navigate their own personal issues while inhabiting video game avatars that were the polar opposites of their real-world personalities. However, it’s not at all an unfamiliar concept to the overall Jumanji franchise. In fact, the idea of Jumanji elements inhabiting our real world was the entire crux of both Chris Van Allsburg’s original Jumanji children’s book and the 1995 movie directed by Joe Johnston.

In these earlier pieces of media, Jumanji was a board game with a jungle adventure theme, one that could suck people, like Robin Williams’ Jumanji 1995 character Alan Parrish III, into its world but mostly just unleashed all kinds of chaos like monkeys and a nefarious hunter onto the real world. The idea extended into Jon Favreau’s Zathura, which took the same basic idea but based it around a science-fiction board game. For the two newest takes on the Jumanji mythos, writer/director Jake Kasdan and company have opted for putting their own spin on this formula, most notably by making Jumanji a video game rather than a board game as well as exclusively focusing on real-world people going into the game rather than the game going into the real-world.

Though the newest Jumanji movies haven’t been afraid to shake up the Jumanji mythos, they’ve also been respectful of what’s come before them. The character of Alan Parrish III was referenced in Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle while Jack Black teased Zathura (via Twitter), previously outright ignored in discussions in this franchise due to its disastrous box office performance, was a part of the Jumanji saga. Given that the recent Jumanji movies have taken great care to respect the past, it’s no surprise to see that the next Jumanji movie will be extending that respect to include doing its own interpretation of the Jumanji world spilling out into reality.

Expect to see the next Jumanji adventure feature plenty of scenes of wild animals interrupting tranquil suburban life just like in the original 1995 Jumanji movie. However, it’s equally likely that this forthcoming Jumanji movie won’t be just a retread of what came before it. Thanks to two whole movies of setting up a barrage of new Jumanji mythology, there’s plenty of new directions for this series to take the idea of the Jumanji game coming into our world. One could easily see the four young adult leads finally getting the chance to meet their video game avatars in person while it feels likely that there could be a role for grown-up versions of the children leads of the 1995 Jumanji movie, Peter Shepherd (Bradley Pierce) and Judy Shepherd (Kirsten Dunst). There are all kinds of possibilities, ones that fuse together the past and present of this franchise, offered up for the next round of Jumanji thanks to the mid-credits scene of Jumanji: The Next Level.

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