Ghostbusters Afterlife end credits scenes explained
All the Ghostbusters cameos and sequel hints explained.
Co-written and directed by Jason Reitman, the son of the original Ghostbusters director Ivan Reitman, Ghostbusters: Afterlife is a direct follow-up to the 1980s movies.
While Ghostbusters: sequel aims to offer a nostalgia trip for fans of the original Ghostbusters films, providing the same combination of horror and comedy, it also aims to introduce new viewers to the world of Proton Packs and ghost traps.
To that end, just like any blockbuster these days it comes with a couple of special scenes hidden after the credits, brimming with secret cameos and sequel hints long after the main story has ended.
Read on to find out what happens in Ghostbusters: Afterlife’s end credits scenes, as well as which characters are in them. Check out our account below...
End credits scene 1 - Dana and Peter
As her name hangs on the screen, viewers may be racking their brains about where she’d appeared in the movie – only to have their queries answered by the first post-credits scene, which actually marks her only appearance in the film.
Reprising her role as Dana Barrett, now apparently in a long-term relationship with Murray’s Peter Venkman, the scene shows Dana and Venkman repeating the psychic testing conducted by Murray’s charlatan academic in the original 1984 comedy.
Mysteriously, Venkman is able to correctly identify all the symbols on the cards Dana picks, though she administers electric shocks anyway to make him admit that he marked the cards to cheat at the game.
It’s a short, funny scene that doesn’t add much to the plot – but for any fans wondering what happened to Venkman and Dana after the events of the original two movies, it does give a sweet coda to their relationship.
End credits scene 2 - Ernie and Anna
After a bit of archival footage from the original film starring the late Harold Ramis, the second post-credits scene picks up with two more classic Ghostbusters characters – Ernie Hudson’s Winston Zeddemore, and Annie Potts’ Janine Melnitz, who meet up to discuss Winston’s current success as a businessman as well as the good old days they had together.
While Winston admits he originally joined the Ghostbusters for “a steady paycheck”, he reveals that he found meaning and camaraderie in the work, which inspired his later successes. It’s shown that as promised in the main movie, he rescued the iconic Ecto-1 car and took it back to the original New York fire station used as Ghostbusters headquarters, where it could be restored.
However, unbeknownst to him, the original Containment Unit in the building is still active and beeping ominously, suggesting that (as in the original film) a host of ghosts and ghouls could be ready to break out... possibly just in time for a sequel?
Ghostbusters: Afterlife is in UK cinemas now. For more, check out our dedicated Sci-Fi page or our full TV Guide.
