Jurassic World Dominion Post-Credits Worthy Moment Suggests This Isn’t the End

This article contains Jurassic World Dominion spoilers.

It all has been building to this. So goes the marketing for Jurassic World Dominion, the first film in 29 years to feature Sam Neill, Laura Dern, and Jeff Goldblum all back together onscreen as their beloved characters of Dr. Alan Grant, Dr. Ellie Satler, and Dr. Ian Malcolm, respectively. As such it is being sold as the end of the “Jurassic Era,” as well as the culmination of the original Jurassic Park movies from the 1990s on top of being the finale to the Jurassic World movies, which began by focusing on another generation in 2015.

As such the film allegedly isn’t supposed to be interested in setting the stage for sequels or events to come. Instead it prefers drawing a curtain on what we’ve already seen: We learn the truth about the origins of the first human clone, Maisie Lockwood (Isabella Sermon), as well as find out whatever happened to Alan and Ellie’s relationship after the events of Jurassic Park III. Jurassic World Dominion is about closing a door. But that doesn’t mean it cannot open a window…

Does Jurassic World Dominion Have a Post-Credits Scene?

The short answer is no. Jurassic World Dominion does not have a post-credits scene. However, this does not mean it is lacking in the equivalent of one before the credits roll. Indeed, the ending of Jurassic World Dominion might wave goodbye to your favorite human characters (for now), but just from the way Alan and Ellie watch a young girl playing with a small dinosaur on the National Mall in Washington D.C., it’s clear the changes in this world are far from over.

So it is that the movie’s final montage before cutting to black acts like an honest to goodness post-credits scene as we see images of dinosaurs continuing to interact with humanity and the larger modern world in new, profound ways. The mighty mosasaurus swims alongside whales; a brachiosaurus climbs a redwood in the American northwest (suggesting havoc is about to be wrecked on global ecology); and a sinoceratops walks proudly alongside elephants across an African savanna as the sun sets.

The world has changed significantly and we’ve barely begun to scratch the surface of this. In Jurassic World Dominion, director and co-writer Colin Trevorrow and his collaborators chose to focus on a version of what we’ve seen before: a greedy genetics company mucks around with prehistoric DNA and has a comeuppance when it all falls apart and the dinosaurs go chomp, chomp. But other than an intentionally goofy chase scene between a raptor and Chris Pratt on a motorcycle, the film did little to explore what it would mean to have dinosaurs walking among us and being the ones to destabilize our modern ecosystems and manmade systems and institutions. Dominion toys with that almost in the abstract via the introduction of genetically modified locusts, but those are a one-off that were remarkably easy to kill off with more genetics tinkering.

The dinosaurs though? They’re here to stay. A cynic might note that this ending is more or less the same as the montage at the conclusion of Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom in 2018 when we saw shots like a Tyrannosaurus Rex staring down a lion in a zoo. What happened next? We don’t really know unfortunately, but it probably wasn’t good for the lion. Dominion teases much the same after spending a movie spinning its wheels in place.

Perhaps that’s because while the Jurassic World franchise (with that moniker at least) is over, the Jurassic shared universe is just beginning? You could do a whole film series about the dangers of dinosaurs in northern California, or a Peacock streaming series about dinosaurs mingling with indigenous species in the African pride land. The possibilities are vast, and given how Universal is likely desperate to have content that can compete with how Disney uses its Marvel and Star Wars brands, you can bet that discussions on how this will look are currently ongoing.

So, no, there wasn’t a post-credits scene in Jurassic World Dominion, but there was a hell of a teaser for how this nutty series can continue. After all, life finds a way, right?