The Time Bandits TV Series Just Rewrote the Original Film’s Shock Ending
Taika Waititi, Jermaine Clement and Iain Morris’s Apple TV+ remake is mixing things up. Spoilers.
Warning: contains spoilers for Time Bandits (1981) & (2024) episodes one & two.
“Strong language, self-harm references & violence. This programme isn’t suitable for younger viewers,” is the warning from Channel4.com to anybody currently wishing to stream Terry Gilliam’s 1981 fantasy adventure film Time Bandits in the UK. Despite the film’s “G” (all ages admitted) rating, the streamer asks viewers to confirm that they’re over the age of 16 before it will play.
An overreaction, or fair dos, in light of the film’s meaty battle scenes and famously bleak ending?
The Original Time Bandits Ending
In the film’s final scenes, 11-year-old Kevin (Craig Warnock) awakens in his own bed following a series of perilous adventures through history with a band of time-travelling wannabe thieves played by actors with dwarfism (Star Wars’ Kenny Baker, plus David Rappaport, Malcolm Dixon, Jack Purvis, Tiny Ross and Mike Edmonds).
After romping through Napoleon’s battlefields, having a hand in the killing of the Minotaur, experiencing the sinking of the Titanic, and more, Kevin wakes up to his bedroom door being broken down by a firefighter (Sean Connery, also the face of Agamemnon in the ancient Greece chapter) who pulls him from the smoke-filled building. The family home is ablaze and instead of rescuing him, his parents are outside arguing about who should have saved their top-of-the-range kitchen appliances. The cause of the fire is traced to an oven containing a smoking chunk of black rock. Kevin recognises the rock as a piece of David Warner’s Evil Genius, recently destroyed by Ralph Richardson’s Supreme Being.
“Mum, Dad, it’s evil, don’t touch it,” shouts little Kevin. Ignoring him, they touch it and are instantly vaporised, leaving behind two smoking piles of dust. “Mum? Dad?” asks Kevin, walking among the singed remains of their destroyed home. Mike Moran and George Harrison’s twinkly synth score plays as the Connery-fire fighter gives Kevin a little wink and drives away, and the camera leaps back through the clouds, above the Earth into the film’s celestial time-hole map, which is rolled up by a pair of hands. The End.
It’s an irreverent, cartoonish moment with a Roald Dahl-esque cruelty to it, and kids’ mileage will vary on how they take it. Even though Kevin’s mum and dad left a lot to be desired in the parenting stakes, it’s a bleak punchline – loved by some and puzzled over by others.
How the TV Series Reimagines It
The new 10-episode Apple TV+ Time Bandits TV series created by Taika Waititi, Jermaine Clement and Iain Morris, has put its own twist on that original ending. At the end of episode two, a baddy turns Kevin’s parents from mobile phone-obsessed couch potatoes into lumps of smoking coal. “It happens,” commiserates Alto (Tadhg Murphy), a member of the new-look Time Bandit crew, adding the scant explanation, “demon stuff.”
Kevin (Kal-El Tuck) asks if his “coaled” parents are dead and is told by Lisa Kudrow’s Penelope, “They’re not well, let’s just say that.” Later, carrying his lumps of mum and dad, Kevin asks if he goes back in time, whether he can save them. Kudrow’s character evades a direct answer, but helps the child to pack them in his bag and takes him on her gang’s adventures.
All this has gone on unbeknownst to Kevin’s sister Saffron (Kiera Thompson), a newly introduced character for the series who, at the time of her parents’ coaling, is listening to music on headphones and happily doodling a unicorn.
Unlike the original film, which left Kevin definitively an orphan, the series could be setting up a mission for Kevin in the magical restoration of his mum and dad (Felicity Ward and James Dryden). By taking the coal with him, Kevin clearly hopes to revive his parents. If he succeeds, then it would be a rewrite – though an arguably understandable one – of the original movie’s most famous element.
Terry Gilliam on His Film’s Ending
Terry Gilliam, who directed Time Bandits and co-wrote it with fellow Monty Python member Michael Palin, was not involved in the Apple TV+ series and has previously expressed disappointment at its decision not to cast actors with dwarfism as the titular gang. Gilliam says that in 2001, he was in discussions with Hallmark to make a planned sequel to the film that would have starred the daughters of the original time bandits, but the project never got off the ground.
Speaking to The Playlist for 2023’s Criterion 4k re-release, Gilliam revisited the ending of his film:
“When we finished the film, the producers felt certain elements weren’t particularly good for the children. Especially the ending with the parents blowing up. I said, “Come on! The kids will be fine with that.” The boys certainly were, and the girls were more motherly. They were concerned about what was going to happen to Kevin now that his parents are no longer there.”
Gilliam went on to explain that his filmmaking goal is not to “reassure people” or to paint pictures of what a wonderful place the world is. “It’s an interesting and exciting place, but it’s also a dangerous place.”
Filmmaker and author Sarah Polley, who wrote in her 2022 memoir Run Towards the Danger about her traumatic, unsafe experiences as a child actor filming Gilliam’s 1988 fantasy The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, would likely agree.
The remaining eight episodes of Time Bandits will arrive on the streamer in weekly double bills on Wednesdays, with eps three and four landing on July 31.
Written by
Louisa Mellor is the Den of Geek UK TV Editor. She has written about TV, film and books for Den of Geek since 2010, and for…