The following contains SPOILERS for the end of Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales. Come back after you've seen the movie.
The newest Pirates of the Caribbean film is being billed as the last one, but if the movie has a post-credits scene, is that really the case? While every Pirates of the Caribbean movie has had a post-credits sequence, they've mostly been there to add a bit of comedy at the end of the story, and they're mostly inconsequential. However, the one at the end of the new movie actually hints that the newest Pirates film might not be the last one after all. Our own Eric Eisenberg sat down with directors Joachim Rønning and Espen Sandberg and asked them about the scene. They admitted that, while the new film does pretty much wrap up every loose plot thread in the franchise, that doesn't mean they wanted to simply end the franchise here. According to Sandberg...
This movie, in a way, we wrap things up. It's sort of an end. But we also like to think of it as the beginning of another one.
And here's where we're going to talk about the scene, so it's your last chance to turn away. Discussion of the post-credits scene requires discussion of the end of the movie itself, so the spoilers are about to go wild.
In the final minutes of Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales fans finally get the fairy tale ending that they've been waiting for since the post-credits scene of At World's End. The curse tying Will Turner to the Flying Dutchman is broken, Will returns home and is reunited with his son, Henry, and his wife Elizabeth. It's a touching scene that leads directly into the post-credits sequence.
Once the credits are over we see Will and Elizabeth together. They're in bed asleep when we begin to hear footsteps. The footsteps get louder until they approach the door and somebody enters the room. We never see a face so it's not clear who it is until we see a massive claw raised up and ready to strike at the bed. It's clearly the claw of Davy Jones. At this point, Will wakes up, and there's nobody there. Perhaps it was all a dream? Will curls back up with his wife and goes back to sleep, as the camera pans down to the ground revealing, a wet floor, and some sea detritus, so maybe it wasn't a dream after all.
The implication that Davy Jones is still out there is certainly and interesting one. He was very clearly killed at the end of Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End, but with the elements of the supernatural involved, it wouldn't be that difficult to bring him back. Jack Sparrow died once too, after all. Check out the directors' full comments in the video below.
Time, and box office receipts, will tell if this is truly the end of the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise. If it is, then maybe it really was all just a dream.
