Lightyear End-Credits Scenes Explained: Is Zurg Really Vanquished?

Editor’s Note: The following contains Lightyear spoilers.After stealing the spotlight from Woody twenty-two years ago in Toy Story, Buzz Lightyear finally gets the spotlight in his own spinoff movie, Lightyear. Chris Evans voices the space ranger in this solo adventure, as he tries to get himself and his crew off a hostile planet. Lightyear also stars Keke Palmer, Peter Sohn, James Brolin, Taika Waititi, Dale Soules, and Uzo Aduba.

While some Pixar films in the past have had fun little jokes throughout the credits, or a tiny scene at the very end of the credits, Lightyear actually has three end-credits scenes. If you’re curious about what happens in these final moments, or just didn’t stay long enough to see all three scenes in theaters, here’s what happens in Lightyear’s end-credits scenes. To infinity and beyond, fellow space rangers!

The first of these scenes takes place after the first batch of credits. The quick scene shows Commander Burnside (Isiah Whitlock Jr.), the head of the space rangers, in his office. The scene shows Burnside having his afternoon teen while in the background, we see the giant forcefield put in place on the planet Tikana Prime. During the scene, we see one of the giant bugs native to the planet get zapped in the forcefield. Also notable in the scene is a quick reference to another Pixar film on Burnside’s bookshelf, as BURN-E—from WALL-E and the short BURN-E—can be seen. BURN-E, released as a special feature on the WALL-E home video release, was also directed by Lightyear director Angus MacLane.

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The second scene occurs at the very end of the credits, and is a callback to a scene from earlier in Lightyear. As Buzz and his team are getting ready to go out on their mission, the robot ERIC (voiced by MacLane) tries to give the team the best route to the spaceship. As we saw earlier in the film, ERIC keeps making mistakes and restarting his plan, and while he’s still talking, the rest of the team abandons him and makes their own plan. In this end-credits scene, ERIC finally finishes his plan, and turns around to find that he had been talking to himself this entire time. Maybe like BURN-E, we’ll get a short film about the adventures of ERIC during the events of Lightyear that we didn’t see.

The third and final scene takes place at the very end, after even the Pixar logo. This final shot shows Zurg (voiced by James Brolin), powering back on, showing that the enemy that Buzz seemingly dispatched is still around, ready to cause more trouble for Lightyear and his new team of space rangers. Does this mean that we will see more Zurg and Lightyear in the future? Pixar hasn’t announced any plans for a Lightyear sequel just yet, but considering Buzz has been getting into new adventures since 1995, it certainly seems like a possibility.

Lightyear is now playing in theaters.

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