How Jurassic World Rebirth Sets Up the Franchise’s Next Sequel

Jurassic World Rebirth has stomped its way into theaters (apologies) and, as with most major IPs when their newest installment is released, people are already questioning how a Jurassic World Rebirth 2 (or Jurassic World 5 or Jurassic Park 8, depending on how you look at it) might take shape. The simple truth is, while Jurassic World, Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, and Jurassic World Dominion each felt like parts of a trilogy, Jurassic World Rebirth feels more like a one-off. The end of Rebirth doesn’t set up a follow-up in any traditional sense, but without a doubt it does move the franchise forward in a way that can be built upon.

Rebirth‘s one-off feel actually benefits the film. Not everything needs to be a trilogy. But we’re going to unpack a likely direction for the franchise in the future. Naturally, SPOILERS for Jurassic World Rebirth follow.

Who Survives Jurassic World Rebirth?

The only people to sail away from Ile Saint-Hubert are Zora Bennett (Scarlett Johansson), Dr. Henry Loomis (Jonathan Bailey), Duncan Kincaid (Mahershala Ali), Xavier Dobbs (David Iacono), and the Delgado family (Manuel Garcia-Rulfo, Audrina Miranda, and Luna Blaise). Everyone else gets chomped.

And, even with Scar Jo’s star power, it seems as though all of these characters are pretty much done. Then again, Jurassic World ended with the title theme park’s survivors being evacuated from the island and Chris Pratt’s Owen Grady and Bryce Dallas Howard’s Claire Dearing starting a romance. In other words, that film didn’t necessarily directly point to them ending up as the adoptive parents to the granddaughter of one of the original Jurassic Park’s co-founders. You just never know.

Things could be equally unpredictable here. In Rebirth, Dr. Loomis and Bennett seem to have some chemistry, so they very well could continue in a sequel. Outside the aforementioned Delgado family, everyone is on Ile Saint-Hubert to get blood samples from the three largest dinosaurs to help craft a medication for preventing heart disease. The head of the venture is ParkerGenix’s Martin Krebs, who as one might imagine is this Jurassic movie’s requisite money-hungry unethical jerk. They all need one.

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Krebs gets mercenary Bennett to lead the expedition by offering up $10,000,000. Krebs and Bennett get Dr. Loomis on board with a similar offer mixed with the promise of finally seeing a live dinosaur out in its “natural” habitat.

Midway through the movie, Dr. Loomis asks Bennett what she thinks of not handing the samples over to ParkerGenix, which is only going to charge an absurd amount for the medication and profit off of people’s suffering. Bennett eventually asks what he has in mind as an alternative, to which he replies they could give it to everyone. A bunch of companies could produce the medicine, there’d be no monopolization, and the medication could be procured by anyone, not just those with pockets deeper than the Grand Canyon.

As one might expect of a protagonist, Bennett ends up saying no to the $10,000,000 from ParkerGenix, especially after Krebs (who did nothing as the elder Delgado child nearly died so she wouldn’t send out a mayday signal) is gobbled up by the Distortus rex. She goes with Dr. Loomis’ suggestion and cut to credits.

Where We Go from Here

Even more than Bennett and Dr. Loomis, Ile Saint-Hubert feels like the anchor for a Rebirth trilogy. After three movies away from a jungle-covered island setting (save for the first half of Fallen Kingdom), Rebirth feels like a return to the good times. At this point, dinosaurs on their own aren’t scary. The protagonists need to be in the dinosaurs’ home. The people are the outsiders, the dinosaurs are on their home turf.

Ile Saint-Hubert was the home of a lab set up by InGen (between the events of Jurassic Park III and Jurassic World) to craft transgenic dinosaurs. People have grown tired of Tyrannosaurs and raptors. They want something new. In other words, the site was the first attempt to craft the Indominus Rex.

But, as is typical for this franchise, the site was shut down after the mutated Distortus rex killed a Milky Way-scarfing lab worker. The mutated dinosaurs share the island with the standard dinosaurs, and it’s not likely this one movie shows all the monstrosities this shut down lab crafted.

Perhaps the next film could have ParkerGenix ship more people off to the island under the guise of destroying the remainder of InGen’s creations only to try and get more blood for something else. Which blood? The blood from the mutated dinosaurs. It seems like a logical step for this scruple-free company to try and create a Jurassic Park solely consisting of the mutated dinosaurs (and, of course, make more of them).

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