The Secrets of the Ghostbusters: Afterlife Ending Unpacked

The Choice of Including the Original Ghostbusters

The reveal of seeing all three of the surviving Ghostbusters stars on-screen and in the jumpsuits again is a surprise Sony has (mostly) tried to hide over the two years it took to release Ghostbusters: Afterlife. (Pandemic delays turned out to be far more powerful than even Gozer the Gozerian!) Even so, writer-director Jason Reitman told us last month that it was always his intent to bring back the original stars of his father’s 1984 classic.

“I would not have been interested in making this film if it did not have the original Ghostbusters,” Reitman says. While the filmmaker was adamant about making his own unique interpretation of ghostbusting, one that would focus on a family coming back together after discovering their late grandfather’s old secrets hidden in the American heartland, Reitman also wanted to use this approach as a slow burn. He’d slowly unfurl all those old fan favorites in piecemeal, building up to the original trio showing up in the climax.

“When we started breaking down how it might work, very early on did I think it would be wonderful [if this was] a film where we handed audiences back the PKE Meter, the trap, the car, the pack, and eventually the guys,” Reitman explains. “And it would feel like Christmas morning as you opened a gift after a gift, and found yourself back in the film that you loved.”

Indeed, it really does seem like Afterlife slowly morphs into the original Ghostbusters as the third act goes along. First, Zuul and the demon dogs’ possession game returns, then Gozer, and finally we’re back to Murray calling Gozer “flattop” and then riffing with a lot more jokes.

Of course audiences probably had a suspicion this was coming after Phoebe telephoned Ray Stantz’s occult bookshop earlier in the picture to get help—discovering from an old and embittered Ray that Egon stole most of their equipment when he ran off to Oklahoma and burned bridges. (This also explains how Ray and the guys knew where to go to help Egon’s granddaughter since she didn’t have time to say what town she was in.) Still, to actually see the trio there really was a holiday gift for the most diehard Ghostbusters fan.

But if each “gift” is intended to be bigger than the last, then there really was nothing bigger than the final reveal of the finale: three old timey Ghostbusters become four.

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