The biggest blockbuster of the summer, Jurassic World Rebirth is the seventh film in the dino-sized franchise that kicked off with Steven Spielberg’s Jurassic Park more than three decades ago. But as the title suggests, it’s not just a continuation. Following a culmination of sorts in Jurassic World Dominion (now streaming on Peacock alongside the rest of the previous Jurassic films), Rebirth offers new territory for the film series, complete with new characters, revelations, and dangers.
Now, the film is finally in theaters (get tickets here!), which means fans everywhere get to see the connections between Rebirth and the rest of the franchise. But where does the new film leave the Jurassic universe? Who survives and what do they bring back with them? Let’s take a closer look at how Jurassic World Rebirth wraps it all up.
The ending of Jurassic World Rebirth, explained
The driving force behind Rebirth is, essentially, a scavenger hunt, a covert mission to take DNA samples from three different dinosaurs so pharmaceutical company ParkerGenix can use them to create a drug that will cure human heart disease, saving millions of lives. To pull it off, ParkerGenix rep Krebs (Rupert Friend) recruits covert ops expert Zora Bennett (Scarlett Johansson) and paleontologist Dr. Henry Loomis (Jonathan Bailey) to lead a team to an equatorial region where the last remaining dinosaurs are still surviving, and even thriving.
Things get more complicated when the team encounters the Delgado family, who were shipwrecked by a dinosaur attack just off the coast of Ile Saint-Hubert, the secret island that served as an InGen research facility in the days before the Jurassic World theme park went under. Zora and her team leader, Duncan Kincaid (Mahershala Ali) insist on rescuing the family and, eventually, leading them to safety. During a chase with various amphibious and water-bound dinosaurs, the eldest Delgado daughter, Teresa (Luna Blaise), falls from the team’s boat after Krebs pushes her away from trying to radio for help, then fails to save her in the hopes that she’ll drown and never tell anyone about his efforts to keep the operation entirely secret, even at the cost of human lives.
When Kincaid’s boat crashes on Saint-Hubert, the team and the family are separated, which means Zora and Kincaid don’t know what Krebs did. They manage to get all three samples while losing virtually every other member of the team, and make for a helipad at the old Ingen facility, where Zora has instructed a helicopter to show up and hover for two minutes, leaving if they don’t see survivors. The Delgado family and the remainder of the team finally reunite at the facility, where Teresa reveals what Krebs did. Krebs calmly pulls a gun, driving everyone else back while handcuffing the case of samples to his wrist. At that moment, the mutated dinosaurs from the InGen facility attack the humans, sending them scrambling down into drainage tunnels while Krebs tries to escape in a car found on the facility grounds.
The helicopter arrives just as the most monstrous of all of InGen’s mutants, the horrific D-Rex, attacks the team, taking the helicopter out in the process. Krebs is pursued and eaten by the D-Rex, and drops the sample case, which Zora picks up. The survivors — Zora, Kincaid, Loomis, and the Delgado family — run for an old boat still attached to a nearby dock. Kincaid, hoping to save the Delgado children, lures the D-Rex away from the dock long enough for Zora to untether the boat and shove off. As they’re sailing away from the island, they see a flare shoot up along the coast and discover that Kincaid has miraculously survived his encounter with the D-Rex.
The team picks Kincaid up and they all head for home. On the boat, Zora and Loomis agree to make an open-source formula from the heart disease cure made possible by the samples they collected, meaning it will be free and usable by anyone in the world.
So, where does this leave the Jurassic universe? Basically with a blank canvas where another filmmaker could play, particularly now that it’s established that dinosaur genetic material could be used in human medicines. The dinosaurs are all still out there, still thriving on Ile Saint-Hubert and elsewhere, and anyone could take that territory and use it in yet another story. The future is wide open for Jurassic World, and in that sense Rebirth might only be the beginning.
Jurassic World Rebirth is now in theaters everywhere. Get tickets here!
If you’d like to catch up on the saga thus far, the Jurassic Park and Jurassic World trilogies are now streaming on Peacock, alongside Jurassic World Rebirth: The Making of a New Era.
