It’s been over 30 years since the Ghostbusters first assured us they weren’t afraid of no ghosts, and now director Jason Reitman is behind the wheel of the Ecto-1 for the franchise’s fourth film, Ghostbusters: Afterlife. A new trailer has dropped for the film, and with it more clues that point to the return of an old Ghostbusters foe.
Let’s take a closer look at the new trailer and what it could mean for the Ghostbusters universe — past and present! Read on for all the clues and Easter eggs we found regarding the Afterlife bad guy, or watch the video! You can also watch the trailer below…
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The New Ghostbusters
The trailer opens on scenic shots of Summerville, Oklahoma. The franchise has ditched the hustle of Manhattan for the bucolic bustle of a midwestern farm town. We immediately know McKenna Grace’s Phoebe is a smart kid because of her Egon-ish hair and glasses and her mom, Carrie Coon’s Callie, is having trouble connecting with her. (Egon, of course, is Egon Spengler, the Ghosbuster played by the late Harold Ramis in the first two films.)
Callie tells Paul Rudd’s seismologist Mr. Grooberson this on (what we hope) is a date, because if there are some Scott Lang/Proxima Midnight smooches in this movie, then our fan-fiction won’t feel like a waste of time. Either way, it seems Callie has moved their kids from the city out to this spooky old farm house her father left to them. In a trailer breakdown Reitman did with IGN, the director told us he wanted the film to unfold like a mystery — and this is where it starts.
Egon Spengler or Louis Tully?
Happily, cinema’s most fashionable receptionist Janine Melnitz (Annie Potts from the original films) is here to drop hints. She says that Callie’s father wasn’t the best housekeeper and tees up a wonderful shot of the Ecto-1A under a tarp in the barn.
But we don’t know what Callie’s relationship to Janine is. Is Janine her mom? If so, is Egon Callie’s father? Janine clearly had eyes for Egon in the first film but hooked up with Louis Tully (Rick Moranis’ character) in the 1989 sequel, so there’s a chance Phoebe and Finn Wolfhard’s Trevor are in fact Louis Tully’s grandkids.
With what Jason Reitman has said about his own personal journey with this film and finding his own place among the Ghostbusters in his father’s legacy, Louis Tully’s arc in Ghostbusters II — where he found the courage to pick up the proton pack — might just be Jason Reitman’s most personal connection to the franchise. If that’s the case, then continuing the story of the Tully children picking up the mantle of busting ghosts might’ve been his way into cracking this long-awaited sequel.
It is clear though, as Reitman confirmed to IGN, that Janine cared for Egon into his old age, whether she had children with him or not, and the mysterious house is not only a piece of the familial puzzle the kids are having to put together, but it’s also important to the mysterious spooks, specters or ghosts rumbling the town.
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Maybe It’s the Apocalypse
Moving into the “what was Egon doing there” side of the mystery, the trailer has a handful of clues here as well. As Reitman pointed out to us, the antenna-riddled house is meant to emulate the top of the Ecto-1, so the house was definitely kitted out with ghost-detecting and monitoring devices at some point (and likely still is).
We also get a shot of pink energy streaks moving through town that are the same iconic pink streaks that flew across Manhattan when Walter “Pencil Neck” Peck shut down the containment grid in the first film and released previously busted ghosts into the five boroughs. This seems to indicate that Egon had built a containment unit in Summerville to keep something at bay — a unit that he maintained until he died and that has since become unstable.
That Egon would have moved to Summerville in his later years specifically to keep a lid on cult leader Ivo Shandor’s machinations regarding Gozer (the malevolent force first seen in the original film) would speak to both sides of the mystery Reitman will unfold with this film — both why the Spengler family has become fractured and didn’t know about Egon or his Ghostbusting days, and why ghosts are descending on Summerville.
So perhaps the psychokinetic energy Egon’s containment unit was keeping at bay grew to the size of an enormous twinkie, causing the earthquakes that Paul Rudd is in town to investigate before rumbling its way to freedom. If that’s the case then the question remaining is whose psychokinetic energy was Egon containing?
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Afterlife and Gozer the Gozerian
In a previous trailer, we saw the kids walking into Shandor Mines, a reference to Shandor, who was the architect of the apartment building where Sigourney Weaver’s Dana Barret lived.
The temple seen in the new trailer is full of Gozer iconography, from the pyramid to the flat top. And whatever apparently gets released in this temple has the same arm and head shape as the figures at the bottom of the shrine in the temple. This trailer makes it clear that the Goze will be putting the moves on Phoebe and Trevor’s would-be hometown.
But this trailer is full of other signs that, as with the first trailer, continue to point towards Gozer’s return. The mountain we see has a similar swirling cloud of doom feel as the one above Central Park in 1984, and the awesome practical skeleton ghost is clearly a miner that’s been released back into Summerville after being trapped in Shandor Mines for who knows how long. Oh, and how about the terror dogs that show up, including one in a spooky new spectral form? Total minions of the Destructor.
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What other clues will the kids find along the way that lead them to answer the puzzles at the heart of Ghostbusters: Afterlife? What’s up with Egon’s hand in the photo of the original Ghostbusters? Doesn’t it look a little photoshopped to you? What’s he holding? Seems like a clue! And then of course, there’s the guy with the tattoo at the end of the trailer who has to be Dan Aykroyd’s Ray Stantz. The tattoo refers to the Book of Revelation, as did Ray in the 1984 film…
Let us know what you think is going on in the new trailer for Ghostbusters: Afterlife, and be sure to check out our breakdown with co-writer and director Jason Reitman as well!
Clint Gage contributed to this report.
