Now that the Ti West-directed Pearl — co-written and starring Mia Goth — is in theaters, many fans may want to skip the movie-going experience entirely and skip straight to the spoilers in order to look up whether there is an end-credit scene after the plot has already played out.
We don’t know why you’d want to do that, as the color-splashed horror film set in 1918, Pearl, is receiving as much critical acclaim — if not more so — than the previous film in the franchise, X. But nevertheless, we’re here to tell you all the juicy details about what may — or may not — unfold after the credits roll.
Our expectations about a post-credit scene were set up by the aforementioned X, which featured a surprise trailer for a prequel film, Pearl. Might Pearl, which follows the rise of the titular slasher from the first film, pull off some similar shenanigans?
The answer, it turns out, is a resounding yes. Just like in X, Pearl contains a teaser for the next film in the franchise, in what people are now coming to know as the X trilogy, as Collider pointed out.
However, the teaser is a little different this time. When it came to Pearl, that movie was actually filmed in secret alongside the production of X, with both films releasing in the same year. That’s not the case with the next film in the trilogy, known as MaXXXine, which has not been filmed yet.
As IndieWire pointed out, Ti West and A24 are actually opening up MaXXXine to a casting contest whereby people can submit their audition video via social media — by using the hashtag #XCastingCall — to appear in the movie. Unlike the trailer for Pearl, the teaser for MaXXXine (below) was already released online by A24, so it doesn’t exactly hold that same “surprise” factor.
Watch Pearl at a theater near you.