×
Cookies help us deliver our Services. By using our Services, you agree to our use of cookies. Learn More.

Does Barbie Have A Post-Credits Scene?

Contains spoilers for "Barbie"

No. There's not a post-credits scene in "Barbie."

Thanks to the supremacy of huge franchises and cinematic universes, post-credits scenes have become almost ubiquitous in the entertainment industry — and it could be argued that the Marvel Cinematic Universe made this trend more or less inescapable. Typically, the MCU uses their post-credits scenes to set up yet another installment in its now-sprawling cinematic multiverse, whether it's Robert Downey Jr.'s Tony Stark trying to get a little group called "the Avengers" together for the first time or various characters disappearing thanks to Thanos' (Josh Brolin) fatal snap.

Anyway, "Barbie" isn't a part of the MCU, unless the upcoming Mattel Cinematic Universe is going to outright steal that acronym. It doesn't have a post-credits scene, because writer-director Greta Gerwig and her partner-cowriter Noah Baumbach aren't setting up a potential "Barbie" sequel. This movie stands alone on its highly arched feet, and once it's over, it's over.

Barbie doesn't have a post-credits scene because a sequel isn't planned — yet

"Barbie" is, to put it lightly, an odyssey; Gerwig's film is a Homer-esque journey wherein Stereotypical Barbie (Margot Robbie) finds her perfect life disrupted by flat feet, cellulite, and pervasive thoughts of death. To figure all of this out, Barbie heads to the real world, leaving the utopian pink landscape of Barbie Land behind only to find that, in Los Angeles, it's the men who run everything — not the other way around.

Barbie finds this disheartening, but Ken (Ryan Gosling) definitely does not, and he goes ahead and brings the patriarchy right back to Barbie Land with him. Barbie solves this problem, restoring the rightful power of the Barbies while also taking into account that the Kens deserve slightly more than they've previously been offered — but she's still not happy. Ultimately, she decides that what she wants to do is become human; now that she's grappled with the inevitability of death, she can't live her happy, thoughtless, perfect life as a doll anymore. Adopting the name Barbara Handler — the real name of Barbie's inspiration and daughter to the doll's creator Ruth Handler, played on-screen as a maternal ghost by Rhea Perlman — she proudly goes to see her gynecologist, finally becoming a flesh-and-blood woman.

Barbie's story in the real world is just beginning — and it still remains to be seen if there will even be a sequel — but "Barbie," at that moment, is over. Once the credits start, there's no need to stick around until the final Warner Bros. logo shows up.