Although it’s been six long years since Johnny Depp’s Captain Jack Sparrow hit the big screen, he returns May 26 in Disney’s “Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales.”
And what’s more, audiences who stick around to the very end of the credits will see a bonus scene — one that also teases a possible sixth installment in the fantasy adventure franchise. (The studio has not slated another installment.)
“Dead Men Tell No Tales,” directed by series newcomers Joachim Ronning and Espen Sandberg, features returning stars Depp, Geoffrey Rush and Orlando Bloom as well as newcomers like Javier Bardem, Brenton Thwaites and Kaya Scodelario.
(Be warned: Spoilers ahead.) In the scene at the end of the long credits crawl, the camera pans up from a rustling curtain inside a bedroom on a stormy night with the reunited lovers Will Turner (Orlando Bloom) and Elizabeth Swann (Keira Knightley) asleep in their bed.
We hear a disturbance outside the bedroom door, and then a tentacled creature emerges at the threshold, at first only in shadow but then briefly full screen.
Will awakes with a start — but sees no one (or no thing) there. He settles back to sleep, convinced it was only a dream — but the camera pans down to the floorboards beside the bed — where there is a puddle of water and several octopus puckers.
The scene suggests that we should expect not only Bloom and Knightley might return for the sixth “Pirates” — but also Bill Nighy’s Davy Jones, the octopus-faced captain of the Flying Dutchman who was the chief villain in the second and third “Pirates” movies, 2006’s “Dead Man’s Chest” and 2007’s “At World’s End.”
Or, since “Dead Men Tell No Tales” introduced Will Turner’s son (Brenton Thwaites) the dream creature could also be some previously unknown offspring of Davy Jones — who seemed to be quite dead when he was sucked into a maelstrom at the climax of “At World’s End.”