WARNING: This article contains spoilers for Jumanji: The Next Level
Jumanji: The Next Level contains a secret twist that could potentially set up the villain for its next sequel. Taking place three years after their hazardous adventure in the video game Jumanji, Fridge (Ser’darius Blain), Bethany (Madison Iseman) and Martha (Morgan Turner) find themselves venturing back into the game after their friend Spencer (Alex Wolff) goes back in search of some extra confidence. Returning to the director’s chair is Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle‘s Jake Kasdan, as well as the main cast of the video game characters, including Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, Karen Gillan, Kevin Hart, Jack Black, and Nick Jonas, as well as new faces in older figures Danny DeVito and Danny Glover.
While the bulk of the film is spent with the main crew of avatars trying to locate their friend, they’re also tasked with having to save the fictional land once again from another brutish character, the aptly named Jurgen the Brutal (Rory McCann). A ferocious warloard, Jurgen was also responsible, as Nigel Billingsley informs the character in his mission brief, for the death of Doctor Bravestone’s parents.
Dwayne Johnson recently posted a commemorative side-by-side photo on Instagram with his co-star McCann and the Big Foot character from the Lee Majors TV series, The Six Million Dollar Man, describing the strange first impression the Rock had with the former Game of Thrones star. But in doing so, the former wrestler also confirmed that Jurgen the Brutal, while the video game’s central antagonist, was actually another playable avatar in Jumanji – leaving the protruding question: who exactly was playing as Jurgen?
View this post on InstagramPlot twist 👹 For JUMANJI: THE NEXT LEVEL we wanted to create a towering beast of a character named, JURGAN THE BRUTE. Enter, “Game of Thrones” actor, Rory McCann. When Rory first walked on set of JUMANJI it immediately reminded me of one of my favorite TV shows as a kid, THE SIX MILLION DOLLAR MAN and the episode where Lee Majors takes on BIG FOOT, played by the legendary, Andre the Giant. Cool plot twist about JURGAN (for those who caught it) is he’s an actual avatar in the game. Meaning – SOMEONE is playing him. But who? That’s the big mystery. In the next JUMANJI we’ll find out just who’s been playing the JURGAN THE BRUTE 😈 #JUMANJI #MysteryPlayer IN THEATERS NOW WORLDWIDE 🌎
While The Next Level concludes with Jurgen swallowing a Jumanji Berry and plummeting to his death, this unknown assailant could be a possible plot line in the upcoming Jumanji sequel – a possibility the Rock appears to have confirmed online. One implication of Jurgen being an avatar is that he would, as all of the other characters do, have three lives in the virtual world. So, depending on how many lives the player had spent establishing a tyranny over Jumanji, Jurgen would have spawned in the plummeting canyon on which he died; something the audience would not have been able to see.
That being said, however, given that the all-but-confirmed sequel appears to be taking place in the real world – at least that’s what’s suggested during Jumanji: The Next Level‘s mid-credits scene – the player’s potential position as the central antagonist of the next film would require that he or she conquer the game. Perhaps, we’ll get some explanation as to how the Jumanji world works after being defeated, given that both Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle and Jumanji: The Next Level end with Nigel sending the characters back to their humdrum lives. Of course, the latest action-adventure comedy seemed to break some of the rules it had established in its prequel (for instance, the Danny Glover/Kevin Hart character loses all three of his lives to no consequence), so who knows how the filmmakers are going to navigate through this jam.
- Jumanji: The Next Level (2019)Release date: Dec 13, 2019
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