Let's make this simple: You want to know if there are any post- or mid-credits scenes in Mickey 17. The answer is no! This is a credit-scene-free endeavor.
Full spoilers follow!
After achieving box office success, critical acclaim, and some huge Academy Award wins — including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Original Screenplay, and Best International Feature Film — with his 2019 film Parasite, writer/director Bong Joon-ho is back with his follow-up, Mickey 17. Feeling more stylistically aligned with Bong’s 2017 film, Okja, than Parasite, Mickey 17 (review) is a dark comedy/science fiction mashup set in a future where it’s possible to literally print out a copy of a human being and give them the saved memories from their previous body after their death.
Those who agree to this process are referred to as expendables, though due to the moral and social debate and controversy around the concept, it’s been outlawed on Earth - but not in space, including onboard the ships being sent out through the galaxy to colonize other planets. Down on his luck and desperate, Mickey Barnes (Robert Pattinson) is one such expendable, working on a ship that’s under the leadership of Kenneth Marshall (Mark Ruffalo), a politician and religious figure with a cult-like following, along with his wife, Ylfa (Toni Collette). As the ship’s expendable, Mickey’s rather miserable role is to be a human test subject for all manner of potentially (or sometimes absolutely) lethal encounters, providing scientific evidence of what is needed to survive various elements, animals or viruses found in space and as the ship arrives at the planet it will colonize, Nilfheim.
A crisis occurs for Mickey when his seventeenth body is presumed dead, killed by one of the giant, slug-like creatures on Nilfheim referred to as “Creepers,” only to survive when the Creeper doesn’t actually eat him. However, during this time, Mickey 18 has been printed out back on the ship. Which is a big problem, because dark prior events in a similar situation have led to zero tolerance for “multiples” – when an expendable has more than one living version walking around at the same time – with the penalty being death for every version.
Mickey 17 Ending Explained
As it turns out, the versions of Mickey can be rather different in terms of temperament, and Mickey 18 is a much more glum, growly type than 17. His first reaction to finding out they have a multiples situation is to try to kill 17 before anyone finds out, throwing him into the same furnace the various (dead) Mickeys are tossed into. Soon though, things calm down, with Mickey’s girlfriend Nasha (Naomi Ackie) taking quite the liking to the idea of having two Mickeys around to have a bit of, well, fun with.
However, the existence of the two Mickeys is eventually discovered by Marshall, and though he doesn’t kill them both, he is adamant only one can remain. He decides to send both of them out amongst the hordes of Creepers that have gathered around the ship, who are furious that the humans have taken two of their babies. One of these babies was already killed, while Ylfa has cut the tail off the other, chopping it up and blending it into what she ghoulishly declares is a perfect sauce. And now she wants more Creeper babies for more sauce.
Marshall’s plan is to have both Mickeys strapped with explosives, with the trigger buttons placed on Marshall’s glove, marked 17 and 18. Whoever makes it back to the ship with 100 Creeper baby tails lives, while the other will be blown up - in the process taking out the Creeper’s giant queen and most of the other Creepers with it.
At the same time, Nasha has realized that the Creepers may look horrifying to humans, but actually never meant them any harm, which is why Mickey 17 was spared in the first place when the Creeper queen could have eaten him but instead had him dragged to safety. She tries to point out that, from the Creepers perspective, the humans are the invading aliens, but Marshall and Ylfa don’t care, having no intention of finding peace with the Creepers. At the same time, sympathetic scientist Dorothy (Patsy Ferran) gives 17 a prototype translator as he and 18 are forced from the ship.
Using the device, Mickey is able to speak to the queen, who is furious to discover one of her children has been killed. She demands one human life in exchange, which works out nicely for her when Marshall decides to personally leave the ship to make a speech to the Creepers about humanity’s dominance over them, which he intends to follow up by setting off the explosives on the Mickeys to kill the Creepers from afar. In the midst of this, Nasha manages to get the captured baby (who Marshall had tried to throw into the furnace) off the ship and return it to its mother.
Before Marshall can go through with his plan, Mickey 18 manages to get to Marshall and the two fight. During their tussle, Mickey purposely pushes the button on Marshall’s glove marked “18,” blowing up both himself and Marshall, and in the process giving the queen her sacrifice, paving the way for peace with the humans, while settling the multiples issue for Mickey.
A New Era for Humans and Creepers… and Mickey
In the aftermath, voice over from Mickey 17 tells us that Ylfa was taken to the psych ward after losing her husband, and rumor has it she took her own life shortly after. With a new leader needed, Nasha was elected. Meanwhile, the expendable program was ended completely, including in space, and we watch as Mickey 17 attends a ceremony out on the planet’s surface, headed by Nasha, where he is to push the button that will blow up the printer that had been used to always make his next copy.
However, we then cut to Mickey 17 walking into the ship and finding the printer – or one just like it – still there, and none other than Ylfa standing by it. She tells him to drink “the sauce” off the floor, except it’s blood, as the printer begins to print out a new person - her husband, Marshall, being brought back to life. In voice over again, Mickey 17 asks himself what Mickey 18 would do, and then tells Ylfa “F**k off,” and we suddenly cut back to the ceremony where the printer is still about to be blown up, confirming Ylfa and Marshall’s return was all a nightmare 17 was having.
17’s voice over resumes, as he says he does feel guilty that the other Mickeys couldn’t be there too, even as he knows he will now be able to move forward and live out his life without being experimented on again. He blows up the printer and we cut to the movie’s title appearing on screen, except the 17 in Mickey 17 begins to flicker between 17 and 18, before both numbers dissolve away and are replaced by the word Barnes below the word Mickey, signifying Mickey truly reclaiming his full name and identity.
Does Mickey 17 Have a Post-Credits Scene?
As noted, there are no post-credits or mid-credits scenes in the film, not that we’d really expect it to. Because sure, this is a big budget Warner Bros. science fiction movie, but it’s also an offbeat, wacky, hyper-specific story from the acclaimed Bong Joon-ho, so Mickey 19 or Mickey 17 Vs. Okja is not something that’s going to be teased.
What did you think of Mickey 17? Let’s discuss in the comments!
