Bumblebee end-credits scene retcon: Is there an end-credits scene? What does it mean?

When the audience first meets Bumblebee in this version of events, it’s 1987. The plot follows Bumblebee, an Autobot fleeing his home planet who seeks refuge in a junkyard in a small California beach town. The official synopsis reads: “Charlie, on the brink of turning 18 years old and trying to find her place in the world, soon discovers the battle-scarred and broken Bumblebee and quickly learns that this is no ordinary yellow Volkswagen.

What does the Bumblebee post-credits scene mean?

Warning: Spoilers ahead for Bumblebee

There are two scenes during the credits for Bumblebee, which occur directly after title card crediting the director, Travis Knight.

The first scene sees Charlie (Hailee Steinfeld) fixing her deceased father’s car, which had been her goal at the start of the movie.

Finally managing to repair the convertible served as a nice conclusion to Charlie’s grieving character arc.

The second scene sets up the future of the franchise and ties into its past.

BUMBLEBEE RELEASE DATE, CAST, TRAILER, PLOT: ALL YOU NEED TO KNOW

In the last moments of the movie, B-127, aka Bumblebee, is driving alongside a truck that looked suspiciously like Optimus Prime.

In the scene, Bumblebee and Optimus Prime, the Autobot leader, are walking through a forest together.

Optimus says there is more to be done in the battle with the Decepticons on Earth and looks up to the sky.

When the camera follows his point of view, the audience can see seven more Autobots flying towards the planet.

The reason this short scene is so important is because of what it means to the previous Transformers films.

BUMBLEBEE CAST: WHO STARS IN THE TRANSFORMERS PREQUEL ABOUT BUMBLEBEE?

The scene essentially acts as a retcon of the previous five Transformers movies by Michael Bay.

A retcon is defined as: “When a piece of new information that imposes a different interpretation on previously described events, typically used to facilitate a dramatic plot shift or account for an inconsistency.”

Here’s how the end-credits scene acts as a retcon for the franchise.

In the first Transformers movie, the audience learns the Autobots first come to Earth in 2007 after being called by Bumblebee.

The Transformers, Optimus Prime, Jazz, Ratchet, and Ironhide, arrive in the middle of Los Angeles in the dead of night.

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They meet with Bumblebee, whose owners are Shia LaBeouf’s Sam Witwicky and Megan Fox’s Mikaela Banes.

In Bumblebee, however, all of this has been retconned, as Bumblebee takes place in 1987 and Bumblebee himself arrives on the planet in that year.

The location in San Francisco, far north of Los Angeles though still in California and seven Transformers have made their way to Earth, not four.

The Transformers timeline as a whole is not known to sticking to the canon.

Michael Bay’s series made plenty of changes to its source material, and from movie to movie.

By the fifth Transformers movie, Bay had written the Transformers into all sorts of human events – like the building of the pyramids.

With the retcon, Bumblebee is setting itself up to create an entirely new timeline for the Transformers series.

Whether a sequel comes to fruition largely depends on box office figures, but hopefully, fan reception can convince Paramount another Bumblebee movie is worth making.

Bumblebee is now playing in cinemas.