Epilogues

It’s one thing to re-contextualize the past, but what if you want to build anticipation for the future? Good news: epilogues are great at that, too. Writers who know they have sequels in the works can use epilogues to hint at new conflicts and characters, piquing the audience’s well before the next release. These preview epilogues, also called ‘stingers’ or ‘teasers,’ are particularly effective for adapted works with built-in fanbases. Characters or plot points that seem new to people who only know the adaptation will be familiar and exciting to people who know the original work. The Marvel Cinematic Universe has used this concept to great effect over the years, hinting at future conflicts that will please longtime comic fans. Writers who wish to do this with their works should use such referential epilogues carefully, as they risk alienating newcomers if they rely on prior knowledge to make sense. 

The bigger video game franchises get, the more opportunities they have to tease future installments in their epilogues. Hideo Kojima’s Metal Gear Solid series is particularly noteworthy for this, as each game ends with a stinger that sheds new light on old conspiracies while introducing new ones that promise to be even more bizarre. Similar teaser endings have become so popular in games that developers who remaster old titles may add them in after the fact, tying together titles that only had a tenuous relationship in their original forms. Square-Enix did this twice with Chrono Trigger (1995), adding new epilogues in both their Playstation and Nintendo 3DS remasters. While the endings depicted different scenes (with one being animated, the other in the original pixel art), both strengthened the connections between Trigger and its sequel, Chrono Cross (Square-Enix, 1999). Of course, it’s impossible to say if those scenes would’ve been the same if the developers had known to put them in from the start, but fans were nevertheless appreciative of the additional connective tissue.