Dungeons & Dragons Credits Scene Shows the Funny Side of Messing With Magic
Speak with the dead, and they shall appear.
When you cast a spell to resurrect a corpse to ask it five questions, you should be careful how you ask them.
In Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves, writer/directors John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein take audiences to the Forgotten Realms for a thrilling heist. A band of thieves, led by the bard Edgin (Chris Pine) and barbarian warrior Holga (Michelle Rodriguez) seek to rescue Edgin’s daughter from the clutches of a former fellow thief, Forge (Hugh Grant). But to do so, they need to retrieve an ancient relic, a helmet, that can disable magic.
While our heroes eventually succeed, they left one little bit of business unfinished, and it hilariously plays out in the credits of Honor Among Thieves.
Warning: Minor spoilers for Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves ahead.
What Happens in the Dungeons & Dragons Mid-Credits Scene?
Simon cast “Speak With Dead!” It was mostly effective.
The mid-credits of Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves doesn’t expand the cinematic universe of D&D. However, it does build upon a gag from earlier in the movie.
When the heroes need to find the location of a helmet that can disable magic, they visit a graveyard of soldiers said to have been in contact with the helmet last. Budding sorcerer Simon (Justice Smith) casts a spell straight from page 277 of the official Dungeons & Dragons Player’s Handbook: Speak with Dead, a third level necromancy spell that allows players to resurrect a dead body back to consciousness and ask five (5) questions. (In a game, the Dungeon Master role-plays as the corpse.)
After excavating a literal graveyard of soldiers, the heroes finally find the answers they’re looking for from one poor sap. But the party leaves before they ask it one final question, preventing the corpse from going back to rest. The mid-credits scene revisits the corpse, who is hilariously (and painfully) waiting for just one more question.
Given that Honor Among Thieves comes from the duo behind Game Night, of course the entire scene is hilarious.
What is Speak With Dead?
The official description of Speak with Dead is as follows:
“You grant the semblance of life and intelligence to a corpse of your choice within range, allowing it to answer the questions you pose. The corpse must still have a mouth and can’t be undead. The spell fails if the corpse was the target of this spell within the last 10 days. Until the spell ends, you can ask the corpse up to five questions. The corpse knows only what it knew in life, including the languages it knew. Answers are usually brief, cryptic, or repetitive, and the corpse is under no compulsion to offer a truthful answer if you are hostile to it or it recognizes you as an enemy. This spell doesn’t return the creature’s soul to its body, only its animating spirit. Thus, the corpse can’t learn new information, doesn’t comprehend anything that has happened since it died, and can’t speculate about future events.”
Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves is bound to be a hit that will spawn a cinematic franchise, be it sequels or streaming TV spin-offs or anything in between. But those behind the movie aren’t putting the cart before the horse. There are no hints about new characters or villains or story arcs from deep in D&D’s lore to lead a sequel. Thus, the all-important credits scene simply reminds audiences just how strange — and funny — playing D&D can be.
Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves is now playing in theaters.
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