Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire Ending And Mid-Credits Scene Explained

Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire is, to put it rather mildly, pretty dense with stuff. We've got the core plot involving the Spengler clan and Gary carrying on the Ghostbusters mantle in New York City as another ancient spirit threat starts to emerge. We've got the old 1980s Ghostbusters, including Janine, sort of tangentially participating while doing their own things. We've got, unrelated to the emerging ancient threat, the original ghost containment unit starting to struggle as it reaches its capacity of ghosts. And, just for good measure, we've got several thousand years of new Ghostbuster lore.

It's a lot to digest, so it's time for a spoiler-filled discussion of the whole thing.

Warning: The rest of this article will be filled with spoilers for the main plot and ending of Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire.

Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire plot and ending spoilers

The central story thread in Frozen Empire involves an ancient brass orb that contains a spirit called Garraka, who wants to freeze the entire world to make it palatable for spirits to take over. This orb comes into play when a man named Nadeem (Kumail Nanjiani) sells it and a bunch of other heirlooms to Ray Stantz (Dan Aykroyd), who runs an occult bookstores and collects objects with heavy spiritual energy. This orb is so powerful that it breaks Ray's PKE meter when he scans it.

It turns out the orb is a prison, and Nadeem's grandmother was a Firemaster--a role that's been passed down through his family for many generations, but Nadeem apparently missed the briefing and didn't realize that he has a magical ability to manipulate fire. He has to figure it out quickly, though, because it's not long before that creepy old genocidal Garraka is loose.

It gets free after Phoebe develops a bit of a crush on a ghost teen girl who accidentally burned her own house down and died in the fire. Phoebe feels like she relates to this ghost, Melody, more than she ever has to a living human, and after hanging out a couple times, she invites her into Ghostbusters HQ and shows her Winston's new machine that extracts spirits from haunted objects. Phoebe wants to use it to extract her own spirit from her body, so she can hang out with Melody in ghost form.

Unfortunately, Melody was working for Garraka, who had promised to let her move on from her ghost life. While trapped in the orb, the ancient spirit can control the wills of nearby ghosts, and it possesses Phoebe's spirit and forces her to read the incantation that will free it from the orb.

From there, the battle is on, and the Ghostbusters of all ages, including Janine, who suits up for the first time, rally to the firehouse. Garraka starts tearing up New York by literally freezing it over, and the Ghostbusters can't figure out how to fight it--their proton packs are useless because Garraka can just freeze the streams. Phoebe tries coating her pack with molten brass, which the ancient Ghostbusters used to contain ghosts, but it isn't enough to take down Garraka.

To complicate matters, the 40-year-old ghost containment unit is fully breaking down while all this is happening. Things are looking pretty bleak, and everyone's fate is ultimately not in the Ghostbusters' hands at all. Instead, it's up to Nadeem with his new Firemaster powers and Melody the ghost. Melody had spent the whole movie with a matchbook in her hand--it was a match from this book that burned her house down and killed her. Now that she's seen the horror she unleashed by freeing Garraka and listened to Phoebe's pleas, Melody decides to use her matchbook against Garraka, whose weakness is fire. So Melody lights a match, and Nadeem weaponizes it against Garraka to take him down.

The elder Ghostbusters get their own moment during all this, as Ray, Winston, Venkman and Janine all have to work together to keep the old ghost containment unit from being breached--it takes their combined efforts to pull the lever to lock it down one more time. But they manage to pull it off.

For Melody, her switcheroo was apparently enough to let her move on--we won't talk about all the random NYC residents who were killed because she let Garraka free--and she has a little bit of a tearful goodbye before she fades into the fabric of the universe.

But there's no rest for the Ghostbusters, because some of the formerly contained ghosts did manage to escape during the battle. So after pressuring Mayor Walter Peck into supporting the Ghostbusters for the first time, the Spenglers and Gary head out in the Ecto-1 to track down that sewer dragon once again.

Does Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire have a mid-credits or post-credits scene?

While there isn't anything extra at the very end of the credits, there's one bonus scene to enjoy mid-way through. This scene catches us up with the Mini-Pufts, those delightful tiny marshmallow men who briefly appeared in Ray's basement early in the film. These little guys are on the loose, and we see them hijack a big rig at a truck stop and drive off in it. It's safe to say we'll be seeing these guys again if they make another Ghostbusters flick.