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When the first teaser trailer for Ghostbusters: Afterlife was released in December of 2019, before the film was delayed by the pandemic, it looked familiar. Not just because the footage on display was harkening back to the original films in a specific way with music cues and images, but because the beats themselves were even more familiar. By the time the Ecto-1 was shown crashing through a wheatfield with its siren blaring it became clear that the guidepost for this new movie wasn’t 1984’s Ghostbusters, it was 2015’s Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Now, the franchise just confirmed George Lucas’ series is their blueprint.
Back in June, Netflix finally revealed the first real details about the upcoming animated Ghostbusters series happening at the streamer, revealing Ghostbusters: Night Shift. Set in 1994, five years after the events of Ghostbusters II, the series follows “scrappy, young New Yorkers” who strap on the proton packs to bust some ghosts. Now, though, Jason Reitman and Gil Kenan have confirmed that this series will be canon to the mainline Ghostbusters films and act as a potential springboard for future projects, much like Star Wars: The Clone Wars became in 2008.
Ghostbusters: Night Shift Will Be The Clone Wars for the Series
In the same way that Ahsoka Tano, Bo-Katan Kryze, Saw Gerrera, and more went from “characters in a Star Wars cartoon” to important pieces of franchise lore, Ghostbusters: Night Shift is aiming to do the same thing.
“Night Shift is very specifically set within the larger context of the Ghostbusters stories,” Jason Reitman told The Hollywood Reporter. “You’ll be able to watch the movies, come into the show, watch more movies and never miss a beat. It all links up.”
Reitman, son of original Ghostbusters director Ivan Reitman, previously directed Ghostbusters: Afterlife, with the idea for the new animated series hailing from the initial planning of that film.
“We gave ourselves a mystery to solve,” Reitman said about Afterlife. “We thought of this young girl who found a proton pack in a barn, and we were trying to figure out who she was, how’d she wind up there, how did this proton pack get there….Wait a second, what about that whole decade in between? What happened in the ’90s? That was the birth of this show.”
Though it’s been confirmed that Dan Aykroyd has some involvement in the series, it remains to be seen how this new series will address the original characters and their time between Ghostbusters II and Ghostbusters Afterlife. One of the biggest lingering questions is Egon Spengler’s journey, from key scientific member of the team to his death in Oklahoma. That in mind, though, Reitman already teased that since Night Shift is “set within the larger context of the Ghostbusters,” fans will be able to go back and forth between the shows and the movies at will, adding, “It all links up.”
An all-new problem that Ghostbusters: Night Shift might create, though, and which the creators are almost surely aware of, is what can happen within the context of the series that keeps the truth about ghosts and even Ghostbusters from being part of the public consciousness? One of the plot holes of Ghostbusters II was how many New Yorkers simply forgot about the existence of ghosts in just five years, so what shenanigans can a new generation of Ghostbusters get up to in the ’90s that wouldn’t make headlines globally?
The most important thing, though, isn’t maintaining consistent continuity around the Ghostbusters franchise, but staying true to its roots.
“The magic trick of the first film is that it was genuinely terrifying and laugh-out-loud funny,” Gil Kenan, director of Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire, added. “That is unique in the history of modern film. When you try to distill what the DNA of Ghostbusters is, it’s that tone.”
Ghostbusters: Night Shift arrives on Netflix in 2027
Netflix’s New Ghostbusters Animated Series Officially Reveals First Images, Story Details & Timeline
