Note: Contains spoilers for Jumanji: The Next Level.
Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle might have effectively been a reboot of the series, but it was still closely tied to the 1995 classic, starring Robin Williams.
Not only does Alex get given the Jumanji board game at the start of Welcome to the Jungle, but it's later revealed that Alex (Colin Hanks) – in the avatar of Jefferson 'Seaplane' McDonough (Nick Jonas) – has been living in Alan Parrish's (Williams) treehouse for 20 years.
It was a subtle way of confirming that the sequel took place in the same Jumanji timeline, and Jumanji: The Next Level goes one step further with a character returning from the original movie.
Spoilers await, so don't read on if you haven't seen The Next Level yet.
During The Next Level, it's revealed that Spencer's grandfather Eddie (Danny DeVito) and Milo (Danny Glover) are former business partners who used to run a restaurant until Milo retired.
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The restaurant was then renamed Nora's, but the significance of that name isn't made clear until the final scene.
It's here we realise that the person who bought the restaurant from Eddie and Milo was none other than Nora Shepherd – Kirsten Dunst's aunt and guardian from the first film – with Bebe Neuwirth reprising her role from the 1995 movie.
Judy (Kirsten Dunst) and Peter (Bradley Pierce) go to live with Nora after the death of their parents. The events of Jumanji changed their parents' fate, though, so until now, we didn't know what happened to Nora in the new timeline.
Since Alan didn't disappear in 1995, the Parrish mansion wasn't bought by Nora with the intent of turning it into a bed and breakfast. Instead it seems that she turned her attention to the restaurant trade and bought Eddie and Milo's place, turning it into the brunch place to go to in Brantford, New Hampshire.
After surviving Jumanji for a second time, Nora's is where Spencer and co head to, along with Eddie, who ends up flirting up a storm with Nora, even using the patented Smolder Bravestone "smouldering intensity" to woo her.
We'll have to see if Nora will come in handy in a potential sequel that looks like it will bring Jumanji into the real world. If only she could remember the experience...
The idea to bring back Nora wasn't just to appeal to fans of the original movie, but an idea that developed naturally when director Jake Kasdan was thinking about The Next Level's ending.
"Our rule for that has been: we loved the original movie, and we want to keep it in mind and be respectful of it, and to feel a connectedness between those things – you know, to the same town and all of that," Kasdan told Digital Spy.
"Alan Parrish plays a small role in that way, in the first movie. But I'm also really conscious of not jamming it in a way that feels like we're pandering to, you know, some Jumanji completists, I guess.
"It was a scene that [came from] an organic process of, 'How do we want to end the movie? Where do we want to leave Eddie?' And as I saw that developing, I was like, 'Wait a second, there's an opportunity for a cool way to cross the movies'."
Jumanji: The Next Level is in cinemas now.
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Movies Editor, Digital Spy Ian has more than 10 years of movies journalism experience as a writer and editor. Starting out as an intern at trade bible Screen International, he was promoted to report and analyse UK box-office results, as well as carving his own niche with horror movies, attending genre festivals around the world. After moving to Digital Spy, initially as a TV writer, he was nominated for New Digital Talent of the Year at the PPA Digital Awards. He became Movies Editor in 2019, in which role he has interviewed 100s of stars, including Chris Hemsworth, Florence Pugh, Keanu Reeves, Idris Elba and Olivia Colman, become a human encyclopedia for Marvel and appeared as an expert guest on BBC News and on-stage at MCM Comic-Con. Where he can, he continues to push his horror agenda – whether his editor likes it or not.
