Does Project Hail Mary have a post-credit scene?

Project Hail Mary has no post-credits scene and no mid-credits scene. Grace and Rocky's story finishes inside the film proper, with nothing held back for a stinger and no sequel being set up. If you leave when the credits start rolling, you will not miss a scene.

You will, however, miss the one thing the filmmakers did hide back there. After the last credit card, the film plays out a short run of badges designed like patches on an astronaut's flight suit — the production companies PPI, Open Invite Films and Lord Miller Productions, and then the MGM lion. As the lion's head moves, the sound that comes out is not the studio's roar. It is one of Rocky's chirping, chord-like Eridian utterances, dropped in over the logo. It is the only moment in the entire picture where Rocky speaks with no on-screen translation, which is exactly what makes it land: for two and a half hours you have been reading subtitles for him, and the last thing he says is left for you to interpret.

What he is saying has never been officially translated, and the filmmakers have not offered a reading. The obvious guess is "goodbye," and there is a good reason to doubt it — earlier in the film Rocky establishes that Eridians have no word for goodbye at all, using a gesture of one forearm drawn across the other instead. The most popular alternative readings are that it is Rocky's version of "the end," a thank-you to the audience, or a joke at the expense of everyone who sat through eight minutes of credits waiting for a Marvel-style tag.

The credits themselves run long — this is a 156-minute film with a very large VFX and puppetry crew — but there is nothing to watch for in between. Sit through them for Daniel Pemberton's end-title music, which uses the same water bowls, woodblocks and treated voices as the score, and wait for the lion.