The Entire Jumanji Story Explained

Fridge, Bethany, Spencer, and Martha remembering their time in Jumanji is a significant change from the way the board game worked in the original movie, which reset the entire thing back to 1969, when its first players began their game. While Judy and Peter grew up with no knowledge of the game (since they were born after the reset), Spencer, Martha, Fridge, and Bethany remember everything, despite Alex emerging from the game before they were born and thus changing the world around them. There's never any explanation given for such a major change in Jumanji's mechanics, so we're left to assume it's just yet another example of the changing nature of the game.

After Alex is returned to 1996, he grows up with his memories of the game intact, gets married, and has children. He names his oldest daughter Bethany, after the girl who saved his life in the game, and his parents continue to live in the former Parrish house. After exiting the game in 2016, the teens meet an adult Alex, who is excited to finally see their real (non-avatar) faces. They later destroy the game by smashing it with a bowling ball.

However, sometime after his friends have left, Spencer retrieves the broken pieces of the game and holds on to it, just in case. The teens remain close throughout the rest of high school and head off to college, but Spencer begins to experience significant self-doubt and withdraw from the group. Before going to meet his friends for brunch during a break from college in 2019, Spencer attempts to fix the game so he can play again as his avatar from the first movie, hoping that this will help restore his self-confidence. Unfortunately, the game is broken, and Spencer gets trapped inside. His friends go to his house searching for him, and get sucked into the game, too — except for Bethany, who goes to find the adult Alex and seek out his help.