Did you catch these Materialists Easter eggs?

Materialists, a new romance movie starring Dakota Johnson, Chris Evans and Pedro Pascal, is now playing in movie theaters and is definitely worth the watch (read our Materialists review if you need any convincing).

The 2025 new movie is the second feature from Celine Song, who had one of the best directorial debuts in recent memory with Past Lives.

However, despite this only being Song’s second movie, she actually had a couple of Easter eggs in Materialists that nods back to her past work. Did you catch them?

No worries if not, that’s where we come in. Let us fill you in on the pair of Materialists Easter eggs. FYI, some minor SPOILERS ahead, so if you haven’t seen the movie, here’s how to watch Materialists right now.

The play in Materialists is real

The first involves the off-(off?) Broadway play that Evans’ John is in and invites Johnson’s Lucy (and inadvertently Pascal’s Harry) to. We only see a quick scene from the play, but it features John sitting on stage with a woman that his character is on a date with. John and the other actress speak bluntly, reciting lines like “my mother and father had sex. I was born. I grew up. I entered this restaurant. I’m on a date.”

If you were a bit curious whether or not that play was real, it actually is, and it was written by none other than Song.

Titled Tom & Eliza, Song wrote the play in the mid 2010s and it was performed in 2016, as before she became an acclaimed filmmaker she worked as a playwright. The whole play features direct, rapid-fire language like we see in the Materialists scene, as the description from the New Play Exchange says it is about “two people marching relentlessly toward the future.”

In fact, the movie lets you know that this is Song’s play, as after the quick scene we see we catch up with John, Lucy and Harry outside the small theater and there is a poster of the play, with Celine Song’s name visible on it.

A Past Lives actor makes a cameo in Materialists

The other notable Easter egg in Materialists is a callback to Song’s Past Lives, as one of her main actors has a brief cameo in the movie. Not physically, but as a voice on a phone call that is critical to the characters.

Throughout the movie, Lucy is trying to find a good match for her client Sophie (Zoe Winters), who unfortunately has had a string of bad dates and failed matches. Lucy’s latest attempt is setting Sophie up with a man named Mark, who she believes checks a lot of boxes for what Sophie is looking for.

The morning after the date, Lucy calls Mark to find out how everything went. The voice of Mark is provided by John Magaro, who played Arthur (the husband to Greta Lee’s Nora) in Past Lives. This 30-second (or so) conversation is all we get from Magaro in the movie, but his character has a major presence.

Though Mark said he had a good time on the date, which excites Lucy as it’s been hard to find a match for Sophie, it is soon revealed that Sophie was assaulted by Mark. Lucy feels an incredible amount of guilt about how she could have missed that Mark was capable of something like that, which sends her on a complete reevaluation of her career and life.

The brief role was a complete 180 from Magaro’s nice-guy Arthur in Past Lives, but if you recognized the voice right away that likely paid a part in the shock of the reveal.

One other quick one, which isn’t really an Easter egg but is just an interesting fact for the movie. While we noted that Song was a playwright prior to becoming a filmmaker, for a brief time she was also a matchmaker, as she told Deadline. That clearly served as inspiration for Materialists.

Materialists is playing exclusively in movie theaters in the US, Canada and other regions; premieres in the UK on August 15.