Spoiler Warning
This article discusses the major Kamen Rider ZEZTZ dream twist around Case 25, including what happens to Baku, how the first arc is recontextualized, and what the reveal appears to set up. If you have not watched through the twist yet, stop here and come back after the episode.
What Actually Happens In The ZEZTZ Dream Twist?
The short version: Kamen Rider ZEZTZ does not pull a simple “it was all a dream” reset. It looks like one for a moment, and that is why the twist hits so hard, but the reveal is sharper than that.
Across the first stretch of the series, Baku Yorozu lives out the fantasy that defines ZEZTZ: an unlucky young man who becomes Code Number Seven, an agent of CODE, fighting Nightmares through the strange overlap between dreams and reality. He uses the ZEZTZ Driver and Capsems, works under Commander Zero, gets pulled into the mystery of Nem, and slowly learns that CODE has been tied to him for much longer than he understood.
Then the story reaches its hinge point. Baku uncovers more of Nem’s true situation, the first arc collapses into betrayal and death, and he wakes up in a hospital bed. The official Case 25 setup from TV Asahi phrases the shock clearly: Baku wakes in a hospital bed and realizes his experiences so far were all a dream, but the ZEZTZ Driver and Capsems are still there. That one image is the whole trick. If it was only a dream, why did the tools of the dream cross over?
Episode 25, “Get Started,” answers that by changing the category of everything we watched. The first arc was not meaningless dream filler. It was a premonition. Baku has effectively lived through a possible future, carried the knowledge back with him, and now has to move through the same board with a terrifying advantage: he knows how badly things can go.
That is why the twist works better than a normal reset. Baku is not back at zero. The audience is not back at zero. The cases, the rules, the relationships, Nem’s tragedy, CODE’s coldness, and the threat of the Nightmares all still matter. The show just turns them into foreknowledge.
Why It Works
The twist lands because ZEZTZ spent 24 episodes training us to accept the dream logic. From the beginning, the series was built around unstable boundaries: Baku is ordinary in the waking world but extraordinary in dreams; Nightmares begin inside people’s fears but can threaten reality; Nem appears inside dreams while her real-world condition remains one of the show’s emotional mysteries.
So when Baku wakes up, the audience’s first reaction is panic. Did the show really spend months on a dream that “didn’t happen”? But ZEZTZ has been too deliberate for that. Our full ZEZTZ review already nailed the key point: the slow first half suddenly becomes load-bearing. The monster-of-the-week rhythm, the CODE structure, the dream rules, and the repeated questions about Baku’s recruitment all become information Baku can use in round two.
That is the real genre shift. Before the twist, Baku is a confused recruit chasing the next mission. After the twist, he is someone racing against a future he has already seen. It makes him more active immediately. Instead of waiting for CODE, Zero, or the next Nightmare to define the episode, Baku can test what he remembers, challenge the people who used him, and try to save the people the first timeline failed.
It also makes the title “Get Started” feel cheeky in the best Rider way. This is episode 25, but it behaves like a second premiere. Toei’s own episode guide leaned into that feeling, framing the story as ZEZTZ beginning twice and suggesting that viewers who had watched the first 24 episodes would now share Baku’s higher vantage point. That is exactly the pleasure of the twist: we are no longer just discovering the mystery with him. We are watching him attempt to outmaneuver it.
Theories: Premonition, Loop, Or Something Stranger?
The clean explanation is that Baku experienced a premonition of a possible future while hospitalized. That is the safest read, and it matches how the twist has been discussed in Japanese coverage of the episode. But ZEZTZ is a dream show, so the fun is in how unstable that answer remains.
Premonition theory: The first arc showed a future that can still be changed. This makes Baku’s knowledge the new weapon, sitting alongside the Driver and Capsems.
Second-start theory: The story is not looping endlessly; it is replaying with altered conditions. Baku remembers too much, and his choices should push the second arc away from the tragedy he saw.
Dream-contamination theory: Because physical objects like the ZEZTZ Driver and Capsems remain after Baku wakes, the dream and real worlds may be less separate than anyone in CODE wants to admit.
CODE manipulation theory: CODE’s history with Baku, and its apparent willingness to treat people as pieces on a board, makes it hard to accept any “truth” from the organization at face value.
The strongest version is probably a mix of the first and third ideas. ZEZTZ is not asking whether dreams matter. It has already answered that: dreams can wound, save, mislead, and reveal. The real question is whether Baku can use a dream of disaster to prevent that disaster from becoming reality.
What The Twist Sets Up
The obvious setup is Baku versus fate. He knows enough to move faster, but that does not mean he knows everything. A premonition is not a strategy guide. It gives him names, patterns, and warnings, but it also risks making him reckless. If he treats everyone around him as a person from his remembered future, he may miss who they are in the present.
That matters most with Nem. Our review points to her as the emotional center that finally gains weight after the twist: a dream-world celebrity figure whose real-world coma and connection to the broader Nightmare mystery make her more than a fantasy heroine. Episode 25 does not just make Baku’s mission clearer. It makes Nem’s situation feel urgent, because Baku has already seen where ignorance leads.
It also sharpens the threat of CODE. Before the reveal, CODE could be read as the usual secret organization: suspicious, stylish, probably hiding something, but still the team handing out the hero gear. After Baku’s death and awakening, their coldness is harder to brush aside. If the first run ended in tragedy, then the second run is partly about Baku deciding how much of CODE’s plan he is willing to obey.
And then there are the villains and rival forces. NOX, The Lady, and the larger Nightmare mythology all become more dangerous after the reset because the show no longer has to spend whole episodes explaining the basics. The board is set. Baku has seen the bad ending. Now ZEZTZ can spend its back half asking whether knowing the future is enough to change it.
Why This Is The Moment ZEZTZ Needed
The dream twist is the point where ZEZTZ’s patient first half pays its bill. The early cases were not wasted time; they were the dream Baku had to survive before he could wake up as a better protagonist. That does not erase the slower pacing, and it does not mean every early episode suddenly becomes perfect. But it does give the whole structure purpose.
For a show about a wannabe secret agent, that is a great move. Baku’s fantasy was always to be the cool operative who knows the mission, reads the room, and saves the target. Episode 25 gives him the information to become that person, then makes the cost painfully clear. He did not earn that knowledge through training. He earned it by dying in a future he now has to prevent.
Collecting ZEZTZ
If the twist pushed ZEZTZ from “fun watch” to “clear the schedule” territory for you, Kakebo stocks ZEZTZ DX items for the shelf, including the ZEZTZ DX Driver, plus the Exdream Driver Buckle, Transformation Belt, and Breakam figure in the wider Kamen Rider collection. For a season built around dreams becoming real, the Driver is the obvious centerpiece.