In the movie’s final moments, Kane admits that he doesn’t think he’s the original version, and a video Lena saw inside the Shimmer seems to confirm that he’s an alien doppelgänger.

It’s daring to walk away and leave viewers wanting more, and it’s often exciting to walk out of a movie feeling like a film has activated your imagination and invited your collaboration on the next steps.But here, the original ending gives speculators more fuel in the form of more information. This might hint that this was in fact a copy of the psychologist, as we saw throughout the Shimmer.From there, Lena goes back to the top of the lighthouse where she does the dance with the blob being. Some part of the being remains inside Lena, and Kane is actually just a copy of the real Kane. By Chris Edwards. So, what happened at the end, when Natalie Portman's Lena reunites with Oscar Issac's Kane? Lena eventually fights a doppelgänger that reflects her every move, and she escapes the Shimmer and returns to her husband Kane (Oscar Isaac), the last person to find a way out of the area.Or does she? Notice the tattoo on her arm and the glow in her eye. And while it leaves the future open, it suggests a shape for that future.

This seems to be an underdeveloped copy of Lena, as whatever it is inside The Shimmer attempts to recreate her genetic structure. The original scripted ending of Annihilation sounds betterYou can get the upgraded OnePlus 7 Pro for $450 right nowThis model with 8GB of RAM and 256GB of storage usually costs $699HP’s latest 15-inch Omen gaming laptop is $300 off at Best BuyIt packs in a six-core processor, the RTX 2060, a 300Hz refresh rate display, and more The animals and the plant-humans were all beings with their genetics scrambled or affected in some way inside The Shimmer.So that leaves the final scene, where Lena encounters ground zero of the event. What ... like this one that's far more scientific from Reddit:

What was with the interpretive dance? Or maybe Garland is implying that it doesn’t matter whether Lena is the original. The end of Garland’s film is the opposite of the end of VanderMeer’s trilogy. She comes across the psychologist deep within the lighthouse. Lena, however, does the opposite, handing a less-evolved copy of herself the incendiary grenade. In the video inside the Lighthouse, we see Kane (who has lost his mind inside The Shimmer), kill himself—convinced to do so by his own copy.

12/03/2018 "What on Earth did I just watch?"

It implies that the testing of the human race’s tendency toward self-destruction is going to continue and expand significantly. That's likely why director Alex Garland strayed so far from the book itself.

This content is created and maintained by a third party, and imported onto this page to help users provide their email addresses. It's clear there are no solid "answers" to this movie. As established earlier, her DNA has been compromised within the Shimmer, and she carries some of the place’s alien element now. The “hail of meteors” ending says the action is just getting started. This commenting section is created and maintained by a third party, and imported onto this page. Netflix movie Annihilation plot and ending explained – spoilers ahoy!

Garland has already said he has no interest in sequels, but his original ending suggests countless sequels of the mind… and it gives viewers plenty of imagined scenarios to play with for the future.

Esquire participates in various affiliate marketing programs, which means we may get paid commissions on editorially chosen products purchased through our links to retailer sites. It seems that whatever was on that meteor began altering the area around it—refracting time, space, genetics, etc.—to mimic and assimilate it into an alien being or organism.

But given that everything the audience sees is meant to reflect her verbal report about her experiences, and given that she does outright lie to her interrogators about those experiences, it’s possible that she just made up what happened to her in the Shimmer. The “Lena and Kane are… something? Plants grow in the shape of people, unnatural animals form, and people face down alien duplicates of themselves.

It still leaves plenty of things ambiguous: are the new meteors falling because some alien intelligence is directing them, and after the test case, the invasion is ramping up? Matt is the Culture Editor at Esquire where he covers music, movies, books, and TV—with an emphasis on all things Star Wars, Marvel, and Game of Thrones.

And certainly, as people digest this bizarre film, there will be many more theories as to what happened inside The Shimmer. The suggestion is that maybe she’s not the original Lena either — she’s also a doppelgänger. This is one that was intended to start a discussion about humanity, biological origins, and the mysteries of impending ecological disaster.

Sign up for the Ambiguous endings can be terrific. Or is it all a galactic accident of some kind? The Best Theories About Annihilation's Wild Ending.

spoilers for the ending of annihilation Mizuno has two roles in Annihilation . Either way, she’s not what she was.And if the ending just means Lena has been compromised, well, what does that imply? Annihilation Ending & Shimmer Explained Did Lena Really Escape The Shimmer?

Alex Garland’s initial script is subtly different, but the difference is importantAlex Garland’s heady, dreamlike science fiction movie In the finished version of the film, military vet and Johns Hopkins biologist Lena (Natalie Portman) is the last known survivor of the most recent investigative sortie into the Shimmer, an area that’s been gradually taken over by an incomprehensible alien power.

That doesn’t jibe with anything Garland puts on the screen about Lena’s final confrontation with her double.

We're watching it learn and adapt. She embraces him anyway, but her eyes glow with an alien light.

With everything inside The Shimmer connected, this kills all the linked organisms.At the end, we see the actual Lena, but one who has already been greatly changed by The Shimmer. You might have noticed that briefly the psychologist's eyes are covered up when Lena first meets her.