How does Everything Everywhere All At Once end? Written and directed by Dan Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, this epic drama movie puts the multiverse on a silver platter in an unmissable feature. But let’s be frank, it isn’t exactly the easiest to follow, and after seeing the sensational flick Everything Everywhere All at Once, you may be wondering what exactly you just witnessed. Warning spoilers ahead!
Everything Everywhere All at Once tells the story of Evelyn, a laundromat owner who is disillusioned with her life. The IRS is hounding her, her husband Waymond is holding divorce papers, and she is constantly trying to breach her strained relationship with her daughter Joy. However, Evelyn soon finds herself having to face all her problems and save the fabric of reality along with her family. In the film, we see her ‘Verse Jumping’ and fighting to stop Jobu Tupaki from succumbing to the void of a nihilistic bagel before it is too late.
As you can tell from that brief description, there is a lot, and I mean a lot of things at play in this movie. However, The Digital Fix is here to help make sense of it all. Here we leave no googly-eyed stone unturned and fully explain the Everything Everywhere All at Once ending.
What is Verse Jumping?
Ok, so here is the thing, we can’t talk about the ending to Everything Everywhere All at Once without going over the multiverse rules and Verse Jumping. In this film, the multiverse concept is approached as different realities that have spawned based on decisions that different versions of ourselves have made.
So, for example, in the film, we saw an Evelyn from another universe who chose never to marry Waymond and became a kung-fu movie star instead of a laundromat owner.
The first universe that discovered the multiverse called itself the Alphaverse, and it was here that Verse Jumping was founded. Verse Jumping is the process that enables you to tap into a different version of yourself in another universe and harness that person’s skills and memories.
So, for example, laundromat Evelyn can suddenly fight thanks to jumping into Kung-Fu Evelyn’s universe and using that Evelyn’s memories of martial arts to kick some butt. However, Verse Jumping puts strain on your brain and can cause something to snap or, like an overfilled clay pot of water – cracks to form. This is exactly what happened to the film’s antagonist Jobu Tupaki.
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In the film, it is revealed that Jobu Tupaki is the Alphaverse Joy who was pushed to the limits of Verse Jumping by the Alphaverse Evelyn. After snapping, Jobu Tupaki can freely Verse Jump, and by extension, can experience the entire multiverse simultaneously.
The reason why the Alphaverse is searching for different versions of Evelyn is that they believe that she is the only one who can stop Jobu Tupaki, who has been destroying universes and also searching for a specific version of Evelyn to complete her ultimate plan – which the Alphaverse believes involves the destruction of all the universes in existence. Still with us? Good.
How does Everything Everywhere All at Once end?
Everything Everywhere All at Once, ends with lots of Verse Jumping, heartfelt action scenes and some tear-jerking family moments. After we see Evelyn facing Jobu Tupaki, the Alphaverse resistance, and pushing the limits of Verse Jumping to the point that she becomes an omnipotent being, we finally learn Jobu Tupaki’s true intentions.
It turns out that the fashionable villain wasn’t hoping to cause Evelyn’s death at all, but instead was seeking a version of her mother who can harness the entire multiverse such as herself. Jobu Tupaki wants someone to understand her plain of existence and sympathise with the feeling of emptiness that the multiverse has caused her.
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Seeing Evelyn as the version of her mother that she has been searching for, Jobu Tupaki shows her a black hole, which she calls an everything ‘bagel.’ The bagel is essentially everything that Jobu Tupaki found compelling, put into one place, all her hopes, dreams, fears, report cards – everything.
So, in short, the black hole wasn’t some kind of doomsday device that the Alphaverse had predicted, but is instead a personalised vessel in which Jobu Tupaki was trying to find purpose and meaning in her life.
But, after finding no reason for her existence across the entire multiverse, the bagel has turned into an all-consuming void. It embodies how nothing truly means anything, and she entices Evelyn to walk into the black hole together, ultimately ending it all.
Evelyn and Jobu Tupaki begin to Verse Jump together, where Evelyn begins to take to her daughter’s nihilistic view of the world. Realising that nothing matters, she begins acting cruelly in multiple universes, living out all her resentment towards her failures and not caring about the consequences or hurting others in the process.
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As we see her explode in multiple universes, we finally see her jump into a rock timeline where life hasn’t developed at all. It is here that Evelyn has supposedly reached the same point as Jobu Tupaki and has given up on life, finding it overwhelming and meaningless at the same time.
But not all hope is lost. Waymond, who has been a beacon of unconditional kindness throughout the movie, comes to save the day. Throughout all the universes, we see Waymond embrace Evelyn even after her rampages, and learn that he uses understanding and empathy as a weapon to survive.
For the first time in the film, we see Evelyn reach a level of understanding with her husband. As a result, she can refocus her efforts towards saving her daughter, instead of falling down the self-destructive path of the bagel.
Having this revelation that we don’t need to succumb to the void but instead can fight back with compassion and understanding, Evelyn makes her way through Jobu Tupaki’s minions and tries to stop Jobu Tupaki from entering the everything bagel black hole before it is too late.
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Although Evelyn is now all-powerful and can easily obliterate her enemies, she instead literally ‘fights with kindness’ using the absurdity of the multiverse to create joy instead of pain, as she makes her way through her opponents to reach her daughter. The whole family then put their differences aside to help Evelyn ultimately pull Jobu Tupaki out from the consuming darkness (I’m not crying, you are).
As we said before, while all this is happening, we have been switching through multiple universes simultaneously. One of them is a very grounded reality where Evelyn and Joy have a tearful blowout outside their laundromat. After Evelyn finally accepts Joy’s girlfriend Becky and introduces her to her grandfather, Joy feels overwhelmed.
Although she has been saved from the bagel darkness, she is still plagued with doubts and the fear that she will never be good enough for her mother. Running away from her, Joy says that she needs time apart, to which Evelyn reveals that out of all the vast possibilities and timelines in existence, what she truly wants is to be with her daughter, and treasure their time together.
This massive step, shows that the two are moving towards a new beginning together, one full of love and open understanding, instead of repeating the past trauma that Evelyn experienced with her own father (again, I’m not crying, you are crying). At the end of the film, the family is in a comfortable space, and life begins to move again for Evelyn, who is no longer trapped by her own feelings of regret and dissatisfaction.
Will there be an Everything Everywhere All at Once 2?
It is unlikely that there will be an Everything Everywhere All at Once 2. Jobu Tupaki has been saved, Evelyn and her husband have worked out their differences, and everyone seems pretty happy. In short, it feels as if the story has finished and doesn’t need to be revisited.
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However, there is one detail that could hint toward something in the future. After all the heart-breaking wholesomeness at the end of Everything Everywhere All at Once, we see the final scene of Evelyn back in the office of the IRS. But she isn’t exactly that focused on the conversation concerning her finances. Instead, she is distracted by the multitude of voices all at once ringing in her ears.
This reminds us of the fact that Evelyn is still experiencing the entire multiverse continuously, which could point to more Verse Jumping in the future. However, as we said before, we are not sure why Evelyn would need to Verse Jump again, considering how peaceful things ended in the film.
And that’s all, folks! If you are after more multiverse action, here is our guide to the best science fiction movies of all time.