Everything Everywhere All at Once ending explained

Here’s the massive ending of Everything Everywhere All at Once fully explained

Will I ever stop crying? No x

2 years ago

Everything Everywhere All at One is an amazing film. It’s a huge film. Massive, actually – incomprehensibly expanding and never ending scope. By the time we get to its weighty ending, you wouldn’t be blamed for getting a bit lost on the way. Here’s a rundown of the entire plot of the critically acclaimed epic, and the full ending of Everything Everywhere All at Once explained.

‘The universe is so much bigger than you realise’

We start the film with Evelyn Wang, a middle aged mother running a launderette with her husband Waymond. She’s awaiting the arrival of her elderly father, who’s being sent over from China to stay with her – and at the same time, her daughter Joy is trying desperately to get Evelyn to accept her girlfriend Becky. Evelyn is rushing about, frenetic – and she’s displeased with Joy getting tattoos and having a non-Asian partner. To make matters worse, Evelyn’s launderette is under investigation for tax evasion – and on the eve of Chinese New Year she has a meeting with the IRS office. Joy is meant to go with her mother and father to help translate as their English is not perfect whereas Joy is fluent and struggles with Chinese.

She turns up with Becky, and Evelyn isn’t happy as it clashes with the arrival of her father Gong Gong. Joy tries to make Becky’s presence not a big deal to her mother and wants to tell Gong Gong that Becky is her girlfriend, but Joy and Evelyn clash and it results in Evelyn and Becky driving away. The others all go to the IRS office for the meeting with their inspector, Deirdre. In the lift, Waymond gets taken over by a new personality who fits a device to Evelyn in which her life flashes before her. He gives her instructions to meet him in the janitor’s cupboard during the meeting, and as Evelyn drifts off from what Deirdre is saying she manages to do just that.

What on earth is going on?

In the cupboard, Waymond explains that there are countless multiverses with different worlds and versions of everyone – he hails from the Alphaverse and goes by Alpha Waymond. In his universe, the late Alpha Evelyn developed the technology to “verse jump” – go in to any body of yourself in the other worlds and use their abilities and skills. To do so, you have to do something strange in order to disrupt the order of things, like chewing old gum or giving yourself a lot of paper cuts. To fight off an evil Deirdre, Evelyn uses the abilities of a kung fu master version of herself.

The Alphaverse is under attack by an evil entity called Jobu Tupaki. Jobu Tupaki is their universe’s version of Joy – and she wants to destroy all the universes by sucking them into a destructive bagel that functions as a black hole. Evelyn realises that to stop her, she must become like her – and be the person that like Jobu Tupaki is everything, everywhere, all at once. After wild universe jumping between existences where Evelyn works in a Ratatouille-esque kitchen, is a movie star, or lives in a world where her and Deirdre have hotdogs for fingers and are romantically involved – she ends back in the launderette and tries to put things right with Joy. Joy reveals herself to be Jobu Tupaki and they have a fist fight that transports them through the multiverses and eventually winds them up at the bagel black hole chamber. Jobu / Joy reveals that the bagel’s existence isn’t to destroy everything but to destroy herself – the lack of resolution and relationship with her mother has spiralled her into a deep depression and she is convinced that everything is meaningless.

The ending of Everything Everywhere All at Once explained

Evelyn starts to believe what Joy / Jobu is telling her – and smashes up every universe she’s in until Waymond calms her down with his speech about kindness and a better way of dealing with things. Evelyn finally gets through to Jobu Tupaki and tells her she is not alone, and that even if the two hate each other or are miserable that she is her daughter and she will always choose to be with her. Evelyn and Joy reconcile, and the whole story becomes rooted in the family story that is the heart of the massive tale Everything Everywhere All at Once, wrapping up the ending explained with a family mended by acceptance and communication.

In the final moments of the film, titled “Part 3: All at Once”, things for the Wangs have moved in the right direction. Becky is considered part of the family, Waymond and Evelyn are taking their marriage in the right romantic direction and they have the chance to sort their taxes with Deirdre afresh.

Go in blind if you can, but if you INSIST on watching the trailer, here you go.