Everything Everywhere All at Once ending explained: bagels and kindness
Spoilers ahead: this article discusses the ending.
Everything Everywhere All at Once ending explained begins with a bagel and ends with a tax return. Everything Everywhere All at Once ending explained properly shows how the Daniels turn a multiverse war into a small family argument, and resolve it with a choice rather than a fight.
Written and directed by Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, the 2022 film stars Michelle Yeoh as Evelyn Wang, a laundromat owner, Stephanie Hsu as her daughter Joy and Ke Huy Quan as her husband Waymond. It won seven Academy Awards, including Best Picture.
Everything Everywhere All at Once ending explained: the bagel
Jobu Tupaki is a version of Joy who has experienced every universe at once and concluded that nothing matters. She builds the everything bagel, a black-hole-like object that represents putting everything on a bagel and finding nothing in the middle. She does not want to destroy the multiverse so much as use the bagel to end herself, and she wants her mother to understand why.
The Daniels have said the bagel started as a throwaway joke. Kwan said it let them talk about nihilism without being too eye-rolling, and it turned a doomsday plot into a personal one.
Why Evelyn chooses kindness
For a while Evelyn agrees with Jobu and lashes out across universes. What stops her is Waymond. In one universe he asks everyone to be kind, especially when they do not know what is going on, and Evelyn realises his gentleness was never weakness.
She then fights differently, using what she learns in other lives to give her opponents what they need rather than beating them. It is the film's thesis in action: if nothing matters, you can still choose to care.
How Joy is saved
At the climax Jobu walks toward the bagel. Evelyn lets go of trying to control her and simply tells Joy she would still choose to be with her, in any universe. Joy is pulled back by her family rather than defeated.
In the home universe this plays out as Evelyn accepting Joy's girlfriend Becky and admitting her own disappointments, the real conflict underneath all the multiverse jumping.
The casting deepens the moment. Ke Huy Quan, as Waymond, won Best Supporting Actor, and Michelle Yeoh won Best Actress, which made her performance of a tired mother learning to listen one of the most celebrated of its year.
The final scene at the IRS
The film ends where it began, at the tax office with Jamie Lee Curtis's auditor Deirdre. The family returns to refile their taxes. Evelyn briefly hears echoes of her other lives, then chooses to focus on the room in front of her.
It is a modest ending on purpose. Saving the multiverse means paying attention to the people you have, here and now.
Themes critics point to
Reviewers have connected the ending to existentialism and absurdism, and to ideas from Buddhism and Daoism. It is also about intergenerational trauma between Evelyn, Joy and Evelyn's father Gong Gong, played by James Hong, and about the immigrant experience. The film was first written for Jackie Chan before the Daniels rewrote the lead as a woman.
- Nihilism answered with kindness rather than meaning
- A mother and daughter breaking a pattern
- Ordinary life as the most valuable universe
Questions people ask
What is the everything bagel?
A black-hole-like object Jobu Tupaki creates by putting everything on a bagel. It stands for her belief that nothing matters.
Does Joy die at the end?
No. Evelyn and the family pull her back from the bagel, and mother and daughter reconcile.
How many Oscars did the film win?
Seven, including Best Picture, Best Director and acting awards for Michelle Yeoh, Ke Huy Quan and Jamie Lee Curtis.
What does Waymond's speech mean?
He asks people to be kind, especially when they do not know what is going on. Evelyn realises his kindness is a strength and uses it to end the fight.