Us ending explained by Jordan Peele
Note: Contains spoilers for Us.
While we can't solve the mystery of how Lupita Nyong'o was overlooked by the Oscars, we have had a major mystery about the ending of Us solved.
Jordan Peele's Get Out follow-up came out in March last year and he's largely kept its mysteries... mysterious. However, he's now opened up about the haunting final shot and, specifically, the unanswered question of what the Tethered do next.
In case you needed refreshing, the ending of Us sees a whole host of Tethered – having come to the surface and killed their original 'selves' – link hands to form a chain across Santa Cruz.
It's inspired by the Hands Across America charity event from 1986 (when Adelaide was taken and switched with Red), and the haunting final shot shows their huge chain and the destruction they've caused.
But surely they had a bigger plan than that? We know that the Tethered have now lost their leader, yet you'd think Red had an idea for what they'd do next.
Nope. Turns out that the chain was the plan.
When asked by Collider about what's next for the Tethered, Peele skirted around the answer for a bit, but then offered a satisfying conclusion.
"I'd resist to actually answer that question because you never know what could happen. But I think part of the answer you're looking for is that to the Tethered it doesn't matter," he explained.
"Their purpose is the expression and there was something kind of terrifying to me – we see it all the time today – terrifying to me about the idea of violence as expression because it's an inevitable force.
"I feel like what happens after is fascinating but irrelevant to the Tethered."
Peele's answer does, of course, leave some ambiguity as it's still unclear what exactly happens next.
But if there's no plan and the Tethered weren't thinking beyond coming to the surface and forming a chain, then we could assume that normal service would resume, especially if the Tethered just existed in Santa Cruz.
That is if there were enough people left alive, of course.
There are still plenty of mysteries with the Tethered that we might not ever get an answer to – such as how they got all the red jumpsuits and gold scissors.
But Peele did at least solve one extra mystery over what they've been up to over the years before their revolt.
"The shorthand cheap version that I sort of would throw out as the general starting point guideline is, they're doing what we’re doing but the scary version. Whatever that means, it's the scary version," he told Collider.
"And the momentum that we're trying to build thematically in the movie is trying to get to this idea that the version up here, the normal version, may be just as crazy as the below version even though we're used to this kind of insanity.
"You know, our mania is in consumerism and one-upmanship, in cutting our faces open, going to amusement parks where we pay money to get in these devices where we scream. I wanted to sort of put this connection together [so], at the end of the film, you're sort of left unsure who the scarier ones are."
We're pretty sure the Tethered are still the scariest, but nice try all the same.
Us is available to watch now on NOW TV and you can buy it on DVD, Blu-ray and 4K Ultra HD.
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