The film “Everything Everywhere All at Once” (2022) is a combination of several genres. Comedy, fantasy, action. In the center of the story is Evelyn, in whose life a complete mess reigns. Problems piled on the heroine like a snowball. And in this difficult period, she understands that this is not the worst thing to expect. Noticing superpowers in herself, a woman begins to look for them in the right way. Let’s analyze the film “Everything everywhere and at once” in order to understand its hidden meaning.
What is the movie “Everything Everywhere All at Once” about?
The content of the film “Everything everywhere and at once” is filled with a huge number of plot twists and references to pop culture. We are used to seeing such “chatter”, throwing from one rich frame to another in cartoons. In cinema, this is a rarity, even for modern blockbusters. A detailed description of what is happening in the picture will take dozens of pages, so we will limit ourselves to a brief, as far as possible, analysis of the details in order to capture what was happening in the cool expressions of the plot.
All
In the first frame, we see a happy family of the main character. Apparently, this is an episode from the past or from another universe (there will be many of them in the future), because in this real life Evelyn Wong has everything going awry. She makes ends meet, trying to keep her business (laundry) afloat, deal with tax reporting, and please her elderly father.
In this turmoil, she turns away from a kind and loving husband, who has completely despaired of reaching his wife and decides to file for divorce. The heroine’s attention is also overlooked by her lesbian daughter Joy, who is trying to introduce her grandfather and make her girlfriend Beka a member of the family. During the conversation, they do not notice how on the screen with the image from the video cameras installed in the laundry room, Evelyn Waymond’s husband suddenly starts running around the room.
The heroine is distracted by a romantic film with singing lovers. She is interrupted by Joy with another request to recognize Beka as his girlfriend. However, Evelyn presents her to her father as her daughter’s friend. Joy is offended, but the mother is unable to say anything to her except “You are fat, watch your diet.”
The inscription “Part one: Everything” appears on the screen. The spouses go to the tax office together with the heroine’s father. They enter the elevator. Waymond again tries to talk to his wife, but she again refers to the mountain of accumulated cases. After closing the elevator doors, he begins to behave strangely: he says that Evelyn’s life is in great danger, puts on a headset and installs an application on her smartphone.
With the help of these manipulations, the heroine’s life is scanned: she sees how she was born, how she fell in love, left her father and left China for the USA with Waymond, opened a laundry with him, gave birth to Joy, moved her elderly disabled father to live with her. The “husband” also gives Evelyn a task of three absurd points, which she must complete while in front of Deirdre Beaubedra’s tax inspector. Then Waymond becomes normal again.
The conversation with the inspector goes poorly – there are a lot of problems in the report. Then Evelyn performs the actions according to the instructions. After this, she seems to split in two, simultaneously remaining in the chair in front of the inspector and being in the storeroom with the strange Waymond. Tot explains to Evelyn that he is not her husband, but another version of himself from another universe. The whole world is threatened by evil, and the heroine is the last hope of humanity. Here, Deirdre’s inspector from the parallel world breaks into the storeroom, breaking Waymond’s neck and killing Evelyn, who is in the storeroom. The heroine’s consciousness returns to “ordinary” reality. The “real” inspector, thanks to the persuasion of the husband, gives an extension until the evening, so that the family can put the report in order in the remaining time.
Standing near the elevator, Evelyn hears her father grumbling that his daughter is always running somewhere and never gets things done. This gives strength to the heroine to hit the inspector, in which Deidre from the parallel universe “inhabited” for a moment. The office workers call the police, and Evelyn meanwhile learns that her husband is going to file for divorce. And Waymond from another reality appears again. He takes out lipstick from his wife’s bag and eats it, after which he acquires the abilities of a master of martial arts and successfully fights with the police.
We are introduced to the villain Jobu Tupac – Joy from a parallel universe, looking for Evelyn from the “ordinary”. She sees Evelyn’s corpse (the one killed by “evil” Deidre in the pantry) and realizes that the one she is looking for is gone.
Meanwhile, Waymond from another reality gives Evelyn an explanation of the device of the multiverse, which resembles a sea of bubbles. Those that are close to each other are similar, those that are far away are more different. The point is that you can move between them with the help of a through jump, the technology of which was invented by Evelyn from the world of this Waymond (Alpha Waymond from the Alpha world), who was killed by the villain Joba Tupac. In the alpha world there is a control center with operators similar to operators from the movie “The Matrix”. They give advice on moving.
The heroine asks to leave her alone, but Alpha Waymond insists that she is the chosen one. Only they can resist some terrible embodiment of chaos created by Tupac’s Job.
Evelyn and Alpha Waymond escape from Deirdre the killer. In order to acquire the abilities of a gymnast, operators give a hint to their leader: he must cut himself four times with a sheet of paper. Alpha Waymond does this, but does not have time to confront Deidre the killer and dies. His consciousness moves to the alpha world, from where he calls Evelyn. On his advice, she should sincerely confess her love for Deidra the killer.
This is one of the absurd actions (like cutting a piece of paper, eating lipstick, or changing shoes in front of an inspector – the crazier the better), with the help of which a jump between universes is made and the selected superpower of its copy is acquired from there.
Sincere confession is not possible, because of which the heroine is transferred to a currently useless world, where she is discussing divorce with her husband.
Alpha Waymond abandons Evelyn and she has to confront the assassin Deirdre on her own. Finally, she manages to sincerely make a confession, after which the heroine momentarily moves to the universe in which she did not go with Waymond to the USA, but remained in China, mastered kung fu there and became famous. Thanks to this, she manages to defeat Deidri the killer. Alpha Waymond returns to Evelyn.
The heroine is drawn to the world where she is famous.
But Alpha Waymond says that moves can only be used to gain skills. If you go too far with them, you can die from an “overdose” of other universes in your head. Alpha Waymond also says that in his world, alpha Evelyn overloaded her daughter Joe with movements between universes, after which she lost her moral guidelines, began to exist simultaneously everywhere and carry chaos in herself – she turned into the villain Job Tupac.
Evelyn is distracted by the universe where she is famous to talk to the local version of Waymond. And in the current reality, she is overtaken by Joba Tupac, who immediately kills the surrounding police officers in fantastic ways. The heroine understands that her daughter in this reality, behaving rebelliously, was also influenced by the villain. While about to fight Jobu, Evelyn makes a mistake and jumps into a world where people have sausages instead of fingers, and she herself meets with the local Deirdre. By showing what the evolution episode looked like here, the viewer is given a reference to the cult film 2001: A Space Odyssey.
Operators in the alpha world, led by alpha Weymond, reason that a perfect jump would kill most of those who dared to do so. This confirms that Evelyn is the chosen one.
Jobu shows his creation – a giant bagel. She “concocted” him from a variety of things, he is the embodiment of chaos and the truth that nothing in this world makes sense. Guilt and pain, about not doing anything worthwhile in life, is pulled into the donut hole along with life itself.
Chaos almost consumes Evelyn – at the last moment she is saved by her father from the alpha universe. The heroine is trying to say that she is still not the chosen one, that she is a complete zero. Alpha Waymond replies that this is why she is the salvation of mankind. After all, her life is a huge collection of mistakes and wrong choices. Evelyn is the worst version of herself. Thanks to this, the potential of the heroine is great.
Alpha father Evelyn asks her to kill his daughter Joy, because she is one of the variations of Jobu Tupac. But the heroine does not allow this to be done. She intends to understand Joba and save her. Thus, Evelyn turns all the operators of the alpha world against herself. Now they’re trying to kill her so she doesn’t turn into Tupac’s second Job.
Alpha people perform absurd acts, pumping their skills, and release gas into the room where Evelyn is with her husband and daughter. But the heroine gets an increased lung capacity, thanks to moving to the universe, where she became a singer, holds her breath and thus overcomes the obstacle. There are several fights with alpha people with parallel skill development. Hits received are reflected on copies of Evelyn in other realities.
Alpha Waymond is delighted with the abilities of the heroine. He expresses the idea that in the desire to save his daughter at any cost lies a great power. And maybe even save the entire multiverse. In the alpha world, Jobu Tupac overtakes him and he dies, returning the “ordinary” Waymond to his place.
Evelyn continues to “split” herself, gaining new abilities, but she becomes ill – she faints from overload.
Credits, but this is not the end. The heroine continues to “talk” between the worlds. In one of them, the alpha fighter in the version of the cook with a raccoon on his head (a reference to the cartoon “Ratatouille”, where a culinary rat also sat on the cook’s head). Shocked, Evelyn says, “No matter how ridiculous I think, it turns out that it exists somewhere.”
Everywhere
The second part, titled “Everywhere”, begins with the fact that the heroine finds herself in a version of the universe where she managed to get a tax deferment until the evening, but there was no further incident with the blow of the inspector and battles in the offices. The filing time coincides with the start of the Chinese New Year party, so the laundry room is decorated and everyone is festively dressed. There, Evelyn again overtakes Joba, who guides the heroine through another chain of worlds and says that everything around is a random reorganization of particles in an oscillating superposition. They are everywhere.
Jobu leads Evelyn to the bagel that represents chaos. The heroine asks to return her daughter, but Tupaci explains that all her versions are the same. Joba herself is not going to kill Evelyn. She just wants her to feel the same as her.
Seeing the bagel, the heroine continues to dissolve into different universes. In the “ordinary” world, where nothing special happened, she signs her husband’s divorce application with the words “stop running” and is rude on the phone to Inspector Deirdre, who never waited for her to report, because “nothing matters”. The latter immediately declares to the laundry, intending to confiscate all the property.
Evelyn takes the bat and breaks the glass. In other worlds, she also does “wrong” things. Including hurt Waymond in the universe where there were fights with alpha people. And in a world where an alpha fighter is friends with a raccoon, Evelyn turns in a talking animal to the veterinary service. She also chases Deirdre away with sausage fingers. Bubble Worlds turns red – Evelyn is wreaking havoc.
From overload, the heroine is transferred to a completely different quiet universe, where there is no civilization and even life, and she, along with Jobu, exists in the form of large stones on top of a mountain. In this guise, the mother and daughter “talk” about people who were selfish creatures, who imagined themselves to be the center of the entire universe, although in fact they represent an insignificantly small part of it. Jobu says that when she pursued Evelyn, she hoped that she would dissuade her from committing her plan. And she planned to enter the donut and thus erase herself from the multiverse. Jobu wants Evelyn to follow her.
But the heroine returns to the “ordinary” world, finds herself handcuffed to a chair. Waymond talks with Inspector Deidri and asks her not to punish her husband, to give her another week. Suddenly, the persuasion worked. Evelyn is extremely surprised: the kindness of her husband, who, in her opinion, only makes things worse, suddenly worked! She asks how he did it. Waymond replies, “I don’t know, I just talked.”
In other worlds, the wounded Waymond in front of the alpha fighters and the failed husband of Evelyn, where that celebrity is, continue to explain the meaning of their behavior: good is not weakness, you need to see the good in everything. This is his way of fighting. And in the “ordinary” world, he is truly happy next to Evelyn. She accepts his position and refuses to disappear into the bagel with Jobu.
Jobu herself is adamant – she goes into this black hole. Alpha people attack Evelyn so that she does not interfere with the disappearance of the “villain”. The heroine, on the other hand, begins to fight using Waymond’s method: she penetrates into the universes of each attacker and fulfills their cherished desires there (and also corrects her mistakes: for example, she undertakes to save a raccoon, “arrested” through her fault, and establishes relations with Deirdre with sausage fingers). As a result, here they become unarmed. Even the bullets Evelyn turns into funny eyes that Waymond sticks on things in the laundry.
In the “ordinary” world, the heroine speaks frankly with her father, admitting that she was stubborn and that her daughter grew up like that. And finally announces that Bequiy is Joy’s girlfriend.
Evelyn almost defeats Joba and all of her incarnations, including Joy, with kindness. But suddenly Joy screams to just let her go. And the mother quietly says: “Okay.” She releases Jobu into the abyss of the donut, and Jobu’s rock falls down the mountain. Probably something similar happens in other universes.
But in the “ordinary” world, the mother still stops Joy and expresses her claims to her. Mother says that she can be with anyone in other universes, but chooses this Joy. Even if they only have a few short meaningful moments, she will appreciate them. Mother and daughter embrace – there is their unity here and in other worlds.
All at Once
In the third part, called “Right away”, all family members, filled with love and mutual understanding, come to the tax office, where Inspector Deidri praises them for their achievements, but still asks to correct a number of shortcomings. At the very end, Evelyn looks around with rapture, seeing other universes in every particle of the surrounding space.
“Everything Everywhere All at Once” movie explained
The plot of the film is non-linear. It is intriguing, multifaceted, non-standard. Evelyn left home very young. The heroine tied the knot with a slow but sincere man. Over the next few years, Evelyn ran the laundry. However, the affairs of their family business were frankly bad.
The spouses are mired in the hustle and bustle of life. Only a woman is not ready to compromise. She is ready to revive the cause, to which she gave so much strength and energy. Evelyn is preparing a tax report. She should describe non-earmarked expenses. She will hand over the documents to the tax agent Deirdre.
Other family members also give trouble to the heroine. Her daughter is going through a teenage crisis. The girl herself does not understand what is happening to her. And her grandfather cannot realize that relationships are possible not only between a man and a woman. And it seems that on the screens, viewers see an ordinary family with their own difficulties and problems. Not everything is going smoothly for them, but the characters do not despair.
Evelyn does not yet realize what an unusual gift fate has prepared for her. Thus begins an interesting and unusual journey through the multiverse.
Tensions between parents and children, the connection between reality and imagination, relatives with complex characters who require attention. It won’t be boring for sure. Sometimes viewers feel like eccentric teenagers who are periodically lectured. Too much information to digest. At times there is not enough space and air. But this is only to enhance the overall impression of the picture.
This story is divided into three parts: “All”, “Everywhere”, “At once”. First, the creators focus on human relationships. They emphasize that fate plays an important role in life. Man is constantly faced with a choice. There are many options to change your life. The main thing is to take the right step, for which you will not be ashamed later.
Every decision you make leaves its mark on the rest of your life. If in one world the character is a complete loser, on whom a lot of problems have piled up, then in another he is already a well-known talented artist who has millions of fans. To change your life for the better, you do not need to make a lot of amplification. It is enough to work on the mistakes and understand where to move on.
In the second part, the authors of the film raised the issue of the difficulty of being everywhere. It is important for a person to decide what he wants to do, to create clear boundaries in his head. Many viewers are familiar with the phrase: “He who is everywhere is nowhere.” Therefore, you should not scatter your ideas, but concentrate your attention on something really important. Otherwise, you can miss all your opportunities. Then life will be more like an aimless existence.
The third part is characterized as “immediately”. The heroine makes a desperate attempt to stop the cycle of strange events that defy logical explanation. Past grievances, misunderstanding should remain in the past. Living according to previously established patterns is not always correct and interesting. Therefore, each person should think about the meaning of his existence and not give in to difficulties.
Everything Everywhere All at Once ending explained
So, the explanation of the ending is multifaceted, since there are actually several of them. They are built like steps leading to the very essence of the film. To understand all this, let’s look at what happened to the heroine in “Everything Everywhere and At Once” in the most simplified way:
- Evelyn was mired in vanity (chaos) and did not pay attention to her family members.
- She learns about her superpowers and begins to develop them, mired in chaos even more and literally harming the family.
- She realizes that she is mired in chaos – life loses all meaning.
- She finds a way out: you need to do good, see good and live in love with your family – this helps to resist chaos.
- She understands that this does not always help – sometimes you just need to accept what is, love the world and people as they are.
Fighting enemies, adventures are just a form behind which the essence is hidden. If we abstract and talk not about the heroine, but about all of humanity, with which the authors clearly associate her, and each of us, we get the following:
- People spend their whole lives chasing ghostly goals, which sometimes they don’t even understand (in the film, this role is played by tax reporting).
- The more a civilization or an individual develops (superpowers), the more they lose the meaning of their existence.
- There comes a heavy awareness of the meaninglessness of existence (donut).
- There is a rethinking of everything that exists: only good deeds and love are of value.
- At an even deeper level comes the understanding that after all, the main thing is not even love and kindness, but acceptance.
- The heroine goes through an unconscious existence, then awareness, love and acceptance. The meaning of each ending of the film “Everything is everywhere and at once” corresponds to a separate stage of this path.
Yet these universes and the movements between them, as Jobu said, are a random reorganization of particles in an oscillating superposition. In other words, the chaos that Evelyn arranges through love and acceptance.
However, having put forward such a powerful concept as the basic idea of the picture, the authors nevertheless took care of the completeness of the plot component (outside of philosophical reasoning) and gave their interpretation of what happened. And it seems that fantastic superpowers and the multiverse have nothing to do with it.
Directors throughout the story “Everything Everywhere and At Once” give hints that most of its events are just a reflection of the heroine, who is trying to improve her life and find harmony in communication with loved ones. She says in plain text that each universe is the embodiment of her chaotic thoughts.
A very vivid example: a world with a cook and a raccoon. Even before we are shown this universe, Evelyn, in a conversation with her husband and daughter, recalls the cartoon Raccoon. If you look at this dialogue in the original, you can understand that the heroine is simply making a reservation. She confuses the original name “Ratatouille” (“Ratatouille” is a French dish) with “Raccoontouille” (it turns out “Raccoon”), that is, the word “Rat” (“Rat”) with the word “Raccoon” (“Raccoon”). And there is nothing strange in this, because Evelyn is Chinese and does not know English very well (this is also made clear to us at the very beginning of the film).
It turns out that all this fantasy is just the embodiment of the heroine’s thoughts. The real events are shown in episodes in the “ordinary” universe, where Evelyn tries to deal with taxes, then Weymond helps her, and, finally, frank conversations with her husband, father and daughter take place.
ALPHA WORLD AND UNIVERSE JUMPS
The events of the tape “Everything, Everywhere” unfolds in a multiverse, vast and consisting of various worlds, based on every human decision ever made. After each choice, a new universe is created, changing the course of events. An interesting thing about the film’s version of the multiverse is that each universe doesn’t seem to exist at the same time. Rather, the universes that branch out are determined by a person’s decision and how it affects their life path. The Alpha Universe, as its name suggests, is at the center of the multiverse because it was the first to discover the existence of the multiverse. The people of the Alpha Universe were able to figure out how each universe came into being, and what decisions each person made to change it.
The Alpha Universe is also the only one that has created technology to communicate with other parts of the multiverse, including reality jumping, which involves connecting to another version of the self. After a jump that requires performing a non-trivial action, you can borrow skills from an alternate reality.
WHY WAS EVELYN THE PERFECT CHOICE TO SAVE THE MULTIVERSE?
All of Evelyn’s multiverse doppelgangers were perfect enough in one way or another. At least they chose a path and stuck to it while Evelyn’s life was up in the air. It is important to note that the heroine is just as chaotic as the events of the multiverse because she has untapped potential. While all the other Evelyns have settled into life, the main Evelyn is full of regrets about the decisions she didn’t make. She leads a life she is dissatisfied with, and her sense of inferiority – not living up to her father’s standards of expectation – still haunts her, worsening Evelyn’s relationship with Waymond and Joy.
Alpha Waymond chooses Evelyn to save the multiverse because she is “so bad at everything” that she is “capable of anything”. None of the other Evelyns could understand how Jobu Tapaki became so strong because their feelings of loneliness weren’t so strong. Evelyn was so strict with her daughter that she understands by the end. She also experiences the trauma of her father disowning her after she married Waymond, and it is these emotions that allow her to face Joba Tapaki as equals.
WHY JOBU TAPAKI CREATED A BAGLE
Jobu Tapaki is a bit of a tragic character. She is the Alpha World version of Joy, whose mother, also Evelyn, pushed her too hard to unlock the potential of the multiverse. She jumped so often and far that something in her mind collapsed, and Jobu Tapaki was able to feel the entire multiverse at one moment in time. Suffice it to say that her mind had to cope with a lot, and it never fully adapted. This resulted in Jobu Tapaki being able to embody any version of Joy from the multiverse without having to perform any “tricks”. It represents our modern society, where there is so much – global events, social networks, social issues and personal life – and they all require attention. Jobu Tapaka’s mind is split, being pulled in so many wildly different directions that it becomes too heavy.
After that, Yobu Tapaki had nothing to lose, feeling the pressure of the multiverse, so she decided to see what would happen if she collected all the experiences, thoughts, and everything else she could think of into a bagel. She wanted to know what would happen if all the chaos was in one place, especially since she could experience it all at once. She eventually discovered that despite the multiverse and everything in it, nothing really mattered. That’s why she wanted to succumb to the power of the bagel, which was pulling her into the void. A big part of Jobu Tapaka’s journey has been learning that there is still hope and that while nothing matters, there are certain things, like the mother-daughter relationship, that are still worth fighting for.
What Jobu Tupac Wanted
Jobu Tupac is the alpha universe version of Joy. Alpha Evelyn led the exploration of the multiverse and used her daughter for experiments. The girl’s mind allowed her to grasp the unimaginable scale of travel through realities.
Joy has jumped on her travels so far that her mind has shattered. The heroine has learned to be everywhere at the same time and at once – to control all her versions. The girl studied the multiverse and came to a specific conclusion: nothing in life matters much. Like, there are so many universes with different events that they all lose their importance. A metaphor for the problem of modern society: when, due to satiety with information, a person loses a keen interest in many aspects of life.
Joy was angry at her mother, who put pressure on her and did not care about her opinion. Joy searched the entire multiverse for an Evelyn who could understand her and share her experiences. Joy hoped to find hope – in the form of a warm relationship with her mother, which she lacked.
Joy has created an all-consuming bagel that’s made from everything from sesame seeds to entire concepts. Delicacy is a cluster of chaos, a huge black hole that draws everything into itself. Joy longed to be consumed by the bagel and find out what was inside. She wanted to go into the unknown with an “understanding” version of her mother.
Why Evelyn is the Chosen One
To stop Joba Tupac, the people of the alpha universe went in search of the Evelyn who can save the world. Alpha Evelyn died, and only one of her versions can fix the situation.
As Alpha Waymond explained, Evelyn was the perfect candidate to save the multiverse, as she is worse than the other Evelyns. The heroine is so unsuccessful in everything that she is capable of any actions and is open to new things.
Evelyn is full of regrets about her decisions. Spiritual emptiness allows her to freely penetrate the minds of other Evelyns and makes it possible to understand Joba. The heroine experiences the same emotional issues as her alternate daughter and sees the conflict between Jobu and alpha Evelyn as a reflection of her relationship with her Joy. And Evelyn’s mind is so messed up that she easily fits into the multiverse chaos.
What do the voices in Evelyn’s head mean?
In the finale, the Wongs returned to Deirdre with their tax paperwork completed. At some point, Evelyn was distracted by voices from alternate realities – she kept in touch with other Evelyns. However, the heroine returned to her conversation with Deirdre. This suggests that Evelyn no longer regrets the decisions she made and intends to continue to develop her life.
