Because humanity has brought climate change, pandemics, and war to Earth, the planet has
become uninhabitable.
The ruling elite escapes as soon as they can and settle on the Kepler-209 space colony.
Over time, the colony acquires modern technology and space travel, but they have become infertile
due to the heavy radiation there.
Two generations later, the Ulysses Project is started to find out whether it is possible
to return to Earth, however the first mission is lost shortly after landing.
Sometime later, they send a second ship called Ulysses-2 with astronauts Louise, Tucker,
and Holden.
Unfortunately, entering the atmosphere turns out to be rougher than expected and the space
capsule crash-lands on a tidal flat near a weather beacon that broadcasts telemetry data
back to Kepler.
After swimming to the shore with all her strength in order to survive, Louise looks for her
partners.
Holden is also on the beach, but unfortunately he’s already dead, and Tucker is inside
the space capsule with an injured leg.
Louise has no choice but to go exploring alone, starting by testing the water with a biometer
and finding some signs of life.
After finding some sort of chelicerata, Louise comes across a jellyfish-like animal, and
when she tries to take a sample for testing, the creature suddenly stings her wrist.
Luckily, Louise has a medical kit and immediately squirts some medical spray on the wound before
putting the sample in her red bag.
At that moment, Tucker tells her that a storm is coming, and Louise loses her visibility
when a thick fog surrounds her, so Tucker climbs out of the capsule and shoots up a
flare.
Following the light, Louise slowly begins making her way back to the shuttle, unaware
that a mysterious man also saw the flare.
He gets to the shuttle first and attacks Tucker, who defends himself with the flare gun and
scares him away.
By the time Louise finally crosses the fog, she finds out that Tucker and the shuttle
have been taken somewhere else.
She can hear Tucker yelling for help, so she uses the scope on her gun and notices a group
of people dragging her shuttle.
Suddenly another group attacks her from behind and Louise loses consciousness.
Sometime later, Louise and Tucker wake up in a large pit of water, and they’re shocked
to find there are survivors closing the lid.
Seeing Tucker's injuries getting worse, Louise climbs up and through a hole she asks for
medical supplies, but it is too slippery and she falls.
At that moment a rope is thrown down by a mysterious figure, and Louise finally climbs
out to find a whole community of fertile humans known as “The Muds”.
Louise can’t believe she’s seeing children again.
Unfortunately she doesn’t understand their language and she gets dragged away as the
Muds use gestures to ask her to help the man whose face was injured by Tucker’s flare.
Louise tries to explain she needs her supplies and finally Narvik shows up.
She knows how to speak English and takes Louise to her shuttle.
Finding the medical tools is easy, but Louise also notices that someone has removed all
the technology from the ship.
When she hesitates to move, she’s pushed to the ground and asked to behave.
Afterward Louise heals the injured man with the spray, using the chance to hide some medical
supplies in her clothes.
She also notices someone has her red bag, knowing the biometer is inside.
When she's thrown back in the pit, she gives Tucker medicine while telling him about all
the kids and babies she saw.
Since their ship is broken, she believes that they must find the biometer and use it to
call for help.
However Tucker knows his injuries are bad and he won’t make it, so he takes a solution
that he stores in his army tag necklace and ends things for himself.
Feeling lonely now, Louise begins thinking about her childhood.
Her father Blake had also been an astronaut and he was lost with the first mission.
When she was a child, Blake gave her a matchbox with three famous astronauts on the front
and showed her he had one of his own so they could match.
He also told her to light one at a certain time and he would do the same, promising that
before the last one was gone, they would be together again.
The phrase “for the many”, which Louise repeats all the time, had been taught to her
by her dad so she would learn to care about the greater good.
The flashback fades and it’s revealed that Louise only has one match left.
At that moment, the tides finally come in and start to fill the pit, so Louise begins
climbing up again.
Grabbing onto the lid, she asks for help, and a guy accepts to take her out and tie
her to one of the community’s boats.
Louise behaves to gain their trust while watching a net retrieve Tucker’s body.
As the boat takes off in the middle of the night, Louise watches Tucker’s body being
sent away on a raft and this inspires another flashback.
Louise’s father told her that the people had plundered Earth’s resources and showed
her a tree seedling, which would not grow on their space colony.
Unfortunately he left shortly after that and Louise could never see if the experiment with
the seedling was successful.
The next morning, the water begins to recede and Louise is thrown back in the pit.
Suddenly she’s visited by a girl named Maila, who gives Louise her medical spray.
By drawing on the wall, Louise finally manages to communicate with the girl and learns a
few words, so she asks Maila to help her get the biometer.
Sometime later, Louise hears screaming outside and the lid is raised for a man to lower some
girls and a baby into the pit.
By spying through the hole, Louise sees that the settlement is being attacked and many
people are being killed or kidnapped.
Maila found the red bag, but she’s kidnapped as well.
A man comes to the pit to check inside, but Louise and the children hide just in time.
After the situation calms down, Narvik shows up to help them out, revealing that she is
Maila’s mother.
After picking Maila’s doll and Tucker’s flare gun, Narvik runs off to save her daughter.
Louise follows her because she wants to help her to save Maila, but Narvik isn’t sure
she can trust her even if she does share some food with her.
At that moment they can hear Maila’s screams from afar, so the two women climb on a big
rock and learn that the captives are being taken away on a boat.
Louise tells Narvik to shoot the flare gun into the sky as a distraction, but Narvik
wants to attack blindly, so Louise has no choice but to knock her out.
Then Louise shoots the flare, and the men begin looking for the source of the light.
While they are distracted, Louise jumps into the water with the fog acting as cover and
she quickly swims to the boat.
After climbing up, she finally finds her red bag in a net, but before she can leave, the
men come aboard as well.
Louise has no choice but to hide with Malia and the other prisoners.
Eventually the boat stops at an enormous cargo ship capable of withstanding the frequent
floods and storms.
The prisoners are taken to a guard named Paling, who decides where each of them goes.
The boys are sent to work while Maila and the other girls are taken away.
Then Paling finds Louise’s gun in the red bag and while looking for the owner, he realizes
Louise isn’t a local.
Paling takes her through a corridor and after searching her, he introduces her to the ship’s
leader Gibson, who turns out to be a survivor of the Ulysses-1 and remembers Louise from
when she was a kid.
Louise tells him what happened to her ship and about the missing biometer, and in return
Gibson tells her of his group’s first encounter with the Muds when they arrived.
Blake had been very good with the locals, but one day, they suddenly rebelled and destroyed
the Ulysses-1 capsule along with its communication equipment, killing Blake in the process.
Apparently Blake had a plan to build a giant dam and use the ocean as electricity, so Gibson
discusses with Louise the chances of bringing people from the colony back to Earth.
Their conversation is interrupted by Gibson’s adopted son Neil, who gifts Louise an origami
space shuttle.
After giving Louise a tour of the place to show off the damn, Gibson takes Louise to
a cabin where she can stay for now.
She immediately goes to bed and tries to deal with her grief while remembering more science
lessons with her father.
The next morning after a shower, Louise finds blood between her legs and realizes that she
is fertile, so she could reproduce here.
Afterward she’s taken to a class full of the daughters of the Muds, including Maila,
who doesn’t look very happy.
Gibson is educating them and after they share a song, he gives them the chance to ask Louise
all kinds of questions about the space colony.
Once the class is over, Louise goes for a walk and finds Neil, who gets private lessons
instead of joining the others.
He likes Louise because he loves astronauts, and after she helps him with his math homework,
he shows her a secret that keeps hiding behind a curtain: it’s a small tree growing in
a jar.
Recognizing the experiment, Louise asks Neil how he learned to do that, and he replies
that there is a strange man living in a cabin next to the engine room.
Louise wants Neil to take her there, but he isn’t supposed to talk to the man at all
and refuses.
After taking a map of the ship from a door, Louise quickly makes her way to the man’s
cabin, where she learns that her father is alive and has been locked away all this time.
At that moment, Gibson shows up and begins justifying his lies by explaining that Blake
actually led the rebellion because he sided with the Muds after falling in love with a
Mud woman.
Then Louise is finally allowed inside and reunites with her dad after fifteen years.
She is disappointed that her dad has betrayed the mission and given up on his daughter,
but Blake explains that the Kepler residents should never return to Earth, saying he has
to stop “the mistakes”.
Hurt, Louise runs out of the room.
Later when the tide is high, Louise finally gets to see the weather station where they
can connect the biometer to contact Kepler.
She decides to tell Gibson that she is fertile so she can be the evidence they need, and
Gibson promises to find the biometer.
Then Louise is invited to dinner and Neil’s mother Munay tells Louise how Gibson found
her when she was giving birth and saved Neil from dying because he was born with his umbilical
cord around his neck.
That day they connected and Gibson adopted them as his family.
Suddenly the power goes off and Paling informs Gibson that an intruder took out the guards
to reach the power box.
Gibson immediately orders everyone to hide in their room before leaving with a gun.
Louise takes a corridor to return to her cabin only to be caught by the intruder, who holds
a knife to Louise’s throat and hurts her.
It’s then revealed that the intruder is Narvik, who is looking for her daughter.
Louise takes Narvik to see Maila but as soon as they enter the girls’ room, they are
suddenly surrounded by guards.
The women try to fight them while Maila cries out for her mother, but Paling shows up and
kicks Narvik, somehow knowing her name.
Then Paling orders his men to take Narvik away, but before she leaves, she whispers
to Louise that “they only take the girls” and accidentally drops Maila’s doll.
Afterward, power returns and Munay treats Louise’s wound as she mysteriously says
she has “his” eyes.
Louise looks at the posters on the wall and notices they’re all photos of girls and
pregnancies.
At that moment Gibson comes to check on her and tells Louise that Narvik was one of the
guards who turned against him during the rebellion.
They discuss the situation and Louise finally discovers that the girls are being held captive
for Gibson's future breeding plans.
Louise is disgusted but pretends to be Gibson’s ally to avoid being arrested too.
Suddenly Paling comes in with the red bag but when Gibson opens it, the biometer isn’t
inside.
He sends Louise away and tells Paling to keep an eye on her before turning to his son, who
shows him a doll he found.
Gibson then notices that the biometer is inside the doll.
When she returns to her room, Louise hears a noise and finds Maila hiding in her closet,
but Paling suddenly knocks on her door and forces his way in because he heard a kid is
missing.
He looks around quickly and doesn’t find Maila, but instead of leaving, he begins hitting
on Louise, not caring about her turning him down.
After some struggle, he pushes her against the wall, but before he can take advantage
of her, he hears a noise coming from the closet.
Paling moves to investigate, but Louise rushes to him and distracts him with a kiss.
Suddenly Paling starts shaking and falls to the ground as he dies because Louise slipped
into his mouth the poison capsule from her army tag necklace.
Afterward, Louise takes Paling’s weapon and together with Maila, begins sneaking around
the ship.
When they encounter a guard, Maila distracts him and Louise knocks him out from behind.
Then they reach the cell where they keep all the prisoners they use as work slaves.
Narvik is there too and Louise gives her the guard’s weapon before she escapes with the
others.
While the prisoners rescue the girls, Louise goes to find Blake, who shows her something
at the window: it turns out Gibson is going to the weather station with Neil and Munay,
which is weird because he never leaves the ship.
Then Louise notices the doll Neil gifted Blake and realizes that Gibson has the biometer.
She doesn’t understand what proof Gibson will send without her, and Blake reveals Neil
isn’t a Mud.
Louise hugs her dad as she accepts to stop Gibson, and Blake tells her he never lit his
last match.
Meanwhile the Muds escape from the ship while dodging gunfire from the guards.
Louise joins them and shoots a few men before the group runs out in the open, where more
guards take the chance to kill a few of them.
Louise shoots any guard that comes too close and helps the group reach a boat before getting
in the water to swim to the weather station.
Gibson has taken Neil’s blood and is about to send the message but Louise reveals herself
and threatens him with her weapon.
Gibson responds by pointing his gun at Neil, revealing that he’s Blake’s son and therefore
her half-brother.
Munay tries to defend her son, but Gibson simply shoots her in the head.
Louise lowers her weapon to save Neil from the same fate, and Gibson immediately sends
the data to Kepler using the biometer.
Since he’s distracted, Louise uses the chance to tackle him into the water, then she strangles
and drowns Gibson, almost drowning herself in the process.
Fortunately, Narvik rescues her and manages to revive her with CPR.
Louise and Blake re-join the Muds, and all of them set out in a tugboat.
Neil is grieving his mother’s death, so Louise goes to talk to him and gifts him her
matchbox as a sign of hope.
Moments later, a group of children are playing around back in the settlement and get scared
when they see figures in the fog.
However they perk up when they realize it’s their kidnapped parents who are finally free
from Gibson’s control.