netflix's new zombie heist film army of
the dead features a large cast of
characters and includes several
surprising twists
so if the ending of army of the dead
left you with some questions here's a
handy explanation of the movie's ending
early in the film kate's friend guido
sneaks into the city of las vegas with
the help of the coyote lily she never
comes back out prompting kate to go try
to find her but why did gita go into the
city in the first place
the surviving citizens of las vegas were
put into quarantine camps
the official purpose of the camps is to
contain the zombie outbreak but the film
indicates that they're actually being
used more as internment camps
oh come on sean you know they're not
infected if they were there would be
zombies already they're political
prisoners just people the government
doesn't want on the streets
the only way out of the camps is by a
bribery which many achieve by breaking
into las vegas to collect
cash gida's plan is to crack a slot
machine and use the money to purchase
freedom for her and her two kids
most zombie movies tend to only have one
type of undead monster but army of the
dead has three
the first is the original zombie zeus
who functions as the zombie king
throughout the film
when zeus bites a person they become an
alpha which are the intelligent
fast-moving zombies that make up most of
the encounters in army of the dead
these zombies are organized and also
understand their own physical
limitations making them formidable foes
when the alphas bite someone those
people become shamblers the slow-moving
creatures we typically find in zombie
movies
chandlers can only make more shamblers
and aren't capable of complex thought or
organization
they also don't have any awareness of
their own needs which leads to many of
them remaining in the sun for so long
that they desiccate
lily says that when it rains the
shamblers will reanimate for a couple of
hours although we never see that happen
unlike traditional zombies who are
driven entirely by instinct the alphas
and zombie king and army of the dead
appear to be up to something more
complex lily says she never figured out
exactly what the alpha zombies are doing
but we get a few
clues the first is that the people the
alphas capture are not immediately eaten
or turned by the zombies but are taken
to zeus to be turned into alphas this
suggests that he doesn't just want more
zombies in general but specifically more
alphas
the second is when we learn that zeus's
queen is pregnant although we have no
idea how two zombies were able to
conceive a child its inclusion points to
the idea that zeus is intentionally
building a zombie civilization
maybe he plans to eventually form an
actual army and venture out into the
world to conquer other civilizations and
bring them under his control
unfortunately for him las vegas gets hit
with a nuclear bomb wiping out the new
race he's creating before they can
attempt to expand beyond the walls of
the city
as ward's team pushes further into the
ruins of las vegas they come across the
remains of other teams that appear to
have been on the same mission
they deduce that this must not be the
first time that tanaka has hired a team
to recover his abandoned cash but the
other teams failed
at one point while examining the remains
of a team outside the save van der rohe
muses that the other teams are in fact
themselves caught in an infinite time
loop of death and failure
is this a hint that army of the dead
actually is some sort of macabre
tenant-like world of interwoven
timelines
well probably not most likely the other
teams were exactly that
other teams that died in pursuit of
their mission bandaro's comment is meant
more to draw attention to the
similarities between them and to
foreshadow their ultimate failure than
to imply that the other teams were
literally them
while ward and the rest of the team are
under the impression that the most
valuable thing in las vegas was the
giant pile of cash in the casino vault
martin knows better
his secret mission is to bring back the
head of a zombie for tanaka
giving his boss the ability to create
his very own army of the dead
the fact that martin is on board with
this plan speaks to his callousness
since he doesn't think twice about all
the people that zombie army could hurt
so it's not shocking that once he has
what he wants he doesn't hesitate to
betray his whole team and attempt to
leave them behind
eager to keep the spoils of the mission
all for himself ironically this lack of
basic human decency turns out to be his
downfall
since if he'd had some backup he may
have avoided becoming zombie tiger food
despite its disasters and you can't say
that ward didn't plan his heist well
his team is solid composed of himself
expert safecracker dieter helicopter
pilot marianne peters guide lilly his
trusted zombie war allies maria and van
der rohe
additional sharpshooters mikey and
chambers and tanaka's head of security
martin
at the last minute his daughter kate
strong arms her way onto the team and
lily recruits the deplorable cummings
cummings is the first to fall with lily
shooting him in the leg and leaving him
as a sacrifice for the zombies
he's turned into an alpha by zeus and
later killed by kate
chambers is next to go after being
abandoned in a zombie-packed building by
martin
although she fights valiantly and takes
out scores of the undead along with her
the rest make it into the vault where
they are betrayed and locked in by
martin
that decision comes back to bite him
literally when martin is then shredded
by a zombie tiger
as for the others maria gets her neck
snapped by zombies when they break into
the bank vault and mikey blows himself
up after getting bitten while trying to
escape
dieter holds his own for a while but
ultimately sacrifices himself to save
andero
shutting his friend in the safe as he's
swarmed by zombies lily provides a
distraction long enough for ward and
peters to escape on the helicopter only
to be rewarded for her trouble with a
pull through the chest
against all odds a few members of ward's
team do make it out of sin city although
some of them don't last very long
afterward either
van der rohe eventually climbs out of
the safe after their nuclear blast and
boards a plane to mexico
only to realize while in the air that
he's been infected by the zombie virus
as for ward he's bitten by zeus when the
zombie king leaps onto the helicopter
during their struggle peter peters is
shot in the shoulder impeding her
ability to fly
she does her best to stay airborne but
ultimately crashes in the desert and is
killed on impact
guido is also on board the helicopter
but we never see her after the crash
implying that she likely dies
kate is the only one who survives
relatively unscathed
ward gives her the small pile of cash
she's managed to hold on to but then
begins to transform into a zombie and is
shot in the head by a tearful kate
while they're successful in breaking
into the safe and locating the cash
ward's team is destined not to get very
far with it much of the money remains in
the save shut in with van der rohe until
the end of the film
the others try to take some money with
them at first but either abandon it or
are killed while holding it
most of the money either gets destroyed
in the bombing of las vegas or is
entombed forever in the safe
however wart does manage to pocket a
small stack of bills which isn't much
compared to the fortune in the safe but
is still likely somewhere around fifty
thousand dollars
he passes it to kate before he dies
telling her to use it to buy freedom for
gita's kids
and van der rohe makes it out with three
bags likely holding a few million which
he uses to charter a plane to mexico
city
unfortunately he realizes mid-flight
that he's been bitten meaning all that
cash isn't likely to do him much good
we never learn exactly why van der rohe
remained in the safe for so long after
dieter shut him in perhaps he passed out
or he was waiting until he could be sure
the zombies outside were gone or maybe
he was waiting for the nuclear blast
whatever his motivation for remaining in
the safe for a few hours it saves his
life
at least for a little while ironically
knowing that bandaro and his bags of
money could successfully weather a
nuclear blast inside that safe
it becomes clear that if tanaka's intent
really was to recover the money there
was no need to rush in before the city
was destroyed
he could have waited to send in a team
until after the strike when all the
zombies were dead
that really would have been the simple
in and out mission he pitched toward
all we know about tanaka is that he's a
billionaire who owns at least one casino
and who is famous enough that ward
recognizes him the minute he walks into
his diner
he says that insurance has already paid
out the money that was in the safe but
that he wants a cash anyway
however we later learned that the entire
scheme is a ruse to get martin into the
city in order to steal a zombie head so
tanaka can create more of them which
martin calls the ultimate weapon of mass
destruction
tanaka doesn't give about the money we
never learned what tanaka wanted an army
for
or whether he had any personal desire
for conquest at all
ramsay simply wanted to be in possession
of the world's greatest super weapon for
the purposes of power and profits and
didn't care what happened as a result
although army of the dead ends with las
vegas turned into a pile of rubble the
film does leave the door open for
zombies to remain in the world in any of
several ways
first there is the possibility that the
virus has already spread beyond the
borders of las vegas
the film doesn't give any hard evidence
of this but it's clear that the
government is concerned about it
additionally since we don't know where
zeus came from it's always possible
there might be more like him somewhere
else
but of course the strongest bit of
evidence that zombies still exist in the
world of army of the dead is the reveal
at the end of the film that van der rohe
was himself infected
of course there's always the possibility
that he could be killed or contained
while on the plane so that the virus
doesn't spread beyond him
but given the rest of the bad luck and
army of the dead the infection stopping
with van der rohe seems unlikely
plans have already been greenlit for an
army of the dead prequel and anime
series but we can't rule out the
possibility of a direct sequel either
despite the film's high body count
a sequel could continue vandaro's
open-ended storyline once his plane
lands in mexico
perhaps he becomes the new zombie king
or maybe he defies the odds yet again
and figures out how to stop his
infection from spreading this seems to
be the most clearly defined
path towards setting up a spin-off
storyline through an established
character
another option is following kate after
she frees gida's children from the
quarantine camps maybe she fulfills her
father's dream of opening a food truck
only to once again be pulled back into
the zombie wars
a sequel could also branch off onto a
new path entirely following a different
group of characters through a new zombie
outbreak
maybe what happens in vegas doesn't stay
in vegas after all
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