"Everything Everywhere All at Once" is as dense of a movie as its title promises,
and it all revolves around a literal everything bagel. Here's all the stuff you
need to know about how, well, everything plays out. Warning: spoilers ahead.
In the multiverse, there are an infinite number of universes. For every event
that has multiple possible outcomes, either by decision or random choice,
a new universe is born. One of these outcomes results in the Alphaverse, or,
the first universe to successfully make contact with the others.
The Alphaverse's residents developed the technology to map an individual's life path.
The technology allows them to project their consciousness into their counterparts' bodies
in other universes. By doing this, they acquire the memories, skills,
and emotions of alternate versions of themselves. This is called, quote, "verse-jumping."
The more different they are from their alternate persona, the weirder verse-jumping gets.
For instance, for Evelyn to access the skills of an alternate Evelyn who became a martial artist
and film star, she needs to earnestly profess her love to a woman who's trying to kill her.
By the end of "Part I: Everything," we've learned that the omniversal being Evelyn's supposed
to defeat, Jobu Tupaki, is the Alphaverse counterpart to her daughter Joy. Jobu was
created when Evelyn's Alpha subjected Joy's Alpha to rigorous verse-jumping experiments.
In the words of Alpha-Waymond,
splitting one's consciousness between multiple alternate versions of oneself
is like putting a crack in a clay pot. If it cracks too many times it'll shatter beyond repair.
In this case, Alpha-Joy has become unstuck from her reality
and gained the ability to become any and all versions of Joy at will. This gives her the
reality-bending powers of a living Looney Tunes character, and the madness to match.
Alpha-Waymond recruits the worst reality of Evelyn in the multiverse to fight Jobu Tupaki
for a specific reason. He believes that her multitude of unfulfilled life paths
make her uniquely suited to advanced verse-jumping.
"Every rejection, every disappointment, has led you here."
Most of the action of the film takes place in the IRS Universe.
It's here where the Worst Evelyn is told that she must confront the worlds-destroying Jobu Tupaki.
Alpha-Waymond tells her that her mission is to counterbalance Jobu's evil with good,
but his boss, Alpha-Gong Gong, isn't as confident in her potential. He orders her to kill Joy,
her own daughter, so that Jobu will no longer be a threat to this particular universe.
Evelyn refuses, insisting there must be another way to rid her daughter of Jobu's influence.
This leads Alpha-Gong Gong to call for reinforcements,
and Evelyn ends up fighting Jobu, Jobu's cultists, and the Alphaverse resistance.
Her only ally is Alpha-Waymond, who occasionally jumps into IRS-Waymond's
body to help but is eventually killed in his own universe by Jobu.
Rather than hang her hopes on winning the battle,
Evelyn deliberately pushes her mind beyond its shattering point.
Evelyn's multiversal overload marks the end of Part I and takes us into "Part II:
Everywhere." Evelyn's consciousness now bounces between a number of universes.
While it's easy to consider IRS Evelyn as the only "real Evelyn"
that we're following for the rest of the film, that's not really the case.
From here on out, there's just one Evelyn.
There's just one mind shared across an increasing number of possible lives
until Evelyn herself reaches omniversal consciousness. We see a fair sampling of the
universes that she's inhabiting, but for ease of discussion, let's label the most important ones:
The spine of the story happens in the IRS Universe. This is where Alpha-Waymond
recruits her into the multiversal war. The Party Universe is what would have happened
if Alpha-Waymond had never shown up in the IRS Universe. In the Movie Star Universe,
a young Evelyn becomes an international movie star and martial artist. And, finally,
the most unique, the Hot Dog Fingers Universe. This is where all human beings have big,
limp hot dogs for fingers, and Evelyn and Deirdre are a couple.
As an experiment, Jobu Tupaki has used her power over reality to create an, quote,
"everything" bagel, which turns out to be an all-consuming black hole.
The resistance of the Alphaverse believes that this is a doomsday weapon.
But actually, Jobu is planning to use the bagel to end her own life.
Ultimately, Jobu has been in search of someone who can ascend to her plane of existence,
understand what she's going through, and maybe talk her out of destroying herself.
Once Evelyn becomes able to jump effortlessly between all realities alongside her daughter,
she takes to Jobu's nihilistic philosophy all too well. Across the multiverse, Evelyn
starts acting out of cruel, selfish impulse, hurting those around her, because why not?
If there's an infinite number of universes in which every imaginable outcome is
happening simultaneously, then there's no meaning behind any of it. Nothing matters.
"The bagel, the circle, is a very important symbol in the movie. Uh, to me it's about reunification."
In interviews, Dan Kwan and Daniel Sheinert have equated the multiverse of their film to
the experience of modern life on the Internet. People who have grown up in the digital age
have a totally different sense of scale to their world than the generations that came before them.
Joy/Jobu is a grown-up millennial who's plugged into an overwhelming feed of constant,
often contradictory information. She's measured her own value, impact,
and suffering against the sum total of existence, and can no longer bear it.
After Jobu shows Evelyn the everything bagel, Evelyn has a dead-eyed nihilistic meltdown
that spans multiple universes. She's seen the life she could have lived if she'd never come
to this alternate reality. So, she no longer has any reason not to act on her resentment.
For example, Deirdre shows up to the laundromat's Chinese New Year party with a police escort with
the intention of repossessing the property. When Evelyn smashes the front window of the
laundromat with a baseball bat, it's not just an act of defiance against Deirdre
but an expression of her loathing for the laundromat and what it represents to her.
Across the multiverse, Evelyn stops caring about the consequences of her actions or
their effect on others. She then shuts out all of these universes to live as a rock on an
Earth where life never developed, because that means she won't have to think about any of it.
Throughout the entire film, Evelyn has been cruel and dismissive towards Waymond.
She sees Waymond as naive and weak-willed. While we see that Evelyn could have achieved
great things without him in her life, we also see the positive results of Waymond as well.
Especially when it comes to Waymond's philosophy of unconditional kindness
throughout the entire film, and each time, Evelyn barely notices. For example,
when Evelyn stays in the forefront, he diffuses a conflict with a dissatisfied
customer at the laundromat by dancing with him. Even when he draws up divorce paperwork,
he does it in the hope that they'll be able to turn their marriage around before it's too late.
It's only after Evelyn has totally given up on life that she appreciates the power of Waymond's
kindness. In the IRS Universe, he refuses to give up on Evelyn even after she's stabbed him.
All he wants is for everyone to stop fighting so Evelyn can help their daughter.
Evelyn has never reached this level of understanding with the Waymond she married,
but now she can look back on their life together
and see the beautiful parts of their relationship more clearly.
"The reveal that he's not…"
"Squirrel, was it?"
"Yes, squirrel, like, just like, his cuddly, sweet, innocent version of himself."
At around the same time that Evelyn is reassessing her relationship with Waymond,
she's approached by Deirdre in the Party Universe. Waymond has told Deirdre of his
and Evelyn's pending divorce. Deirdre, a divorcée herself, sympathizes with Evelyn.
But Evelyn knows that Deirdre isn't unlovable because, in one far-off universe,
she loves Deirdre and the two of them have built a life together. It's probably not a coincidence
that, immediately after this reflection on her relationship with Deirdre in the Hot Dog
Fingers Universe, Evelyn has an epiphany about how she's been reacting to her daughter's sexuality.
Joy has been dating her girlfriend Becky for three years, but Evelyn remains, at best,
begrudgingly tolerant of the relationship. Evelyn even attempts to blame Joy's attraction
to women on the malevolent influence of Jobu Tupaki, betraying that Evelyn has
seen homosexuality as an affliction rather than a natural part of her daughter's life.
At the start of the film, Evelyn hurts Joy by introducing Becky to Gong Gong
as Joy's "good friend." Now, after accepting her own love for Deirdre,
Evelyn marches up to Gong Gong and corrects herself.
When Jobu Tupaki summons the everything bagel to the IRS Universe,
Evelyn has only a short amount of time to keep it from destroying her.
Apart from Waymond, everyone present wants Jobu to go through with it.
With Evelyn now an omniversal being, she could easily destroy the entire army that stands between
her and her daughter. But instead, she adopts Waymond's strategy of fighting with kindness.
When we first see Jobu take apart a trio of police officers earlier in the film,
it's hard to make total sense out of how her powers work. She's basically
operating under cartoon rules, able to do anything so long as it amuses her.
Once Evelyn acquires this same power, we gain a slightly better understanding of it.
Each time she confronts an Alphaverse soldier, she peers into the web of their alternate lives
and then uses that knowledge to make changes to reality. Where Jobu would make changes that
were destructive or deadly, Evelyn does something that makes her opponents happy.
Granted, these are still cartoon rules, but the tone of Everything
Everywhere All at Once doesn't demand literal sense. What's important is that
Evelyn uses the absurdity and chaos of the multiverse to create joy rather than pain.
Even after "fighting" a dozen people to prevent Jobu from diving into the everything bagel,
the divide between Evelyn and her daughter is not entirely mended.
Joy doesn't feel she can trust that things will really get better with her mother in the long run.
Their relationship is punctuated by intense moments of drama that cause Joy a great deal
of stress and pain and she still thinks she'd be better off if they went their separate ways.
In the Party Universe, Joy plans to drive away from the laundromat and never look back.
Joy has a crushing fear of inadequacy. She doesn't just believe that she'll
never be enough for her mother; she also feels that she could never matter at all.
In a final effort to calm that fear, Evelyn confesses that,
yes, the multiverse is unfathomably large, but out of the limitless possibilities of existence,
what she wants most is to be with her daughter.
It doesn't matter that there are other, better versions of each of them out there.
The lives they're living right now are just as insignificant, and therefore
just as important, as any of the others.
"Because we've traveled across the multiverse, we found each other.
That was one thing we discovered was like, at the end of the day, we are looking for each other."
"Part III: All at Once" is a brief epilogue that takes place entirely in the Party Universe.
Evelyn is a changed woman, now more affectionate towards Waymond,
more accepting of Joy and Becky, and sporting a more positive outlook on life.
If a viewer is so inclined, they might argue that the entire adventure in the multiverse has
occurred only in Evelyn's head, and that the Party Universe is the only "real" universe in the film.
As Evelyn sits down with her family for their make-up meeting with Deirdre,
we discover that she is still hearing voices from the other universes in her head. Assuming that
these voices are real, this suggests that Evelyn still exists in all other universes at once.
It also suggests that she's made the choice to remain present in this world
rather than obsess over the roads not taken. She's at peace with the life she's lived,
the family she's built, and the possibilities that lay in her future, not just in her past.
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