At long last, filmmaker M. Night Shyamalan has completed a trilogy of movies that he
secretly started back in the year 2000 with Unbreakable.
True to form as ever, he left plenty of twists in store for the final act.
It was almost too much to keep track of, so let's break down what happened during the
ending of Glass.
Unbreakable introduced viewers to Elijah Price, a.k.a. Mr. Glass, a mysterious, intense, and
seemingly unbalanced comic book dealer.
After discovering security guard David Dunn to be the sole survivor of a devastating trainwreck,
Price spends the movie encouraging him to embrace the idea that he's been gifted with
superhuman abilities.
In the grounded world of the movie, it comes off as a wacky idea.
But Elijah is ultimately proven right; David slowly comes to realize he's nearly invulnerable,
can see into people's thoughts by touching them, and possesses incredible strength.
Reluctantly, he begins putting his powers to use in an effort to bring evildoers to
justice - a security guard on a grand scale.
Of course, this being an M. Night Shyamalan picture, there's more to the story than initially
meets the eye: Elijah's motives for awakening David to his powers are far from altruistic.
It's revealed that he actually orchestrated the deadly events that led to his discovery
of David in the first place, causing many other incidents of domestic terror before
sabotaging the Eastrail 177 train.
Elijah sees himself as the perfect foil to Dunn's superhero.
There's plenty of symmetry backing up Elijah's point of view, right down to the rare bone
disease that renders him just as physically fragile as David is strong.
But David refuses to play by the rules of his would-be arch-nemesis.
As Unbreakable ends, we learn that Elijah has been arrested and committed to an institution
for the criminally insane.
And that was the end of the story - until Split.
David refuses to be drawn into a super-rivalry with Elijah, but that doesn't mean he rejects
the potential of his powers outright.
As we learn about in Glass, David adopts the alter ego of the Overseer, dedicating himself
to ferreting out evil with the assistance of his son Joseph.
It would have been interesting to learn more about David's exploits in the time between
Unbreakable and Split, since fans of the first movie had spent years wondering if a more
traditional sequel could be on the way.
Instead, audiences are reintroduced to David at a pivotal moment, as he learns about the
existence of Kevin Wendell Crumb, a.k.a. the Horde, whose psychotic exploits become public
during Split's closing minutes.
When Glass begins, we see David trying to track down Kevin in an effort to foil his
latest kidnapping - and he does a pretty good job.
After bumping into Kevin on the street and learning his dark secret, he heads straight
for Kevin's hideout, frees his victims, and then faces off against his adversary.
Their showdown is cut short by the arrival of well-prepared law enforcement, who show
up determined to take both men into custody - not just Kevin.
Without so much as a court hearing, the duelling superhumans are locked up inside a mental
institution - one that has also spent years housing Elijah Price.
With David and Kevin at the institution, Elijah has all the pieces in place to execute a masterwork
of supervillainy.
With the Overseer, Elijah has his perfect adversary; in the Horde, he has a useful ally.
Several of them, actually - Kevin lives with 24 distinct personalities, including the supernatural
one called "The Beast."
This personality is imbued with incredible strength, the ability to climb walls, and
a desire to rid the world of "impure" individuals who've never known suffering.
Elijah is physically weak but intellectually brilliant, while Kevin is incredibly strong
but psychologically unstable.
Together, they team up to execute an escape plan, teasing the audience with a climactic
showdown in the heart of Philadelphia.
But what Elijah says he wants to do is not what he's actually going to do.
As they make their way out of the psychiatric facility, only Mr. Glass knows the full shape
of what's really going on.
"That sounds like the bad guys teaming up."
The showdown
Elijah's plan is to expose the existence of superheroes to the world on a grand scale,
letting people know beyond a shadow of a doubt that humans are capable of extraordinary things,
just like in the comic books he loves so much.
At first, he claims his plan is to have the Horde and the Overseer go toe-to-toe with
each other at the high-profile opening of a new skyscraper in downtown Philadelphia.
But once he escapes the facility with Kevin, they never get further than the parking lot.
Neither David, Kevin, nor Elijah make any effort to get to the tower for their showdown,
instead having their fight on the hospital grounds.
To the audience, it seems like Elijah's plan is going off the rails, and that he's going
to be prevented from completing his mission of waking people up to the existence of superheroes.
By the end of the movie, we learn that everything is actually going according to plan.
In the hospital parking lot, The Overseer and the Horde duke it out with each other
while Mr. Glass watches and provides commentary, almost like the whole battle is a movie he's
directing.
All the while, Dr. Ellie Staple is frantically attempting to bring reinforcements of some
kind to the facility in order to bring the situation under control.
When they arrive, one of the most shocking moments in the movie happens - and we're not
talking about the reveal that Elijah's derailment of Eastrail 177 also killed Kevin's dad.
That twist, implying that Mr. Glass essentially created the Horde, is relatively tame compared
to what happens next.
When Staple's armed reinforcements show up, they're once again suspiciously prepared for
the spectacle at hand.
Instead of trying to de-escalate the situation peacefully, they instead start trying to kill
the superhumans, exploiting their weaknesses to catch them off guard.
Dr. Staple enlists Casey to lure the Horde away from the Beast persona, and back to his
baseline identity of Kevin Wendell Crumb.
Once he's got the body of a normal human being again, he's fatally shot by Staple's backup.
He's not the only one to get such merciless treatment.
After fighting with Kevin in a tank of water, David's strength is severely compromised.
He's thrown off by being submerged in the source of his one weakness, and when Dr. Staple's
backup approaches him, dressed like SWAT team members, he's powerless to fight back.
Instead of helping him or trying to take him in peacefully, the men take a hold of David,
and drown him to death in a puddle of water.
It's a devastating moment for viewers who went in expecting a more traditional ending
to the story.
As we all should have probably expected, Shyamalan has no interest in giving people what they
expect.
"No."
Before David dies at the hands of her backup, Dr. Staple decides to explain to him just
what's really been going on at the facility.
Essentially, she's been gaslighting all three of them, attempting to make them believe that
their superpowers are only a delusion.
She wasn't trying to help any of the superhumans - she was trying to stop them.
"So you're not going to shake my hand?”
After taking Dr. Staples' hand, David sees in his final vision that she is a part of
an elaborate secret society - one that has spent a very long time trying to prevent real
superheroes from gaining a foothold in the wider consciousness.
Dr. Staple's job is to go from city to city, hunting down isolated incidents of superheroism
and shutting them down before they get too much attention.
She says she prefers to do this in a nonlethal way, convincing people to give up their so-called
delusions so that she can spare their lives.
If they don't, well - she lets her teammates kill them.
She also lets Elijah die from injuries he suffered when the Beast turned his awesome
strength on him, after it was revealed that he was responsible for the death of Kevin's
father.
Once the three superhumans are dead, the members of the mysterious society - who all share
the same tattoo of a clover on the wrist - set about erasing all the evidence that indicates
a fight between superhumans even happened.
Dr. Staple previously told Elijah that more than a hundred cameras were recording activity
on the facility's grounds, and her group goes about the process of erasing all of that footage.
They advise regular staff members of the hospital to keep the incident to themselves, and almost
look like they're going to successfully sweep everything under the rug, like they've apparently
done so many times before.
But again, that's not what actually happens.
Turns out, nothing that Dr. Staple can do is capable of stopping Mr. Glass’s true
plan.
Unbeknownst to Dr. Staple, the Overseer, or the Horde, Mr. Glass made arrangements to
record all of the surveillance cameras at some offsite location, broadcasting the footage
elsewhere so that it couldn't be erased.
This cache of valuable video is then sent to Joseph, Casey, and Mrs. Price, all of whom
were there to see the fantastic events as they unfolded.
Thanks to Elijah's data drop, the three survivors have more than just their eyewitness testimony
- they have footage of superhuman feats, recorded by dozens of cameras, which they can now blast
out into the world, defeating the scheme of Dr. Staple's secret society.
After the superhumans are dead, these three regular strangers work together to share the
footage with the world, uploading it to the internet - and then they sit and wait as people
around them begin to hear the incredible news.
All around them, people see with their own eyes what seems to be proof of the existence
of superheroes.
The secret society's mission has been foiled - Mr. Glass' plan was a success.
The biggest twist in Glass, aside from the reveals of the Horde's real origin story,
Mr. Glass' real plan, and the unexpected deaths of the main characters, is arguably the existence
of the secret society.
It's clear from the glimpses we get that the group possesses significant resources to help
them execute their mission.
But the film gives us very little insight into what the organization actually is, or
what it might do now that the cat's out of the bag regarding the whole superhero thing.
They apparently want to maintain balance in the world - but now that balance is tipping.
Not only does the archive of security camera footage show real superheroes in action, it
also shows proof of Dr. Staple's organization blatantly executing David and Kevin, both
of whom are basically defenseless at the time they're killed.
David's death is particularly merciless, and now it's on tape for the world to see.
Will there be repercussions?
Is their mission effectively over?
The ending doesn't tell us, but from Dr. Staple's bloodcurdling scream after she realizes what's
happened, the outlook for her group doesn't look too good.
As the footage makes it way into the world, Mrs. Price once again channels her son's obsession
with comics, declaring it to be the "beginning of a universe."
She believes wholeheartedly that Elijah was right, and that the reveal of real superheroes
will only inspire more extraordinary people to step out of the shadows, recognize their
powers, and change the world.
It's the sort of setup that cries out for a sequel - so of course Shyamalan has said
he's not doing one.
Speaking in an interview with Vulture in the days leading up to Glass' release, the filmmaker
shut down all speculation about a sequel movie, saying simply,
"Yeah, we’re not doing that though.
[...] I have the sequel rights to most of my movies, essentially for the reason to not
do them."
If he's telling the truth about that, then it seems that Glass' hopeful ending is meant
to be a tease for your imagination only, rather than a promise about what's to come.
In keeping with the trilogy's second installment, people have been very split on their reactions
to the final movie.
Whether you love it or hate it, you almost have to admire Glass for doing pretty much
exactly the opposite of what audiences expected, and still somehow leaving you wanting more.
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