Director Alex Garland returns to high-concept sci-fi with his latest film, Annihilation. We explore what happened to Lena (Natalie Portman) in the ending and what it means for the Shimmer as well as future adaptations of Jeff VanderMeer's Southern Reach trilogy.

Annihilation follows Lena, who's still grieving her husband, Kane (Oscar Isaac), who left on a covert mission on year prior and never returned. When Kane mysteriously returns one day, he and Lena are taken in by the organization known as Southern Reach and brought to a location only known as Area X. From there, Lena is told about the Shimmer, an unknown phenomena that began when a lighthouse was struck by something and has been spreading for three years. Though Southern Reach has sent teams into the Shimmer, no one ever returned - that is, until Kane.

Major spoilers for Annihilation follow.

Unfortunately, Kane is grievously ill, so Lena joins an expedition into the Shimmer in an effort to potentially save her husband. The expedition is lead by Dr. Ventress (Jennifer Jason Leigh) and also includes Anya Thorensen (Gina Rodriguez), Josie Radek (Tessa Thompson), and Cass Sheppard (Tuva Novotny). However, once they enter the Shimmer, they immediately lose their memories of their first six or so days, and they begin to notice how different the vegetation and animal life is all around them. As a biologist, Lena is able to explain that the cells of everything within the Shimmer are mutating at an alarming rate. While some of the mutations are beautiful, others are horrific, like the creature that kills Sheppard, and then is able to replicate Sheppard's cries for help in order to lure and attack Thorensen.

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While the entire Shimmer is full of weird things, Annihilation truly gets strange once Lena catches up to Ventress at the Lighthouse and discovers the source of the Shimmer. There, Lena discovers the Kane who returned home isn't the same man who left, and Ventress has been overtaken by the thing in the center of the hole under the Lighthouse. Then, a mirror-Lena is created, and the true Lena is able to escape the Lighthouse only after using a bomb to destroy the creature, which sets fire to the source and brings down Shimmer. Lena returns to Area X where she's interrogated by Lomax (Benedict Wong) at Southern Reach, after which she's reunited with Kane. At least, that's the way it appears at first glance.

A great deal happens in Annihilation and for those confused by the ending, we explore what exactly it all means and how the final scenes can be interpreted.

The Shimmer Explained

In the beginning of Annihilation, we're shown something traveling through space, breaking through the Earth's atmosphere and falling from the sky to crash into the Lighthouse. Based on this, we can assume the source of the Shimmer is alien, but we don't exactly know the makeup of this alien thing. When Lena is asked by the Authority whether it's carbon-based or sentient, she simply states she doesn't know. Nothing in Annihilation suggests the source of the Shimmer is alive in the sense that it contains consciousness.

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We know that wherever the Shimmer spreads, it changes the landscape and the creatures within it, but the movie suggests this is simply its nature, not a conscious decision. This is evidenced when Lena explains her fight with the mirror creature and says she didn't think it knew what it was doing, it simply mirrored her movements. The reason the Shimmer mirrors Lena and the environment surrounding it is explained by Josie Radek, who figures out the Shimmer is a prism. But instead of refracting only light, it refracts DNA - the DNA of plants, animals, humans, etc. This means, when DNA enters the Shimmer, it's changed, which explains why Lena's blood and the internal organs of the man in Kane's expedition are changed.

As we see throughout the movie, the mutations and changes to the environment, as well as the creatures, become more intense the closer the expedition gets to the Lighthouse. The alligator Lena's expedition faces early in the movie merely has mutated teeth, whereas the nightmarish creature that kills Sheppard and Thorensen has been changed to a much more extreme extent, so that it's nearly unrecognizable. Further, the human-shaped plants are an example of a relatively mild mutation, while the crystal-like trees closer to the Lighthouse are evidence of a much more extreme mutation.

But, once Lena - and, by extension, the viewer - gets closer to the source of the Shimmer by going inside the Lighthouse to explore the crater left by the alien's crash landing, Annihilation moves beyond relatively easy scientific explanations. So, what exactly happened inside the Lighthouse?

Lena in the ending of Annihilation

What Happened Inside the Lighthouse?

There are three sections of the Lighthouse sequence to explore. First, what happened to Kane, then what happened to Ventress and her revelations about the source of the Shimmer, and finally Lena's battle with the mirror version of herself. What happened to Kane is perhaps the most easy to understand: He was driven mad by how the Shimmer changed him and he killed himself, leaving the mirror version of him to escape and return home to Lena. It's unclear whether Kane's acceptance of the mirror version of himself is part of his madness or not, but he seems to view the creature as both separate to himself (urging the creature to go find Lena) and an extension of himself (hinting the creature shares his feelings for Lena).

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After watching the video recording of Kane's death, Lena ventures into the crater created by the alien's crash landing. There, she discovers Ventress - who is first shown without eyes, indicating this is a mirror version of Ventress - who explains the source of the Shimmer doesn't have consciousness but it does have a drive. It means to fragment everything it touches down to its smallest parts, annihilating everything, presumably before rebuilding it again as mutations, like those we saw in the Shimmer. As Lena explains to Lomax later, the source of the Shimmer doesn't necessarily destroy, it changes. In a sense, it annihilates what was before in order to change it, but change and death aren't necessarily the same thing - though they can be.

Arguably that is a question posed by Annihilation, whether change is death or change is immortality. The concept of immortality is sprinkled throughout the film, with Lena telling Kane in a flashback that death is a fault of human genes, then in a different flashback she's seen reading the book, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks (The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks follows the true story of Lacks, whose cancer cells provided the immortal cell line, which are cells that can divide indefinitely, replicating immortality). Based on what we know of Lena's interest in immortality, and how she talks of the Shimmer's nature being to change despite its motivations to annihilate, it seems feasible Lena believes immortality may be achievable through the Shimmer's annihilation insofar as the Shimmer's mutations of human genes could "fix" the fault that causes them - and, by extension, humans - to die. At least, that's what this version of Lena seems to believe (more on that later).

Natalie Portman in Annihilation

In the last section of the Lighthouse sequence, Lena's blood is taken by the Shimmer's source and turned into a mirror version of her. When Lena tries to escape the mirror creature, she's trapped against the door of the Lighthouse until she passes out. Eventually, Lena is able to trick the creature by grabbing a bomb leftover from Kane's expedition and passing it to the mirror version of herself, using the creature's mirrored movements against it. As Lena escapes the Lighthouse, she looks back to see her own features solidifying on the visage of the creature, just before the bomb goes off and the creature is set on fire. In its final moments, the creature affectionately touches the body of Kane, then retreats into the crater and sets the source of the Shimmer on fire. This leads to the destruction of the Shimmer, indicating everything changed by the Shimmer is connected - either physically or by something intangible.

Back at the Southern Reach outpost in Area X, Lena is told that when the Shimmer was destroyed, her husband recovered from whatever made him ill. After Lena tells her story to Lomax and the Authority, she is reunited with Kane, and while they're embracing, their eyes shimmer - which seems to be proof the Shimmer wasn't completely destroyed.

The Group walking toward The Shimmer in Annihilation

Did Lena Really Escape The Shimmer?

The tricky part of Annihilation and understanding what happens in the end is that everything we the viewers know about the expedition in the Shimmer is framed as Lena's story told to Lomax and the authority. So the question becomes: Can we trust Lena? In storytelling, an unreliable narrator is the person telling the story, but someone whose integrity is called into question. In the case of Annihilation, Lena is shown early on to be frustratingly obtuse when answering Lomax's questions. Later, Thorensen ties Lena to a chair, gags her, then accuses her of being a liar for withholding the information that the man who returned from the Shimmer was Lena's husband. The movie goes out of its way to establish Lena is a liar; she also had an affair before Kane left for his expedition into the Shimmer, which is another big lie she's told. So can we trust that the story Lena is telling Lomax - essentially, everything we see happen in the Shimmer - is the truth? Ultimately, that's up to the viewer.

While it's certainly akin to going down the rabbit hole to question everything that happens in the Shimmer in Annihilation, Lena's trustworthiness is most important when it comes to whether the real Lena escaped the Shimmer or if the mirror version of Lena escaped. In the final scene, viewers see Lena's eyes shimmer similarly to mirror-Kane's, hinting they're similar. But are they similar simply because they were both inside the Shimmer or because they're both mirror creatures? If Lena can't be trusted, it's possible that the scene where we see the real version escape and the mirror version die is inaccurate - meaning mirror-Lena may have been the one to survive and is lying about what happened in order to trick the Authority.

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This is arguably a much more interesting interpretation of Annihilation because it could mean the Shimmer can absorb not just DNA, but emotions and human behavior as well. Like Radek posits about the bear-creature absorbing part of Sheppard's consciousness before dying, perhaps the Shimmer absorbed Kane's consciousness - specifically, his love of and longing for Lena - and sent mirror-Kane out into the world in order to lure the real Lena in. If that's the case, the Shimmer could have absorbed Lena's qualities, namely her ability to lie, and transferred them to mirror-Lena, who is using that absorbed behavior to trick the Authority with a lie about what really happened.

The other interpretation is more straightforward. If we can trust Lena, then we know based on the way her battle with the mirror creature was filmed that the real version of her escaped the Shimmer. If we can trust Lena, then Kane is the only tangible remnant of the Shimmer left on Earth. However, that doesn't explain the strange shimmers in both Kane and Lena's eyes. These are also left up to the interpretation of viewers. If we can't trust Lena, the shimmers are indicative of them both being Shimmer duplicates; but if we can trust her, they are simply an indication both were changed by their interactions with the Shimmer.

In terms of what this all means for a potential sequel, no matter your interpretation, the Shimmer is still alive on Earth in some fashion in both Kane and Lena. Since the Shimmer is alive in the form of two people, it may have gained consciousness. Before the duplicates, the Shimmer was mindlessly spreading and mutating whatever was inside its borders. Now that the Shimmer lives on in two duplicated humans, who are conscious in a way plants and animals aren't, things could get even more complicated in a sequel. That is, of course, if Paramount adapts the second novel in Jeff VanderMeer's Southern Reach Trilogy, Authority. For his part, Garland said he has "zero plans" for a sequel, so the end of Annihilation is the conclusion of his story in this world.

Ultimately, Annihilation doesn't offer any easy answers for viewers, leaving it up to moviegoers to decide how they interpret the film's ending, what happened in the Shimmer, and what it all means for Lena and Kane going forward. Garland delivered a high-concept sci-fi film with Annihilation and much of it is subjective, offering many different interpretations of the movie's ending. As such, feel free to share your interpretation of Annihilation in the comments.

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