How It Ends: Ending Explained

How It Ends an an American Disaster film starring Theo James and Forest Whittaker.

The story revolves around Will making his way back to his girlfriend with her father after a mysterious destructive force sweeps across the country.

Throughout this article I will be discussing the film in full detail so obviously there will be heavy spoilers.

The Long Road Ahead

After all flights are canceled, Will and Tom embark on a road trip. After making several stops along the journey they encounter all manner of people from thieves, the escaped convicts and grieving families.

During the trip, Tom’s lungs collapse and Will must perform a needle thoracostomy. This is a medical procedure that allows decompressed air within the lung to escape and from this Tom’s breathing returns to normal.

Unfortunately, they are once again attacked by a gang on the bridge and Tom succumbs to the wounds that he has received thus far.

The car also breaks down. Will uses the remaining gas to set Tom and the car ablaze and continues on foot. A car with a family stops by while he’s walking near Idaho. They offer him a ride and he shows them the way to his father’s house. Will finds it abandoned and decides to give all the supplies in it to the family in exchange for their four-wheel drive car.

Seattle

As Will gets closer to Seattle, he sees that the city is almost completely destroyed. He finds a note left by Sam with an address. He goes to the address and finds Jeremiah and Sam.

Will becomes suspicious of Jeremiah who has been checking out Will’s car and acting strangely. Will confronts him and Jeremiah then reveals he and Sam have a special bond and thought Will was dead. Jeremiah then tries to kill Will, only to be shot by Will before he can draw his pistol. A big cloud of smoke and fire starts approaching. As Will gets Sam and starts to drive away from the cloud, the cloud is seen destroying everything in its path. The couple drives north with the engulfing cloud behind them.

Moments before it reaches the vehicle, the cloud appears to slow down which could signify that the disaster is now at bay. However, the opened ended nature of the film leaves a lot of questions.

Our Theory

Whilst the destructive force that rages across the country in How It Ends is never truly explained. Personally, I believe it is a metaphor for the government’s inability to properly communicate which therefore causes panic and fear. We have seen that fake news and humans jumping to conclusions often leads to panic, fear and hysteria and due to the lack of information on the devastation, people may trample over others in order to survive a cataclysm that seemingly has no end.

The sparse clues that do appear in How It Ends suggest that some of the observed events are due to a volcanic eruption. The U.S. west coast possesses two supervolcanoes: the Long Valley caldera in California and Yellowstone in Wyoming.

These two volcanos are considered to be one of the five biggest threats to humankind with the other four asteroids, nuclear war, disease and global warming.

Volcanos cause huge volcanic eruptions and during one it is important to keep a power grid working. This obviously hasn’t happened in How It Ends and explains why networks fail and air travel has become impossible.

Your Thoughts

I definitely think this is the case with the film but as always I’d love to hear your thoughts if you have a different explanation. Comment below and let me know and if you enjoyed this video please like it and subscribe to my channel.

I create videos like this weekly and there will definitely be something on the channel that you’ll love if you’re a fan of film. I recently discussed 8 amazing things that you definitely missed in Infinity War so make sure you check that out linked at the end of this video.