I Am Mother: Ending Explained

I am Mother has just dropped on netflix and the post apocalyptic Sci-Fi drama has a lot to unpack from it.

Throughout this video I’ll be breaking down everything you need to know about the movie as well as answering the big questions that you may have about the film and it’s ending.

This is full spoilers ahead, so if you don’t want to know anything about the movie then I highly suggest that you turn off now.

With that out the way let’s get into my breakdown of I Am Mother!

I Am Mother Plot Recap

I Am Mother picks up in the aftermath of an extinction level war between the human race that has seemingly wiped out the population. A.I. Robot, Mother, has been tasked with restarting the species and from a facility, she begins raising from an embryo to adult.

From the off, it’s clear that Mother has a prime drive to enforce the human race’s survival and early on she teaches the girl, named simply Daughter, to realise that the needs of the many far outweigh the needs of the few.

Whilst it initially seems like Daughter is the first to of her kind to be raised by mother, this comes into question upon the arrival of a character named ‘Woman,’ played by Hilary Swank. Woman is apparently an Orphaned Baby who was found and raised by other humans though her origins are unknown to her. Throughout the film, we discover that Woman was actually the first child to be raised by Mother and this explains why she was able to survive in the outside world whilst others died. This is because something went wrong with her and thus Mother cast her out allowing Humans to be her guardians.

Is Daughter Woman’s Child?

Though it is teased that Daughter may, in fact, be a clone of Woman we learn that they are both clones from the same strain of DNA and that Daughter is actually Mother’s third attempt at raising a superhuman.

This is why Daughter finds missing embryos and a jawbone in the incinerator as this was the second clone that was unfortunately killed after she failed Mother in some way.

Turns out Mother isn’t all she’s cracked up to be and is actually a pretty bad computer program that caused the apocalypse. Mother is every robot on the planet and she’s pretty much Skynet without the time travel abilities. We learn that Mother was created to save the human race, however, after realising that we’re all pretty much idiots that will inevitably destroy ourselves and the planet she decided to Thanos us all out of Existence.

The reason that she stocked so many embryos is because Mother planned to raise a new group of humans with better ethics which is why the A.I. spends so much time teaching Daughter about mortality and self-sacrifice. Turns out she was kinda right too as Woman confirms that humans are still fighting one another on the surface. This is why she’s attempted to flee from the rest of the human race and now lives alone with a dog.

However, the film isn’t all doom and gloom and Mother realises that her child-rearing has been third time lucky and that Daughter is one of the good ones. This is why she finally allows her to have a brother as she feels like the teen is fit to pass on everything that she has learned throughout the course of her life.

This comes as a huge emotional moment at the movie’s midpoint and they allllll lived happily ever after…wait.

Turns out not everything will be coming up roses and Woman, racked with Paranoia inspires Daughter to question the narrative that she has been told. This leads Daughter to discover the truth behind APX02 and everything else. With the help of Woman, Daughter decides to escape the compound with her new baby brother.

This escape attempt works but like the little mermaid, Daughter learns that the surface isn’t such a good place after all and after realising that Woman was lying to her just as much as Mother was she decides to return to the compound. There’s some amazing tension throughout the finale and after bargaining with Mother, Daughter decides to make piece and stay in the facility to raise her brother. Mother agrees to this and decides to leave her alone to raise her new sibling.

Whilst it works out for her there’s one more final twist and through a droid, Mother leaves the facility in order to hunt down and kill Woman. This is because Woman has served her purpose now and is no longer needed.

Why Mother Kills Woman

In the final few shots of the film, we see Mother enter Woman’s container home and close the door behind her which shows that she will now end her life. It’s possible that Mother orchestrated the entire event so that Mother could show Daughter that humans were untrustworthy which is what she deems as Woman’s purpose. She purposely allowed Woman to be let out into the world so that she could be raised by humans and then come back as a shining example to show just how bad the species is. Now that this goal has been completed and Daughter has learned a valuable lesson, Woman no longer has a reason to live and thus Mother exterminates her. In addition to this, she probably realises the danger that she poses in her knowledge of the compound and thus can’t allow her to live in case the new Humans become compromised.

We close with Daughter raising a family with the moral compass and ethics that will allow a better version of the human race to exist on the nearly revitalised planet.

I Am Mother Review

It’s a rather positive ending that shows that humans have the potential to do good if influenced correctly.

It’s a pretty powerful message and overall whilst I felt the film was probably more in line with say a black mirror episode rather than a big budget Hollywood movie, I still really enjoyed it. This kind of film is perfect for the Netflix platform and obviously more people will now watch this and it definitely deserves to be seen.

All of the actors in the movie deliver excellent performances and this is a really strong female lead piece to get behind that doesn’t feel like it’s pandering or being over the top with it’s message.

Often in movies when they have an old and young version of a character, it’s very jarring as you can tell that they aren’t really the same person and thus this can take you out of it. However, I never felt this with I Am Mother and both Clara Rugaard and Hilary Swank both feel like they are giving the same performance that feels like a continuation of the clone. This shines even when they are on screen together and it’s a really difficult thing to pull off that this movie does effortlessly.

In addition to this Rose Byrne does a stellar job as Mother and she delivers the sterile lines with a touch of warmth that also doesn’t remove this from feeling like a robotic performance, in a good way.

Overall I really enjoyed I Am Mother and it definitely is the one to watch this weekend especially with Dark Phoenix being such a disappointment.

I Am Mother is gripping from start to finish and it gets an…