LEAVE THE WORLD BEHIND Explained | Unanswered Questions, Qr Code, Ending, Theories And More

Welcome to the Heavy Spoilers show, I’m your host Paul, and in this video, we’re answering some of your big questions about Leave The World Behind.

The brand-new Netflix movie leaves a lot of things open-ended, and throughout this, we’ll be letting you know what happens in it.

That includes things like what caused the apocalypse, what the lady was saying in Spanish, why Archie’s teeth fell out, the secret cabal, and so on. I’ve compiled this from a number of different sources, including the director and cast, and I think there’s a lot here that clears up some of the big pressing issues.

WHAT CAUSED THE APOCALYPSE IN LEAVE THE WORLD BEHIND?

Now, the first question that you probably have is what actually caused the apocalypse. Though neither the book nor film spells it out, we do learn certain things about what’s going on. At the core of it is uncertainty and misinformation during a blackout of communication. The message of the movie, to me, is to not turn on ourselves and, in these uncertain times, that we have to stick together. Author of the book Rumaan Alam actually talked about this with Variety and did a big interview breaking down the movie.

In it, he talked about the speech with George and said what the true meaning behind it was.

He’s describing this scenario of attack, which will induce uncertainty in the population. In a way, what he’s afraid of is exactly what he’s experiencing. It’s just uncertainty. You as the viewer have to fill in the blanks of what that uncertainty looks like, whether it’s a cyberattack, whether it’s an act of war, whether it’s an environmental disaster, whether it’s just a collapse of civic order. That’s what’s so scary about it is that you just don’t know.

I think this really works in the film, and we as an audience are meant to argue about what it is. You can extrapolate this to real life and see how uncertainty and paranoia can drive us down certain paths. It’s a theme that Oppenheimer picked apart brilliantly, and that too had Strauss going down a certain route. That was all because he was uncertain over something, which eventually led him to act a certain way.

We see the tension from this most notably in Danny, who draws his gun at George and Clay. Though George is someone he’s been friends with for years, he’s still uncertain over whether to trust him.

However, in the end, they decide to work together, which too is exemplified in both the families. Amanda initially starts off not trusting George and Ruth, but in the end, she sees that she misjudged them all. Had she not admitted to this misjudgment, then tensions may have escalated further and further. I think that this misjudgment, in the end, is what causes humanity to turn on itself. That’s the feeling that I get from this, and it tells us that in the end, we need to be friends.

I don’t think the theme of friends playing over the end is a coincidence later, and it literally says…ahem…I’ll be there for you.

So, though we don’t have a specific cause for what happened, it’s all based around uncertainty. Though George gives his thoughts, that’s still just a theory, but it shows the uncertainty around the event.

Now, being unable to fully understand someone or something can also cause us to be fearful, which I feel is exemplified in the woman Clay comes across. Speaking in Spanish, he can’t understand her, and you might be wondering what it is she says.

Decider managed to break the whole thing down, as we don’t get subtitles to tell what it is. However, she actually talks about several things in the movie and says:

“Thank God I found someone! I’m trying to get back to my home! I’m lost! I’ve been walking for a while! I need to use your phone! You’re the first person I’ve seen all day! We have to get out of here!

I just saw a plane that was spraying red gas in the vicinity. I saw some deer, more than 50. They were coming out of the woods. Please! I need to go home, sir. A military plane appeared and fled. There’s no one around! Is it a chemical attack?”

Now that Red Gas turned out to be the flyers, which also had their own writing on them.

NUCLEAR WARFARE IN LEAVE THE WORLD BEHIND

So perhaps that’s who struck with the nukes at the end, and as we learn from Danny, other countries did the same thing. This is actually something that happened before the atomic bombs on Japan, with both key targets being warned in advance. I do think there’s validity to what was said, with potentially all America’s enemies coming together for this big attack.

That’s what you get, mate, that’s what you get for dumping tea in the harbor.

ME PG TIPS!

Anyway, one thing you might notice with the

cyberattack announcement is that it also looks like it has Russian writing on it. Several countries are named in the film, and they may have united to pull this whole thing off.

I did theorize that the nukes we see at the end were fired by the US itself, but since then, I’ve had a change of heart. The bunker that we see has a message from the White House, so I don’t think it would do this if it pulled the trigger itself.

Either way, I think we get a hint as to what may have happened with the Cabal that’s brought up by George.

He talks about how a high-ranking friend used to ask him to move money, and then goes into how he thought it was all a joke. To him, the world wasn’t being controlled by anyone, and in the end, we were completely rudderless. However, I think that George might have changed his mind due to a conversation he had with him before the blackout.

Potentially, those that run the world lost control, and something or someone stepped up and decided to take them down. If that’s the case, there’d be a power struggle like this that may lead to innocents getting caught in the crossfire. I do like that idea, and the movie was produced by Barack and Michelle Obama, so…pfffttt…tin foil hat on for that one, mate.

I even thought that aliens might be involved at one point, as we get those shots of space that almost act as if something’s creeping over the planet. Potentially, a natural phenomenon affected the radio waves, cutting off communication, and this may have sent us into our own panic. What I like, though, is that something like this can really drive you to grasp at what you personally think would happen.

Now, whatever’s going on has clearly affected the animals too, as the deer were clearly coming together to either attack or warn us. I’d love it if we found out it was actually deer that were behind it, and nobody…nobody ever suspects the deer.

Now, we do get a radio broadcast that you have to listen out for that says the migration patterns have affected animals. However, there’s a lot of symbolism to them, with the deer meaning something else beyond just what we see.

When talking to the Today Show, Charlie Evans said, “Deer are peaceful creatures. To turn that sweet image into now this sort of ominous, menacing, almost warning — I thought was really interesting. That’s the trick about this movie. We always tried to take the things that we never really considered a threat and then turn it around on them.”

In the novel, they were supposed to symbolize that the world was changing around the characters, and they were unable to control what was going on.

Evans then went on to say, “the connection to the natural world, how we treat it, how it moves around us, and how we don’t really think about it as carefully as we should.”

I think that ties into the point that Amanda brings up when she says we have this collective delusion that we’re treating the world well. Deer are often hunted for sport, and perhaps this could be seen as them coming back.

On our last video, user Westtide also brought up their own theories and how the film riffs on the rapture. The eclipse is something that happens in it, and animals lose their fear of man. The users quoted numerous verses that tie in with actions in the film, and I think there’s definitely a connection there if you want to see it.

Again, a lot of this movie is open to interpretation, with bugs also potentially causing their own issues too.

This comes in the form of Archie, who slowly gets iller and iller in the film.

After The Noise, he wakes up coughing, and from here, his teeth start falling out.

Perhaps it was because he didn’t cover his ears, or it may have been the bug that bit him, but the character was clearly edging closer to death throughout.

In the end, he got help in the form of pills from Danny, but it’s clear that something was up with him.

Personally, I took this to be either the bug being poisonous or there being radiation in the area that caused his cells to die off. Microwaves are discussed at one point, and perhaps covering one’s ears helped to shield the effects of this.

Look, yeah, I’m not an expert on radiation, mate…just something to ponder.

Either way, Sam Esmail brought up a very interesting point when discussing what it was that was going on with Archie. He said,

“I want to be careful how I answer this. I think it’s a nightmare. I think the movie’s a nightmare, and I think that, in nightmares, things happen that are inexplicable.”

Now, people’s teeth falling out in dreams is something that has been studied in psychology for years. This is said to be caused by the dreamer suffering from stress or anxiety in real life that has caused them to lose something.

This definitely fits the situation, and though I know lots of people don’t like the way the film ends, I think viewing this as a metaphor for a nightmare works well. They’re isolated, uncertain of what’s going on, and watching the world fall apart around them, which adds a lot to the things that play out in the movie.

When talking with Collider, Esmail stated that he wanted to start the movie off with it having a dream feeling that then devolves into a nightmare that feels claustrophobic due to its small cast and the situations that they’re put in. I think this dream idea could be why the paintings alter and change over the film, which is what many of you guys have pointed out.

Now, one of the last things you guys probably want to know is whether they made it or not. In my ending explained, I played a clip of Sam Esmail discussing that they, in fact, did, which has been backed up by Rumaan Alam. I won’t just play the clip with Sam again, as that’s already in my other video, but here’s what Alam had to say on it:

“In the film, they set that timer, and so there’s a literal ticking clock, and we hear the timer alarm go off. That’s the last moment we’re with Ruth and Amanda. And the last thing that G.H. has said is we’ve got to go to that bunker. You as a viewer may say, ‘Oh, they’re not going to make it.’ But I have this vision of G.H. as so competent, and I feel like he’s solved every problem. But I don’t know what’s going to happen to Archie. The truth is that I don’t know. This is something I’ve heard Sam say a lot, that he also doesn’t know. But this is open enough that it becomes something that is possessed by its audience. I’m not withholding a definitive answer because I’m not in possession of that.”

HIDDEN QR CODE IN LEAVE THE WORLD BEHIND – HINT TO SAM ESMAIL’S NEXT FILM?

Lastly, you guys may have not noticed, but there’s actually a QR code in the movie, which is embedded in the map of the states.

This happens at about the 34-minute mark, and if you scan it, it takes you to https://visitmercercounty.com/places/lake-shawnee/

This states:

“LAKE SHAWNEE ABANDONED AMUSEMENT PARK
There’s something unnatural about this Mercer County attraction.
A Native American burial ground. Violent deaths. Freak accidents. Who knew a simple amusement park could have such a dark past?
Explore this creepy (maybe cursed?) land — ‘one of the world’s most haunted places.’ Arrange a private tour, join paranormal investigators to ghost hunt, or brave the ‘Dark Carnival’ in October.”

To me, that sounds like a teaser for a show or film coming down the line, and potentially it could hint at Sam Esmail’s next project. Guessing that it is going to be releasing in October, but obviously, we’ll find out down the line.

Anyway, that wraps up the video, and a huge thank you for watching our follow-up. Hopefully, this helped you to enjoy the movie a bit more, which, hey, judging by some of the comments, won’t be hard. Either way, thank you for watching, as we really appreciate it.

Please drop a like on the video, and if you want to support the channel as a member of the Spoiler Society, then please click the join button.

You’ll get early access to videos every week, and it goes such a long way to helping us.

With that out of the way, a huge thank you for sitting through the video. I’ve been your host, and I’ll see you next time. Take care, Peace