SOUL Ending Explained Breakdown, Easter Eggs, O...

SOUL Ending Explained Breakdown, Easter Eggs, Original Endings And Full Movie Review | DISNEY

This one’s for the kids…and ahem Adults…who spent Christmas Disney’s latest movie Soul.

Throughout this post, we’re gonna be breaking down the film’s ending and the true meaning behind it.

Meet Joe

Now the movie itself follows Joe Gardner a music teacher who suffers a critical injury before getting his big break.

Before you can say have you been in an accident that wasn’t your fault, Joe is transported to the Soul world which is where spirits arrive before heading into the great beyond.

Due to having unfinished business on Earth, Joe breaks out of this purgatory between worlds and lands in the Great Before which is where souls are given their personalities before being born. Posing as a Mentor to not be sent back, he’s assigned to a problem soul named 22 who doesn’t want to be born because…well she’s probably seen 2020.

In order to journey back to Earth, these young souls must fill up a sort of travel badge, that fills up with personality traits and the pair agree to make a deal to fill it up so that Joe can take it and return.

Easter eggs

There’s a scene in which there’s a tonne of Easter Eggs and we can also see the Balloon from Up as well as the Planet Pizza Truck which has appeared in every Pixar movie. There’s also the infamous lamp that makes up their logo and the hall of everything is filled to the brim.

You may also remember that there was a Pizza rat spotted in New York a couple of years ago and this even makes an appearance in the movie.

2319 also appears as a subway train number and this was the same code that was used in Monsters Inc to say that a sock has entered the world

The Meaning of the Movie

Now Soul becomes somewhat of a body swap film with the pair actually making it to earth but Joe lands in a cat whereas 22 takes over their body.

Soul is very much about finding the beauty in life and we see as 22 experiences things on Earth such as eating pizza for the first time, having a subway blow the wind up through, seeing happy families and so on.

The movie kinda goes back and forth with 22 and Joe going on a journey as he tries to get back to his body so that he can perform at the gig and make it to his big break.

However, the movie also allows 22 to come to the understanding that there is good in the world and that she will have a reason to live.

Now in Joe, he believed that the only thing worth doing was playing Jazz and that if he was unable to do this then life simply wouldn’t have meaning and thus he’s fixated on this thing. In the film, we journey to a realm known as the zone which is where those lost in what they love to travel to. However, there’s also a downside to it and souls can become trapped there if they have turned something into an unhealthy obsession. These people’s lives have sort of lost their meaning and become disconnected because they are fixated on one thing instead of all aspects of life.

The message of the movie for me is that though there are things such as your sparks drive your existence, that shouldn’t be the only thing your existence is about.

Relatable Messages

We meet these sort of angel-like creatures in the movie called Jerrys who explain that a spark fills a hole but many people fall into the trap of thinking that they exist just for one reason.

Soul movie - Jerry

At one point in the film, Joe even says that he exists solely to play and that nothing else matters.

I know on a personal level that I’ve kinda fallen into just making YouTube videos none stop this year instead of actually taking some time off and though I love what I do this message did mean something to me.

I think many of the adults watching this and yeah I know you’ll be out there, have probably had times where they wanted to do something with their kids, friends, or family but that something else has got in the way and thus they’ve spent too much time focusing on that rather than having a balanced life.

Joe got a full-time job teaching music to kids but he still didn’t care and because of his obsession, he pretty much brushed this to the side. We see throughout the movie that there’s a Terry that’s obsessed with numbers and the count and because of this in comparison to the others, he’s a short character. The other Jerrys are taller, symbolising that they’ve been able to grow because they’ve found the beauty in a lot of things.

Mentoring 22

In being 22’s mentor, Joe sort of passes on this view of things to 22 and she actually ends up having a worse experience with him than she did with the other mentors who let her down.

However, he manages to make it back to Earth after casting 22 to the side and he gets his big gig.

Everything goes off without a hitch, it’s the moment that he’d hoped for his entire life but something just feels…empty.

This should feel like a win but because he’s pretty much focused on this at the expense of others there’s no one to really celebrate this with. So he spends his night alone in his apartment looking over some of the things that 22 collected on Earth. These symbols pretty much represent how much fun she had living his life and in many ways, she enjoyed it more than he did. Thus the hollow victory of finally getting to play Jazz has meant that he’s missed out on some of the joy in life and has also let 22 down.

Joe can easily travel to the zone whenever he wishes to through his music but if he spends all his time there he’ll like the other miserable zombies that roam the realm, completely empty with no purpose in life outside of this one thing.

Joe, inspired by the tokens that she collected and his own experiences goes back into the zone and we see that because he instilled in this belief that life should only be about one thing that she has a very negative view.

I kinda viewed this almost like a pushy parent that forces their life into doing what they wished that they had whether it’s a sport or art. The choice has been removed from the child as to whether this is what they want to do and they end up existing solely for one reason similar to what we see with Joe.

She clearly resents him and in her mind, he’s a towering figure that is pretty much the leader of the mentors in the past who failed and let her down.

Lesson’s Learnt

It tells her that she has no reason to live and I think this makes Joe realise how much he failed her. However, Joe breaks through to her and tells her that she will find a reason to live but that fills in on the journey of life.

In saving her life he also saves his own and he decides to give 22 a pass which will allow her to travel the Earth. Joe jumps towards it with her and though he can’t go with her all the way, he can go as far as he can.

The Jerrys realise that he’s come a long way and they give him another chance on Earth. Terry still obsessed with the count is tricked and thus he can return back to his life. The Jerry asks what he’s gonna do and how he will spend his life and Joe says that he doesn’t know what he’s gonna do with his life.

Now to me, this symbolises the beauty of life. We don’t know what’s going to be around the corner but life is full of ups and downs that make it worth living and as long as we can appreciate what we have and find people to share the experience with we will live a fulfilling one.

Open Ended

This ending is deliberately left ambiguous however there were several plans by the creators to give us concrete answers.

In an interview with Den Of Geek, the film’s director Pete Doctor said:

“We storyboarded a bunch of stuff where [Joe and 22] met. One of them was in New York. 22 was like a student that Joe later recognizes. In another one, she actually ended up in India as a kid living there.”

However in the end they decided to leave these answers up to the audience and the Doctor stated:

“In the end, it’s kind of one of those things where I feel like if the audience falls in love with these characters, I would rather that they have their own answer to where they ended up rather than trying to provide all those answers for them. For me it’s really a great joy when you can create these things that have a life of their own, that spark a whole story for someone else.”

This is why I really like the ending of the movie. Throughout Joe’s life, he’d had this drive to do one thing but he found something else entirely. In the movie, before playing on stage he does state that his life is just about to begin and though he means this through the performance, by the end we discover that there was actually an alternate meaning to it.

His life begins in the end because he finds something else beyond his obsession and he realises that Jazz shouldn’t be the only reason he’s alive.

22 and Joe both learned how to live from one another and now they will experience all the ups and downs, finding the joy in them.

Doctor stated that the last line of the film was going to be ‘I’m going to enjoy every moment of it.’

However in the end they decided to change it to just ‘live it’ because it’s impossible to enjoy each and every moment of life.

It’s a better understanding of what it means to be alive and I absolutely loved the movie.

The film ends with Terry telling everyone to go home and though this is a sort of post-credits scene it actually carries the meaning that we should go out and make the most of what we have.

In the end, Soul was a blast and for me it gets an 8.5/10

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