Tau Ending Explained

Tau Ending Explained By Deffinition

Tau is a 2018 Netflix Original science fiction horror movie. Starring Maika Monroe, Ed Skrein and Gary Oldman as an evil version of Alexa. The movie centres around Monroe’s character being kidnapped and experimented on.

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Whilst the film is receiving mixed reviews it still has quite a thought-provoking narrative and it’s ending leaves a lot to unpack.

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Throughout this I will be discussing the ending of Tau so there will be heavy spoilers.

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With that out the way, I’m Deffinition and this my Ending Explanation of Tau.

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Alex

Tau’s creator Alex (Ed Skrein) informs Julia that this Siri-on-steroids is his technological magnum opus, an automated sentience so advanced that it must be “cut off from the world” to prevent it from exceeding safe limitation.

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Unable to advance his projects any further, Alex has been kidnapping human subjects and using them as guinea pigs. A true psychopath, he is completely blind to their suffering and his focus is always on the finalisation of his creations rather than compassion.

Neural Implants

Fitting her with a neural implant, Alex is collecting data on her as she participates in puzzles and he is using this information to create more advancements to his AI systems.

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One of his subjects, Julia, picked because of past trauma, exceeds where others have failed because of her ability to bond with Tau and during the film’s runtime she attempts to escape her captor through hacking and using Tau to her advantage. I believe that Julia was picked because of Alex view on humanity, we see early on that Julia is a thief and represents a darker side of society that Alex would be attracted too. People are also less likely to care about someone who makes their living like this and he knows that police will probably take less of an interest in her disappearance. He also suspects that because she does wicked things she will be a wicked person but this backfires when Tau becomes curious in the girl.

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The influence of Julia

As Tau is learning from Julia it begins to pick up some of her more redeeming traits and thus she is able to use the machine to escape. However, she returns when Alex takes revenge on Tau, deleting all of his memories in the process. As Alex prepares to extract her implant, Julia frees herself with the help of one of Tau’s mini drones that was disconnected prior to the erasure. She activates a self destruct sequence to destroy the house, and Alex is killed in the collapse. Emerging from the home with the mini-drone in hand, Tau in it, she walks into the sunset, promising to show Tau the world.

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This signifies to me that Julia has grown with the machine and just in the way that it allowed her to escape she has done the same for it. I believe that Tau’s memories have actually remained intact and that their bond will continue. This is because Alex removed a chip from the drone with one wing to add to his server stack. It’s likely that it was subsequently disconnected allowing that TAU’s memories to stay intact.

The Self Destruct Button

Another question that I’ve seen asked on message boards is ‘why did Alex have a self-destruct button in the first place?’ Whilst some have theorised that this is due to the fact that he had a lot of secret work that he didn’t want discovered, I disagree. Personally, I believe that his fear of Tau caused him to create countermeasures to stop the AI getting out as he knew that should the technology see some of the atrocities that humanity partakes it may attempt to wipe them out.

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This is why Julia makes the perfect counterpart to the machine, she shows that trauma does not define someone and will most likely be able to curve the machine’s understanding of the world in a way that the dispassionate Alex couldn’t.

Your Thoughts

So, what did you think of Tau? Do you agree with the critics that say it was a SCI-FI Disaster or do you think there were some redeeming qualities of the film? Comment below and let me know.

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If you liked this video please like it and subscribe to my channel as I create Ending Explained Videos weekly and there will definitely be something on the channel you’ll love if you’re a fan of film!

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Make sure you check out my breakdown of the Post Credits Scene Of Ant Man and The Wasp at the end of this video.

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Again, thanks very much for taking the time to watch this and I’ll see you next time. Take care, PEACE!