Summary

• Evelyn Wang embraces every version of herself to save the multiverse in the Everything Everywhere All at Once ending.
• The multiverse in EEAAO is created by individual decisions and each universe is predicated on a person's life journey.
• Evelyn's complex relationship with her daughter and the importance of family are central themes in the film's ending.

Everything Everywhere All at Once's ending explained in detail reveals the 2022 sci-fi comedy's true meaning. Written and directed by Dan Kwan and Daniel Scheinert (aka the Daniels), A24's highest-grossing movie explores the multiverse with the seemingly ordinary family of Evelyn Wang (Michelle Yeoh) and her husband Waymond (Ke Huy Quan). The Everything Everywhere All at Once ending sets up the multiverse in a way that puts the Marvel Cinematic Universe to shame. Apart from the movie's commercial success and cultural relevance, the 7 Oscars Everything Everywhere All At Once won in 2023 include Best Picture and Best Original Screenplay — something its layered ending no doubt helped to ensure.

In EEAAO, Evelyn Wang is a stressed laundromat owner who is in the middle of an IRS audit. Her life is beginning to tilt off its axis, with an impending divorce and her daughter Joy (Stephanie Hsu) feeling unexpected by her mother. When she is thrown into an existential battle for the fate of all creation against Jobu Tupaki, a version of Joy, she has all those issues to save the multiverse. The ending sees Evelyn embracing every version of herself in the multiverse and pulling back her daughter from the darkness. The Everything Everywhere All at Once ending has many layers that explain the film’s themes, the multiverse rules, and more.

The Alphaverse And Verse-Jumping Explained

Everything Everywhere All At Once Has A Unique Take On The Multiverse

The Everything Everywhere All at Once ending takes the concept of the multiverse to its extreme, with the infinite various worlds that are all based on every human decision ever made are explored. For every choice, a new universe is created, branching off into its own version of reality. The interesting thing about Everything Everywhere All At Once version of the multiverse is that each universe doesn’t seem to have been created simultaneously. Rather, the universes that branch out are predicated by an individual’s decision and how it affects their life’s journey. The Alphaverse, as its name infers, is at the top of the multiversal chain because it was the first to discover the multiverse existed.

The people of the Alphaverse were able to figure out how every universe came to be and the decisions each person took to get them to their current place in life. The Alphaverse is also the only one to create technology to communicate with other parts of the Everything Everywhere All at Once multiverse, including verse-jumping, which involves tapping into another version of oneself to borrow their skills or inhabit their mind for a while. Evelyn and Alphaverse-Waymond are able to separate their consciousnesses by doing something strange; for Evelyn, that involves switching her shoes from one foot to the other.

However, Alphaverse-Waymond has another trick up his sleeve as well. To fully inhabit Evelyn’s husband Waymond in her universe, the Alphaverse version has to do something completely bizarre before pressing the BlueTooth headphones to be zapped into another’s consciousness. This could be anything — from sticking a sharp object up one’s butt to Evelyn declaring her love for Deirdre, the IRS agent, who she hates. The more outrageous it is, the easier it is to verse-jump.

Why Evelyn Was The Perfect Choice To Save The Multiverse

Evelyn's Reality Reflected The Nature Of The Multiverse

In the Everything Everywhere All at Once ending, Evelyn’s multiverse doppelgängers were all fairly accomplished in one way or another. At the very least, they had chosen a path and stuck with it, while Evelyn’s own life was up in the air and often unclear. Crucially, Evelyn's life is just as chaotic as the events of the multiverse because she has all of this untapped potential. Whereas all the other Evelyns have settled into their lives, the film’s primary Evelyn is full of regret about the decisions she didn’t make.

She leads a life she didn’t necessarily see for herself and her feelings of inadequacy — of not living up to the standards of her father’s expectations — still haunt her, coloring Evelyn’s relationships with Waymond and Joy. Alpha-Waymond chooses Evelyn to save the multiverse because she’s “so bad at everything” that she’s “capable of anything.” No other Evelyns could understand what the Everything Everywhere All at Once villain Jobu Tapaki was going through because their feelings of desolation were not as strong.

What’s more, Jobu Tupaki's Evelyn was so hard on her daughter, which is something Evelyn can relate to because she has been the same with Joy. She also carries the trauma of her own father disowning her after she marries Waymond, and it’s these very emotions that allow her to step up to meet Jobu Tupaki on a level playing field. All someone had to do was believe that Evelyn could do something extraordinary — which Alpha-Waymond did, seeing beyond what she saw in herself — to make her the perfect choice to help the multiverse and bring back the balance that was lost.

Why Jobu Tupaki Created The Everything Bagel

The Bagel Is A Nihilistic Metaphor For Modernity

Out of all of the characters in Everything Everywhere All At Once, Jobu Tupaki is the most tragic. She’s the Alphaverse version of Joy whose mother, also Evelyn, pushed her way too hard to tap into the multiverse. She verse-jumped so much that something in her mind shattered, with Jobu Tupaki experiencing the entire multiverse simultaneously. This led to Jobu Tupaki being able to embody any version of Joy without having to perform any of the Alphaverse tricks that others had to do to verse-jump.

This is a direct metaphor for the overwhelming nature of modern society, where so much — global events, social media, societal issues, and personal life struggles — demands attention. Jobu Tupaki's mind is split in that way, being pulled in so many wildly different directions to the point that it gets to be too much. Jobu Tupaki had nothing to lose after that, feeling the weight of the multiverse pressing in, so she decided to see what would happen if she threw experiences, thoughts, and just about everything she could think of on top of a bagel.

Jobu Tupaki wanted to discover just what would happen if all the chaos was in one place, especially since she could experience all of it at once. What Jobu Tupkai ultimately found is — despite the entirety of the multiverse and all that was in it — that nothing really mattered at all. It’s why she wanted to succumb to the everything bagel’s power, which was pulling her towards its void. A big part of Jobu Tapaki’s journey was learning that there is still hope and that, even though nothing matters, there are certain things, like a mother-daughter relationship, that are still worth fighting for.

Everything Everywhere All At Once Ending’s Real Meaning

The End Of EEAAO Is About Human Connections Giving Life Purpose

The Everything Everywhere All at Once ending sees Evelyn trying to make amends with Joy, who is tired of trying to please her mother. Evelyn had a big moment when confronting her father about Joy being with her girlfriend, but it was a moment born from Evelyn’s need to defy her dad. Joy, feeling like she couldn’t live up to her mother’s expectations, breaks down, and it’s only then that Evelyn realizes that, if nothing else, the relationship she has with her daughter — as tension-filled and complicated it may be — matters more than anything. Everything Everywhere All at Once's multiverse leans into the layered dynamic between a parent and their child.

Evelyn and Joy have so much pain from their familial relationships, but they also have a lot of love. When Evelyn reveals she always wants to be with Joy, no matter where they are, it is the start of a healing process for both characters from the pain inflicted previously. That is key to overcoming both of their traumas and breaking the generational cycle that causes a rift between parents and their children. At the heart of the film is the message that family matters, so long as one is willing to listen and approach things with an open heart.

Besides dealing with family trauma, the film explores how a person can be caught between so many expectations, perceptions, and the constant barrage of things in life that require so much of one’s attention. It’s also a reflection of society and how much the digital age has changed the way people consume just about everything. Jobu Tupaki has access to countless versions of herself and the multiverse at large, and the influx of information was so intense and taxing on the mind that she couldn’t take it anymore.

As the Everything Everywhere All at Once ending implies, it can start to feel like nothing really matters. For Joy and Evelyn, they needed to step away from the pressures of the world and realize that they both, despite all the hurdles, are worth it in the end. In times of hardship and darkness, one can still find hope.

How Evelyn Changed By The EEAAO Ending — According To Michelle Yeoh

The Actress Who Played Evelyn Brought All Her Life Experience To The Role

The positive reviews of Everything Everywhere All at Once's ending are thanks to it being jam-packed with layers and meaning — and actress Michelle Yeoh effortlessly tackling it all. In fact, Yeoh's performance as the world-weary Evelyn was strong enough to bag the Golden Globe for Best Performance by an Actress (Musical/Comedy category) and a ground-breaking Best Actress Oscar in 2023. This is especially impressive since Yeoh wasn't only playing one role, but played every version of Evelyn in the Daniels' multiverse. To take on something so complex is no easy feat, and Yeoh's performance was both endearing in all of her faults and inspiring in the face of her difficulties.

It takes a strong figure to be able to embody a character that must explore and embrace every intricate detail of themselves and their choices, and Yeoh obviously did so perfectly. Undoubtedly one of the reasons for Everything Everywhere All at Once's record-breaking box office earnings, actress Michelle Yeoh opened up in an interview (via Vanity Fair) about the role and the overall themes of the film. Right off the bat, Yeoh its, "I guess my 40 years of experience was like a long rehearsal for this movie." Yeoh did a lot of character study going into the movie, even changing the way she walks as Evelyn to outwardly express her feelings about life.

The actress also had a lot to consider about Evelyn's appearance, trying her best to show things like a character who is living paycheck to paycheck or adding gray streaks to her hair to visually represent the familial and financial stress that Evelyn is so clearly under. That being said, at the movie's core is the discussion of generational trauma and a mother-daughter relationship. Everything Everywhere All at Once is not Michelle Yeoh's first go at portraying a disapproving mother, as she took on the role of Eleanor Young in Crazy Rich Asians.

Notably, Crazy Rich Asians and Everything Everywhere All At Once's box office success speak for themselves. That said, unlike in Crazy Rich Asians, the themes surrounding the mother-daughter relationship found in Everything Everywhere All at Once — as Yeoh discusses with Vanity Fair — are problems that defy cultural (and economic) boundaries, and can be identifiable to anyone. While the Everything Everywhere All at Once ending doesn't tidily fix the relationship between Joy and Evelyn, there is one piece of the puzzle that is clear to Yeoh, "It’s like we have to step back and say, ‘We want to be there for each other. We just don't know how to express it yet, but let’s not give up on each other."