Ready Player One begins with an ordinary boy competing in a video game contest created by genius James Haliday, but by the film's end, he begins to wonder, is Haliday really dead? Wade Watts is a poor teen from the year 2024 who spends most of his time in the OASIS, a VR world created by genius James Halliday. Following Halliday's death, an automatic announcement was released to all OASIS s explaining that the man hid an Easter Egg within his virtual world, and whoever found it would inherit his millions—and the OASIS itself.

Wade/Parzival becomes one of the many "Gunters" who devote their lives to searching for the Egg, hoping to find it before Noal Sorrento and the evil corporation IOI. To achieve this goal, Parzival and his friends must become experts in Halliday's life to find three keys that will lead them to the contest's end. Since Halliday created the Easter Egg hunt in Ready Player One after learning of his terminal illness, he hoped the contest winner would learn valuable lessons he himself learned too late, and that's precisely what happened.

What Halliday's Three Keys Really Mean

The Race, The Shining, and Play Adventure

Halliday was a closed-off man in his early years awkward and disinterested in the full ramifications of his creation, while later in life, lonely and regretful. As such, the quest was made after he learned of his imminent death as a way to find a suitable successor. He's not looking for the best player per se, but someone with the "traits" worthy of ruling the OASIS. As he says in his own eulogy, the keys can only be found by going into his mind - which he handily created as a physical library - so, while the tasks necessary have some genuine challenge to them, each represents something more.

Halliday is not looking for the best player per se, but someone with the "traits" worthy of ruling the OASIS.

First, for the Copper Key, is the race, a pop culture onslaught one can only win by reversing backward through the course. The clue to finding the challenge is found before the movie starts, but Wade still needs to use knowledge of Halliday—he hated rules—to find the memory where the creator and Ogden Morrow begin to schism, and he makes a point of wanting to "go backward." It's about thinking outside the box, applying greater truths, and not being afraid to it mistakes.

The second task, for the Jade Key, comes from a clue at the end of the race, alluding to a "creator that hates his creation" and a "leap not taken." Parzival and Art3mis try various permutations of this building from what they perceive to be Halliday's biggest regret—his failed date with Karen Underwood. Eventually, they realize the key is hidden within the movie Halliday and Karen watched when she wanted to go dancing: The Shining which Stephen King famously despised. To get their hands on the key, they had to correct Halliday's mistake by asking an NPC version of Karen to dance.

IOI quickly figures out from here that the "fortress tragic" in the previous clue is Halliday-avatar Anorak's castle on gaming Planet Doom, where an Atari 2600 is set up. The catch here is that retrieving the Crystal Key didn't depend on winning any games. Instead, the player needed to play Adventure, believed to be the first video game in which the developer hid an Easter Egg. Once Parzival found developer Warren Robinett's hidden feature (his name), the key was his, proving that it's not about winning but taking a moment to enjoy the little things.

Ultimately, Halliday's tasks weren't really about the pop culture references that permeate them but teaching lessons that the OASIS creator deemed important—it to mistakes, learn from them, and understand that it's the journey that's important. As each of Halliday's three keys taught the players of his game to do these things better than the creator had himself, they are being prepared for the final test of Ready Player One's Easter Egg hunt.

The Final Test & Halliday's Easter Egg

Getting All Three Keys Didn't Mean The End Of Parzival's Journey

After gaining the three keys, Wade doesn't win straight away. Instead, he's taken to an ornate room with the Easter Egg at its center, where Anorak offers him a contract for the OASIS. This, of course, looks like victory, but in light of the lessons from the previous challenges, it is clearly another test. Wade is being offered the exact same deal Halliday took, but to sign would be undermining how he got to that point of the competition to begin with. By declining to sign Anorak's contract, Parzival proved that he deserved to win.

Anorak's final test in Ready Player One was a failsafe, proving that even with all three keys, Nolan Sorrento couldn't have retrieved the real Easter Egg.

After refusing to sign the contract, Wade discovers Halliday's true purpose and is given the real Easter Egg, a symbol of his journey so beautiful it bleeds into the real world (via a high-tech VR suit), stunning hero and villain alike. Some version of Halliday (a mystery we'll get back to) reveals that he had made the OASIS to immerse himself in his pop-culture obsessions and connect with others who shared his ions. However, since this virtual reality wasn't real, it couldn't replace genuine connection.

This is solidified by Ogden Morrow. Throughout the movie, the High Five is led to believe that Kira and the missed opportunity at romance was Halliday's defining regret, and while it certainly weighed heavily on him, that's not the Rosebud at the center of the story. The broken friendship with "Og," caused by their conflicting goals for the OASIS, left him alone and with no human connection. Halliday's entire contest in Ready Player One was to preach against that and ensure his eventual successor would not lose sight of those around them.

What Happens To The Oasis?

Wade Takes Control Of The VR World

At the end of Ready Player One, Wade—like any Spielberg protagonist—gets the girl, which in this story represents his taking steps to be better than Halliday. Of course, he still does get control of the OASIS, and here's where he makes the essential, autonomous decision to share control with the rest of his "clan," the High Five. He's gone from literally naming himself after the Knight who tried to find the Holy Grail solo to understanding the value of friendship and —exactly what Halliday wanted.

The Five move to make the OASIS more harmonic and a force for good in the real world rather than just an escape from it. To ensure it remained this way, the decision was made that the OASIS would be closed on Tuesdays and Thursdays, thus forcing the population to take the time to make real and meaningful connections in the real world. Ultimately, this served as another step in correcting Halliday's mistakes.

What Happens To IOI?

Wade Makes Moves To Shut The Company Down

The other big company in 2045 is IOI, whose products are so ubiquitous they're even used by those who oppose them. Their full scale isn't shown on screen, with most time spent on Samantha's stint in the Loyalty division, where those who owe significant debts to IOI are forced to do labor to pay it off. Then, of course, there are the Sixers, employees of IOI who aim to hunt down Halliday's Easter Egg so that the villainous company can take control of and monetize the OASIS, making it no longer accessible to most of the population.

One of Wade's biggest rulings at the end was locking out Loyalty Centers from the OASIS, a move that essentially shut the entire division down. Additionally, since Wade and the rest had significant proof that Nolan Sorrento had attempted to murder them IRL, it can be assumed that, like in the Ready Player One book, the villain ended up in prison. In the novel, IOI was forced to shut down after Wade and the rest of the High Five stripped away its highest profit points, but this is never confirmed to be the case in the movie.

Is Halliday "Alive"?

Halliday's Autonomous NPC In Ready Player One Seemed To Hint That The Genius Wasn't Really Dead

At the end of Ready Player One, Wade asks Halliday if he is really dead. The version of the man seen during the final test in the Easter Egg hunt certainly seems to be fully autonomous, and this has confused audiences just as much as Wade. Halliday refrained from answering whether he was alive or not, instead giving Wade a knowing look and thanking him for playing his game. This itself seems to imply that Halliday is more than just an NPC, and the Ready Player One book series confirms this.

Though the Ready Player One movie's themes about living in the real world weren't as prevalent in the book, the sequel's reveal that Halliday was literally trapped in the OASIS drives this point home and makes the man's story even more tragic.

In Earnest Cline's Ready Player One book, Wade never doubted that the version of Halliday inside the OASIS was an advanced NPC created by the man himself. Therefore, the question the character posed about whether Halliday was dead never happened. However, in the book's sequel, Ready Player Two, it is revealed that Halliday invented technology allowing a person to their mind to the OASIS, creating a perfect AI replica of themselves that could live eternally. Halliday's body was, in fact, dead; his mind lived on in the OASIS.

Ready Player One Shows The Dark Side Of Corporate Nostalgia

The Movie Presents A Dystopian Society Holding People Down

Make no mistake, Ready Player One's future is a true dystopia. The Columbus Stacks are futuristic slums plastered with invasive advertising and full of people utterly disconnected from reality. The world is stacked against them, with the only way out via OASIS access. This makes this virtual world the perfect machine for the greedy to manipulate the desperate. In fact, despite racing against them from the start and later ing the rebellion, Wade still uses IOI tech to access the OASIS throughout the movie.

The OASIS is a parallel to internet-obsessed culture, and you can see this best in how the film's much-discussed nostalgia is used.

It's easy to say The OASIS is the last safe haven, but that's a fake truth. While it offers an escape, nobody knows each other - just the version they want to present. It's a parallel to internet-obsessed culture, and you can see this best in how the film's much-discussed nostalgia is used. Gunters and their ilk are simply basking in the things they love, while IOI is trying to weaponize it, finding ways to manipulate it to make money. Nolan Sorrento is fascinating in this regard because he manipulates nostalgia, treating it as a product and a tool.

What Ready Player One Is Really Saying About Nostalgia

Ready Player One's Many Easter Eggs Have Been Called "Pandering," But There Is More To It Than That

Ready Player One has countless Easter Eggs and references to various fandoms and IPs, and this has earned it some criticism over the years. It's commonly believed that name-dropping books, movies, and various nostalgic media are a ploy to pander to audiences and, therefore, make more money. However, when delving into the movie's themes, there are far more important lessons concerning pop culture. Ready Player One is about balance. It's about enjoying games, movies, and TV shows but understanding that reality is far more important.

Why A Ready Player One Movie Sequel Never Happened

Delays & An Underwhelming Sequel Book Stalled Plans

Steven Speilberg's Ready Player One was released in 2018, and Ernest Cline released a book sequel, Ready Player Two, just a few years later in 2020. Shortly after the novel's release, Cline announced (via sequel could be on the way. However, it would be a challenging project.

Cline's Ready Player Two book received overwhelmingly negative reviews, which makes the idea of a movie based on the same story less than promising. Additionally, the book's sequel sees Wade continue to struggle with an even more dangerous OASIS addiction, which leads him and Samantha to break up. The emergence of the virtual James Halliday as an out-of-control AI villain also significantly contradicts the story Spielberg told. Therefore, if a Ready Player One movie sequel were to happen, it would likely look very different from Cline's book.

There's A Hidden Easter Egg That Reveals One Of Halliday's Clues

The Clue Is In The Movie's Music Score

There were plenty of Easter eggs hidden in The Oasis, although players had to find three specific ones to win the game. However, it also turns out that there was a hidden Easter egg that revealed one of Halliday's clues that many people missed until much later. This clue actually appeared in the music by composer Alan Silvestri. Specifically, there was something in the theme for "The OASIS" that viewers could hear when Wade first entered the VR world in the movie.

The track features Latin lyrics, giving it an ominous and almost religious feel. However, according to the Blu-ray special features, the lyrics have a hidden meaning and serve as a hidden Easter egg. The lyrics in the chorus are, "Father's egg, easter egg, find me, come find me." According to Silvestri, Spielberg wanted people entering the OASIS to be viewed as a "religious" experience, explaining the score. Silvestri added the Easter egg lyrics on his own (via CinemaBlend)

"This idea begins to develop that there is a place in the film where Samantha and Wade read the second clue. So, we're talking at lunch and it's like 'what is easter egg in Latin?' And it's ovum patrice tui. That's kinda cool. So that was it. That whole opening piece is the second clue of the film in Latin and the chorus is 'father's egg, easter egg, find me, come find me.'"

This leads to Ready Player One's clues, as the Latin lyrics that play when Wade Watts enters the OASIS actually say 'Easter egg,' hinting at what is to come.