The alien invasion movie Captive State has proven a minor hit on Netflix UK; despite being a box office bomb when it came out in 2019, it's been hanging out on the streaming service's most-watched movies list ever since hitting its library on Friday, March 1.
Starring Ashton Sanders, John Goodman, Vera Farmiga and Jonathan Majors, the movie follows the inhabitants in a neighborhood of Chicago nine years after aliens invade and take power over Earth. A plot to destroy an underground bunker for the aliens in Chicago causes families to come together, while the police are hot on their tails.
If you've seen Captive State, you'll know that it ends with some degree of ambiguity, and it's not quite clear whether we're seeing a happy or sad ending. That's because lots of information is hidden in the credits or is only implied, so you may have missed it.
That's why we've written this Captive State ending explainer, to help clear up some details. Spoilers ensue.
What was Detective Mulligan doing at the end?
At the end of the movie, Detective Mulligan (Goodman) is summoned to visit the aliens in their underground "Closed Zone" after his success in dismantling the resistance network.
However we learn that he's not actually a bad guy, and this has been his plot the whole time. As the movie comes to an end, he's covered in the rippling reflecting substance that we saw earlier in the film, as it shows that someone is covered in a hidden explosive vest. Mulligan is actually planning to blow up the aliens in Chicago, and his foiling the stadium attack and capturing Rafe was always part of the plan.
Were the aliens defeated at the end?
With the above in mind, the aliens were blown up in Chicago, but what about everyone else?
A little graphic during the credits shows a red cross appearing over Chicago, then others springing up over other US cities like Detroit, Washington and Philadelphia. We also see footage of people celebrating in the streets.
This is presumably meant to indicate that the aliens were fully overthrown in Chicago and then the same happened across the US, and presumably the rest of the world too. Whether that's going to be enough to defeat aliens who very easily invaded the Earth is open to interpretation, but the theme of the film is about uprising.
Either way, it may not be enough for all of our characters...
What happened to Rafe?
Rafe (Jonathan Majors) is the brother to our main character Gabriel, and is one of the most important people in the terror network. He's the only survivor of the stadium attack, but is captured and imprisoned afterwards, until Mulligan frees him in exchange for Gabriel's help ending the terror network.
Near the end of the movie, we catch up with Rafe, and "free" might be a stretch, as he's being shepherded along with other people to an alien spaceship on a quay
Previously in the movie, it was established that some criminals and dissidents had been moved to the alien's homeworld for some unspecified purpose, and this is clearly happening to Rafe as well.
While we don't know what fate awaits him on the alien planet, it's probably not going to be a pretty one, especially with what happens on Earth immediately after his departure.
What happened to Gabriel?
Gabriel (Ashton Sanders) manages to get away pretty scott-free given that he was arrested for domestic terrorism against the aliens.
The last time we see him, he's back at his job. If you'll remember, his job was to look through storage drives like memory cards to find important information, and upload anything useful for the aliens to see before destroying the drive. In other words, it sounds like an important task that you wouldn't necessarily want to delegate to someone who's been caught plotting against you.
Still, he's just lost his brother, so it's not all sunshine and roses.
Who was Jane Doe?
Jane Doe (Vera Farmiga) was the ringleader of the resistance. She was a prostitute who used her job to gain valuable information about the aliens (from their sympathizers, not the aliens themselves) and used this to orchestrate plots to attack them.
However at the end of the movie, the ties between her, Mulligan and Gabriel's family are revealed. Before the alien invasion, Doe (or as she was then called, Priscilla Scott) was a school teacher. Gabe and Rafe's mother taught at the school, and she also knew Mulligan this way too.
