In The End We Start From, torrential rain and flooding sees the low-lying areas of the UK completely washed away, forcing people into shelters. As food runs low, people take to looting and extreme measures, and it's this world in which our main character embarks on a quest to find safety for her new-born baby.
The movie has quite an abstract narrative, letting you put the pieces together to work out what's happening instead of giving you all the details. One example is how the entire The End We Start From cast aren't given names, just letters.
If you've watched The End We Start From, you might therefore have been confused about a few details through the story. So to help you understand what actually happened, and what you don't actually need to worry about, we'll explain the ending for you.
Where did the mother and baby Zeb end up?
Most of the locations of The End We Start From aren't named, so while the mother takes her baby from London to a shelter, to a remote island, and then back to London, we don't know her exact journey.
They end up right back in the mother's home, though, which is looking a little worse for wear but is still standing. This is in a suburb of London which isn't named.
Her husband, played by Joel Fry, finds his way home too, so they can be a family unit all together.
What happened to Britain at the end?
At the end of the story we see London, and it's still very flooded in its lower-lying areas, with characters needing to use boats to get around.
However a radio tells us that water levels are dropping, and some cities like Bath and whichever suburb of London that the mother lived in are inhabitable.
It's implied that, by the end of the film, the worst of the crisis is over and Britain is rebuilding its infrastructure and cities. That's the case for the mother, her husband and baby Zeb too, as the former makes plans to rebuild their home.
What caused the apocalypse events?
In The End We Start From, the apocalypse isn't zombies or an alien invasion or even a nuclear attack, but is something we see all the time in the UK: rain.
It's an environmental crisis where it just keeps raining, more than the infrastructure can keep up with. Flooding destroys homes and crops, so people don't have a place to stay and there isn't enough food being grown.
Where was Joel Fry's character through the story?
While he sticks with the mother for a while, Joel Fry's character (her husband) leaves them when the shelter they try to visit will only let one of them in with the child.
The mother keeps seeing her partner, but these are just visions and flashbacks, not really him. She finally sees him in the flesh right at the end, when he returns to their home shortly after she does.
So what did he do during the intervening months? Well, we never find out, though "shaving" wasn't on the agenda apparently.
Why did the mother leave the island?
For a while, the mother has shelter in an island commune with her baby, her companion and her baby, and several other women. They have food and comfort and even electricity... but then the mother leaves.
Why does she do this? Well, it happens not long after the characters hear on the radio that the government is rebuilding society, and given the mother's next action is to return to her old home, maybe she just got home sick.
The mother also tells the owner of the commune that they're too sheltered and are ignoring the rest of the world. That's also why Benedict Cumberbatch's character left the commune.
What happened to Benedict Cumberbatch's character?
In the middle of the film, Jodie Comer's character and her companion meet a stranger played by Benedict Cumberbatch. They share food, have a campfire, share vodka and dance a little, while he tells them of his story.
So what happened to him after that? He tells the mother that he's grieving losing his wife and children after a bridge they were on collapsed, but that he plans to return to their family home in the city.
His fate is left ambiguous, so we don't know if he succeeded in his mission. But seeing what London was like at the end of the movie, hopefully he did.
What was up with the creepy couple at the end?
When the mother is journeying to London, she comes across a creepy woman standing by a car in the woods, whose husband is nearby. What was up with these guys?
We never find out, but the woman's repeated "no" seems targeted more at her husband than the mother, imploring him not to do whatever he was planning to do... suggesting that they had ill intent. Maybe they wanted to rob her, or even murder her.
Either way, the mother turns the tables on them by stealing their car and driving away, so they never got to carry out any evil plans.
What happens to the parents?
The parents of Joel Fry's character, played by Mark Strong and Nina Sosanya, give the man and the mother shelter during the first phase of the flooding. But then they vanish, so what happened?
Well, we hear from Joel Fry that his mother was trampled to death at a food rally, with people crushing her as they swarmed to get food.
Shortly afterward, miserable about his wife's death, Mark Strong's character walks into the woods and shoots himself to death.
