0
0
No One Will Save You
No One Will Save You ending explained: What happened in Mill River?
No One Will Save You’s ending will leave you with many questions, particularly one essential one — is Brynn alive?
The movie’s last sequence leaves plenty of room for theorizing, that’s for sure.
This superb sci-fi thriller stars Kaitlyn Dever as Brynn, a woman who has lived a life of isolation after being ostracised by her local community of Mill River for a mistake in her past.
Since her mother died a few years earlier, she’s lived alone and hasn’t needed help – until now. One night, an alien invades her home and Brynn manages to fight it off, killing it with a piece from her model village.
The next day, she realizes that it wasn’t just a one-off and aliens are invading Mill River. However, things don’t pan out exactly as you’d expect.
Let’s dig into No One Will Save You’s ending to explain that wild finale.
Major spoilers ahead.
No One Will Save You ending: Does Brynn survive?
After the initial attack at her home, Brynn heads into town to get help and it soon becomes clear that nobody will help. They won’t even speak to her and the police chief’s wife spits on her, so Brynn does the only sensible thing: gets the hell out of town.
Or at least she tries to, but when she’s on the bus, Brynn is attacked by the local mailman who has seemingly been taken over by the aliens. Another passenger starts to attack Brynn too and although Brynn escapes to get back home, she sees another group of Mill River residents staring up at the sky on the way.
It’s clear the problem extends beyond her home as there are crop circles on everybody’s lawns, so Brynn decides to prepare herself for another night of alien invaders. During the second night, she manages to kill another couple of aliens, but there are just too many of them.
Brynn is caught in one of the spaceship’s tractor beams, freezing her in place while another alien pukes up a parasite that then forces its way into Brynn’s mouth. She wakes up with a start and her house looks normal, but something’s not right as she also sees her childhood friend Maude who died when she was 12.
“I’m sorry, Maude… I’m sorry,” Brynn tells her (in the movie’s only bit of dialogue) for reasons that will soon become clear. Knowing that it’s just a fantasy, Brynn manages to pull the parasite out of her throat.
From that parasite though, the aliens can create a fake Brynn who stabs the real Brynn. Fortunately, it’s not fatal and real Brynn manages to slice the fake Brynn’s throat with a Stanley knife she had tooled up with earlier in the evening.
As if she hadn’t gone through enough, another spaceship arrives and Brynn is caught again in its tractor beam and taken up into the ship. Several aliens observe as one of them touches Brynn’s forehead and sees her memories, including her building the model village with her late mother.
Most tellingly though, we finally see why Brynn has been shunned by Mill River residents and why she’s written apology letters to Maude. During a childhood argument, Brynn hit Maude – the daughter of the police chief and his wife – in the head with a rock, accidentally killing her.
The aliens continue to look on as Brynn comes face-to-face with her younger self and she puts her hand on young Brynn’s hand, finally acknowledging her childhood trauma and seemingly ready to move on with her life.
No One Will Save You explained: What’s happened in Mill River?
After witnessing this, the aliens decide to let Brynn go and they apparently move on from Mill River – or so we think.
The next day, Brynn heads into Mill River and it becomes clear that everybody in town has either been replaced by alien doubles, much like we saw the fake Brynn being created, or they’ve been taken over.
Regardless, Brynn isn’t living with humans anymore. As the residents of Mill River wave to Brynn, we hear the distinctive alien screeching that we hear throughout the movie.
Later that night, Brynn seems happier than ever as she takes part in a dance with everybody. It’s now effectively become the model village that she was building with her mother, as long as you ignore the fact that everybody but Brynn is now dead. A glance up to several spaceships in the sky suggests it didn’t just happen in Mill River either.
You might wonder whether Brynn died from being stabbed by fake Brynn, but she’s got signs of a healing head wound so she did survive and it’s not all some dying hallucination of a town she wanted to live in.
It’s something writer/director Brian Duffield believes too. “For Brynn, it’s not a delusion or anything,” he explained after the movie’s release.
“I love Brynn. I love her as a character and what she goes through, and I don’t have the heart to be a douchebag, and she gets her kicked so hard in the movie that I wanted our girl to be okay.”
However, Duffield did add that there is “material” in the movie to suggest that Brynn isn’t alive if you want a bleaker ending.
“You can interpret it [as a dream], especially because of where she is beforehand, but I don’t know how much I believe you can heal in a dream. I like bleak horror endings, but I like Brynn more than those,” he added.
Why did the aliens decide to leave Brynn alone? It’s not made entirely clear, but it’s possible they understood she was only fighting back against them due to her past trauma. With her coming to terms with her past, maybe they knew she’d no longer be an issue.
And since everybody in town hated her for years over a mistake in her childhood, it’s not like Brynn would miss any of them.
After all, like the song she continually plays (Ruby Murray’s ‘Knock on Any Door’) says, Mill River has now become a place where if you “knock on any door, you’ll find a welcome, rain or shine”.
A happy ending, of sorts.
No One Will Save You is available to watch now on Disney+ in the UK and Hulu in the US.
Ian has more than 10 years of movie journalism experience as a writer and editor. Starting as an intern at trade bible Screen International, he was promoted to report and analyze UK box-office results, as well as carving his niche with horror movies, and attending genre festivals around the world. After moving to Digital Spy, initially as a TV writer, he was nominated for New Digital Talent of the Year at the PPA Digital Awards. He became a movie editor in 2019, in which role he has interviewed 100s of stars, including Chris Hemsworth, Florence Pugh, Keanu Reeves, Idris Elba, and Olivia Colman, became a human encyclopedia for Marvel and appeared as an expert guest on BBC News and on-stage at MCM Comic-Con. Where he can, he continues to push his horror agenda – whether his editor likes it or not.
The Last of Us Season 2 reportedly eyeing the No One Will Save You star for the divisive Abby role
The ever-so-divisive Abby Anderson will be making her presence known in Season 2 of HBO’s The Last of Us adaptation. While pen reportedly hasn’t yet been put to paper, the showrunners may be close to inking a deal with Kaitlyn Dever of recent ‘No One Will Save You’ fame.
Much like it was in the gaming sphere back in 2013, The Last of Us proved to be an unprecedented smash-hit for HBO with the 2023 live-action adaptation. Reaching millions of viewers across its first season, it instantly became one of HBO’s hottest properties.
The article continues after the ad
As a result, you may have been fiending for any scrap of intel on the highly-anticipated second season. A season set to follow the events of The Last of Us Part 2, and thus, events involving the controversial character of Abby.
The article continues after the ad
Although showrunner Craig Mazin teased the role had been cast as early as August, no official announcement has been made on who may step into Abby’s shoes. Though now, new reports suggest such news may be imminent, with one clear frontrunner for the job.
26-year-old Kaitlyn Dever is reportedly in talks for the contentious role, according to former Variety reporter Jeff Sneider.
While it’s worth taking the report with a grain of salt for now, Sneider’s sources have certainly been reliable in the past. Furthermore, as highlighted, Mazin currently follows Dever on Instagram, lending credence to the idea of her as Abby.
Subscribe to our newsletter for the latest updates on Esports, Gaming, and more.
Previously, Dever even auditioned for the role of Ellie, a gig that ultimately went to Bella Ramsey. Thus, the showrunners would be familiar with her acting prowess.
Most recently, Dever stole the spotlight in Netflix’s No One Will Save You, a silent role that captivated thriller fans around the globe. The American actress has also appeared in the likes of Dopesick, and Booksmart, and perhaps most interestingly, was credited for Cassie Drake in Naughty Dog’s Uncharted 4. A game near and dear to director Neil Druckmann’s heart.
For the time being, a deal is yet to be finalized, according to the report. Though with news now circulating, it should only be a matter of time until we hear one way or another.
Filming for Season 2 is set to commence on January 7, 2024, leaving just a small window to finalize any remaining cast members.
No One Will Save You, Director Brian Duffield, Says He Won’t Even Talk to Warner Bros.
!['No One Will Save You' Director Answers Every Question You Have [Spoilers]](https://static1.colliderimages.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/no-one-will-save-you-brian-duffield-interview.jpg "No One Will Save You, Director Brian Duffield, Says He Won't Even Talk to Warner Bros.")
The filmmaker presumably doesn’t feel safe that any work he did would be completed and released.
Brian Duffield, the writer and filmmaker whose No One Will Save You was the most-streamed movie in America earlier this fall, has taken a strong stance against Warner Bros. Discovery. As part of the discourse surrounding Coyote vs. Acme, Duffield revealed on social media that he had previously instructed his representatives that he would not consider working with the studio, which has been at the center of several recent controversies. Duffield’s tweet is an indication of just how frustrated some in Hollywood have become with Warners’ new management, which has been slashing production and staffing costs while management escapes more or less unscathed.
Warner Bros. is not the only studio to shelve completed or nearly-completed projects in recent years — reportedly for the tax credits the company can get if they call a big project a total loss — but they are the ones who popularized the practice, and the ones who have been the most aggressive about it. Filmmakers have been saying for over a year that it makes them nervous about working with Warner Bros. since you can do months or years of work, only to have the project scrapped. That also means you lose all your future royalties and residuals, since a movie nobody is watching, does not have audience metrics to measure bonuses by.
That’s the conversation that came up again on social media over the weekend, with fans speculating about whether the move might chase off talent. A handful of smaller creators said they would never work with Warner Bros. — although it’s a lot easier said than done when you need the work. Duffield, though, is pretty well set.
You can see his remarks below.
Discovery boss David Zaslav, who became the Warner Bros. CEO following the companies’ merger in April 2022, earned a truly massive compensation package for that year, with bonuses and stock options reportedly totaling more than $200 million. The acquisition of Warner Bros. saddled Discovery with billions in debt, though, and so as soon as he came on board, Zaslav directed the company to start cutting costs wherever possible. Among other things, this famously led to the cancellation of the Batgirl movie and Scoob!: Holiday Haunt, both of which were almost completely done, and both of which were based on big pieces of intellectual property for Warner Bros. and seemed likely to be profitable considering their relatively low budgets.
Since then, creatives in Hollywood have been up in arms, and during the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes, Zaslav became an easy target for the ire of…well, pretty much everyone. That had died down a little bit, but almost immediately after the actors’ strike ended, Warners announced plans to shelve Coyote vs. Acme, a fully completed film that had already been shown to test audiences and done very well. Not only did the internet have opinions this time around, but the people who made the movie didn’t stay as quiet as previous creative teams did.
Composer Steven Price called out “bizarre anti-art studio financial shenanigans,” and the movie’s director said he was “beyond devastated by WB’s decision.”
The studio has since changed course and will allow other distributors to bid on the movie rather than giving up on it entirely.
Average Rating