'Bugonia' Ending Explained: Unpacking Everything It Says About Humanity

The 'Bugonia' Plot

Yorgos Lanthimos's black comedy thriller tells the story of Teddy Gatz (Jesse Plemons). He's an amateur beekeeper and a low-level warehouse employee at a megacorporation called Auxolith. Teddy is convinced that Auxolith's chemicals are causing Colony Collapse Disorder, which is destroying his hives.

Teddy takes this all very personally because years prior, an experimental drug trial run by Auxolith, turned his mother, Sandy (Alicia Silverstone), into a vegetable - not literally, she's just brain-dead.

Now, the angry Teddy has gone down an internet conspiracy rabbit hole and decided that Auxolith's CEO, Michelle Fuller (Emma Stone), is an alien-in-disguise from the Andromeda galaxy sent to destroy humanity, starting with the bees.

And Teddy has to stop this all from happening.

Bugonia's Plot Twists: Is Michelle An Alien? 

The plot kicks into high gear after Teddy kidnaps Michelle in order to prove that she is an alien on Earth.

Teddy's cousin, Don (Aidan Delbis), helps him with the kidnapping, but he becomes overwhelmed by guilt because of the torture he's witnessing. Don kills himself with a shotgun in front of Michelle, and this also rocks Teddy.

Michelle sees this guilt in Teddy as a way to fight back against her captors.

In the aftermath of that horrifying act, Michelle convinces Teddy that the "Andromedan cure" for his mother's condition is hidden inside an antifreeze bottle in her car. A desperate Teddy rushes to the hospital and injects the antifreeze into his mother's IV, killing her.

If you were feeling at all bad about this, the movie takes some guilt away because while Teddy is gone, Michelle finds a secret room revealing Teddy's previous victims.

It turns out, he's done this all before.

When Teddy returns, Michelle spins a long, complicated tale that she is, in fact, an alien. Michelle claims that aliens did arrive on Earth, but that they created humanity. But they're ashamed of their creation because humans—with their wars and climate change—are the ones destroying the planet, and the Andromedans have been trying to save them all along.

At this stage, it's unclear if she is telling the truth or just manipulating him.

The Crazy 'Bugonia' Ending

It's the night of a lunar eclipse and Michelle tells Teddy she will take him to her mothership via a teleportation closet in her office in order to prove that she's an alien.

But when they get to the office, we see Teddy is wearing a suicide bomber vest. So he's insulated himself from capture and maybe has nefarious ideas about what he could do to the aliens as well.

They sneak into Michelle's office, where Michelle types a long number into a calculator and tells Teddy to enter the closet. He does, and his vest detonates, killing him instantly.

It all seems like this was just one crazy story with Michelle as the sole survivor of all the violence.

The Final Bugonia Twist

Michelle is placed in an ambulance but she escapes, rushes back to her office, and goes to the same closet she put Teddy into. She uses the same calculator to activate what is revealed to be a real teleporter.

She beams up to her mothership, where it's confirmed: She is the Andromedan Empress hidden on Earth.

Teddy was right about all the details of the conspiracy, from his theories all along, and even truly knew about the design of their spacecraft.

Michelle circles up with her advisors and declares humanity a "failed experiment." She stands over a model of Earth and pops a bubble surrounding it. Instantly, every single person on the planet drops dead.

The film ends with a long montage set to Marlene Dietrich's "Where Have All the Flowers Gone?," showing corpses strewn across the globe.

But in a darkly comedic twist, the final image, of the movie is hopeful as we see bees finally returning to their hives.

'Bugonia' Title Explained 

The title itself is a key to the film's theme. A brief Google will show you that "Bugonia" is an ancient Greek word meaning "progeny from an ox." It refers to a myth that bees could be spontaneously generated from the carcass of an ox that was sacrificed without any blood being spilled.

Screenwriter Will Tracy explained in Time that this is a metaphor for the movie's message: "that there might be some opportunity or new life that could arise from the ashes of something that's quite corrupt."

'Bugonia' Ending Explained

Okay, so what the heck did all this mean?

I think we have to start with the idea that humans are ruining the planet, which was given to us as a gift. We're like if the bees in this movie were destroying their own hives, if that makes sense.

To me, it seems like Lanthimos is obsessed with the horrifying absurdity of human behavior. This movie is a brutal takedown of humanity's total inability to see the bigger picture.

In other words, we're so busy chasing conspiracies (like Teddy) or, on the flip side, burying our heads in corporate spreadsheets (like Michelle) that we can't see the planet is dying, and even if we do, we don't do anything about it.

The central joke of the movie is that Teddy is convinced aliens are destroying the world, but the reverse is true, with us bringing on climate change, engaging in wars, and suffering due to corporate greed. And the movie argues that the aliens aren't the villains; they're just the exterminators called in to deal with the infestation.

That's what makes the ending so nihilistic: we don't go out with a bang, or even a whimper. We're just basically erased.

Michelle ends our entire species with the same cold, bureaucratic indifference she used to run her pharmaceutical company.

It's as cold as her approving an experimental drug trial that kills Teddy's mom.

Summing It All Up 

This is one of those bonkers movies that leaves you thinking for a long time. All the twists and turns were pitch-perfect, taking the comedy to incredibly dark places.

I think if humanity is the disease on this earth, then at least we get to have high art like this film and to revel in our own destruction.

This is all my take, but I'm open to other interpretations.