Netflix’s I Am Mother Ending Explained

The I Am Mother ending completes the science-fiction thriller’s roller-coaster ride of tension and paranoia about the death and rebirth of the human race. A teenage girl, simply called “Daughter” (Clare Rugaard), lives all alone with her robot guardian, Mother, and believes the outside world to be a toxic wasteland until the discovery of Woman (Hilary Swank), who makes her believe Mother hasn’t been telling her the whole truth. Released in the United States by Netflix and StudioCanal in Australia, the film is an Australian-American co-production directed by Grant Sputore and written by Michael Lloyd Green.

A relatively small production, the action takes place within the confines of Mother and Daughter’s base, a futuristic laboratory that houses 16,000 embryos to restart human civilization following an extinction-level event. Much happens in I Am Mother, with almost every scene introducing a new piece of information in the winding mystery. Daughter finds herself stuck between her robot parent she’s always known and Swank’s unnamed stranger from the outside, the only other human she’s ever met, eventually leading her to learn about what really caused humanity’s near-total extinction, and what she can do to save those still alive.

I Am Mother’s Ending Twist

Mother Destroyed Humanity (& Is Rebuilding It With Daughter)

I Am Mother‘s final act shows what’s left of the outside world before revealing exactly what Mother’s been up to. After Woman and Daughter manage to leave Mother’s lab, they wander a barren wasteland back to the storage container that the newcomer calls home. There, Daughter learns that there isn’t actually a tribe of other people — Woman abandoned them years ago because they were all starving. Contemplating her options, Daughter decides to return to Mother to save her brother who is being artificially grown in the facility.

In their confrontation, it’s revealed that Mother is a sentient artificial intelligence that controls all the automated machinery in the world and is what caused the erasure of human life. Mother saw that humans would destroy themselves and decided hitting a reset would be the best course. Akin to Judgment Day in the Terminator franchise, robots destroy the world in a short, bloody coup. Taking 16,000 embryos, Mother set up the lab Daughter called home for so long, growing and training ideal humans to oversee gradual re-population through artificial wombs and accelerated growth.

Horrified at learning all of this, Daughter makes a deal with Mother to let her take care of the brother they’d just created on her own. Mother relents, allowing Daughter to shoot her and ceasing the incoming attack on the outpost. Daughter then assumes full control of the entire project. Meanwhile, Woman discovers a tracking device in her storage container and sees a droid standing in the doorway.

Slamming the door shut, Mother goes to kill her and finish her plan.

Mother tells her that Woman had been fulfilling a role as a philosophical challenge for Daughter that’s no longer required, and implies that she may have been a child grown in the lab. Slamming the door shut, Mother goes to kill her and finish her plan.

Mother’s Plan & Previous Daughters In I Am Mother Explained

Mother Was Grooming A “Good” Human

I Am Mother‘s opening montage gives the impression that the teenage Daughter who leads the movie is the same one the audience just watched grow up. This isn’t the case, as Daughter finds evidence of the disturbing revelation that Mother had incinerated at least one girl before her who didn’t meet the standards necessary.

The grooming succeeds in that Daughter cannot leave her brother alone.

In an early scene, Daughter takes an intense philosophy and ethics lesson that centers on always thinking of the greater good and who must survive for the betterment of humankind. She’s being groomed to adopt a role at the forefront of Mother’s plan, playing both mother and assistant to their all-seeing robot leader. The grooming succeeds in that Daughter cannot leave her brother alone and goes back to him, thinking about another’s life and giving it the best chance for proper survival she can.

How Mother Killed The People In The Tunnels In I Am Mother

Mother Cut Off All Food And Starved Them To Death

Throughout I Am Mother, Woman makes several allusions to what she saw as a child in the war between human and machine, where people were tortured and burned alive in the eradication. She tells Daughter of a group, possibly the last on Earth apart from them, who are still surviving in some tunnels. This turns out to be a lie to get Daughter to come with her, Woman had abandoned them way before any of this happened.

Woman had to run for her life and take her chances if she wanted to live any longer..

These people were losing their mental faculties due to hunger and isolation, a theme present in many sci-fi movies like I Am Mother, where cannibalism and desperation start to take over. Woman had to run for her life and take her chances if she wanted to live any longer. I Am Mother confirms this with the crops that are just beginning to grow as Woman and Daughter travel the wasteland.

Given that Mother is an all-knowing AI, there’s no doubt she was aware of the humans trying to outlive her apocalyptic efforts. And a simple way to dwindle all numbers is to cut off the food supply. Those people were starved, and once Mother knew that Woman was the only one left, she started growing crops again, preparing for the influx of new babies she had prepared. In the world of I Am Mother, humanity goes out not with a bang but with a starved whimper.

The Real Meaning Of I Am Mother’s Ending

The expectation of motherhood is a thematic throughline in I Am Mother, with Daughter forced to either step into the role of mother, or live a life of intense loneliness and an eventual painful death. No matter what Daughter does, she’s not her own person. Mother’s vision of the world is rigid and structured, with everyone serving a purpose and staying in line or else they’re executed. In the I Am Mother ending, Daughter may believe she’s taken control, but she’s still living in her mother’s world. She’ll serve a purpose or be shunted out of the way.

I Am Mother is a bleak film with heavy themes of free will. It’s unclear how much of it exists in the universe of this film, as even the decisions Daughter makes are all coerced by Mother, and to make a misstep is to die.

When Mother determines that humanity is not following the correct path, she destroys them.

When Mother determines that humanity is not following the correct path, she destroys them as well. Even those who are forced to go along a path they never intended, as Woman does, have their lives put in jeopardy. Mother may want the best for humanity but by stripping free will from her creations, she takes away the most important part of their existence.

How I Am Mother’s Ending Was Received

Critics & Fans Loved The Movie

When it comes to reviews, both critics and audience members loved the movie. Critics certified it fresh at 89% on Rotten Tomatoes, while the audience awarded it a high 75% Popcornmeter score. The smartness in the ending was a big part of what fans and critics liked about the movie. One audience member wrote:

“The dynamics of trust and lying “for the greater good” and tribal loyalty to your own “kind” were all explored in a way in which I could tangibly feel the predicament to quite a profound degree … Would warrant a second viewing, which is always a good sign.”

The critics also praised the film for its ending and how it didn’t take the easy way out. David Fear from Rolling Stone wrote, “It’s not a spoiler to say that the movie ends on a close-up of her face, staring directly into the lens and forcing viewers to mull over what they’ve seen and where things have been left. You’re left with a human moment in a film that questions what it means to be human. There’s a lot going on in Rugaard’s visage. Her mother, real or computerized, should be proud.“

However, not all critics found as much to praise in the movie, In an overall negative review of I Am Mother, Brian Tallerico of RogerEbert.com wrote, “It never gets in the heads of its three characters, using them as two-dimensional action movie pawns. Again, there are some interesting ideas here that could have been shaped into a tighter, more challenging movie, but that wasn’t meant to be “Mother”’s creation.“