Bugonia ending explained: Was Emma Stone’s Michelle an alien all along?

by

Yorgos Lanthimos’s latest film, starring Emma Stone, could be their most successful collaboration to date. Now that ‘Poor Things’ is in theaters, many are predicting it will soon receive numerous awards.

Inspired by the 2003 Korean movie Save the Green Planet!, Bugonia tells the story of two cousins who believe a major pharmaceutical company’s CEO is secretly an alien from a race called the Andromeans.

The film’s ending is a wild ride of unexpected events that build to a dramatic and possibly bleak conclusion.

Want a reminder of how the movie ended? Or maybe you haven’t seen it yet and are curious if Michelle turned out to be an alien? Either way, we’ve got a complete explanation for you below.

Bugonia ending explained: Was Emma Stone’s Michelle an alien all along?

After a traumatic experience involving kidnapping, physical assault, and bizarre accusations, Michelle Fuller (played by Emma Stone) is understandably trying to move on with her life.

Following a deeply unsettling electroshock session, Michelle’s kidnapper, Teddy (Jesse Plemons), comes to believe she’s not just an Andromedan, but their empress. Eager to treat her with respect, he lets her clean up, change clothes, and share a spaghetti dinner with him and his cousin, Don (Aidan Delbis).

As the dinner progresses, it’s revealed that Michelle and her friends intentionally harmed Teddy’s mother, Sandy (Alicia Silverstone), ultimately causing her to slip into a coma. The party quickly descends into mayhem, ending with a violent confrontation between Teddy and Michelle, where Michelle stabs Teddy with a fork.

The tense situation is broken when Casey, the unsettling Sheriff, arrives at the door, investigating Michelle’s disappearance. Don leads Michelle back to the basement while Casey and Teddy talk. Michelle tries to bargain with Don, offering to help him avoid prison if he’ll let her go, but Don unexpectedly shoots himself, resulting in his death.

After hearing a gunshot, Teddy kills Casey and then becomes enraged with Michelle. Michelle claims a bottle of antifreeze in her car is actually a special medicine from Andromeda that can revive Teddy’s mother. Desperate, Teddy races to the hospital and injects the liquid into his mother, only to discover it was just antifreeze. Back at the house, Michelle realizes Teddy has done this before – he’s kidnapped and killed others in the past who he believed were also from Andromeda.

After Sandy tragically dies from the antifreeze poisoning, a very angry Teddy rushes home on his bike to confront Michelle again.

To protect herself, Michelle pretends to be an alien from Andromeda. She tells a long story about how these aliens came to Earth and originally created people, but later became disappointed in how humans developed. Michelle says she now wants to help people overcome their tendency towards violence.

Michelle then agrees to take Teddy to the Andromedan headquarters.

She tells Teddy to drive her to work, and then insists her walk-in closet is a teleporter. She claims it will take them to the Andromedan home world once she enters a long sequence of numbers into a calculator.

Teddy surprised everyone by revealing he had a homemade bomb. He went into the closet, and a few moments later, the bomb exploded, killing him instantly.

Michelle was taken away in an ambulance, and thankfully, she appeared to be alright. She had managed to get away from the people who were obsessing over conspiracy theories, lived through an explosion, and, most importantly, she was confirmed to be a real person.

Right?

Okay, so get this – just when you think it’s over, Michelle somehow pulls herself out of the ambulance and crawls back to her office, hiding in her closet. And then… she gets beamed up to an alien mothership! Seriously, it turns out Michelle was an alien the whole time. I did not see that coming!

The scene then cuts to a strange and dreamlike conversation where Michelle talks with the Andromedan senate about whether or not to save humankind. Ultimately, they decide – as you might expect – that humanity isn’t worth the effort.

Michelle blows a bubble, and the scene immediately cuts to a strikingly eerie vision of everyone on Earth having died.

The film ends where it began, with bees returning to a now human-less earth.

What is the message of Bugonia?

Bugonia offers several thought-provoking themes, including a criticism of large corporations, a questioning of humanity’s value, and a complex exploration of morality where the distinction between right and wrong isn’t always clear.

Perhaps the most striking thing is how quickly people can lose sight of each other’s humanity – and how far they’ll go to justify their own beliefs, even if it means sacrificing their principles.

This message is a bit complicated, though. If Michelle was secretly an alien, does that excuse Teddy’s harsh and violent behavior towards her? Or does it show that even when we believe we’re doing the right thing, our actions can still be wrong and harmful?

I was really thinking about the movie after it ended, and something kept bothering me. What if Michelle wasn’t actually an alien at all? What if Teddy just grabbed a normal woman? Sure, she’d still have done some terrible things with that corporation and been involved in hurting Teddy’s mom, but would that really justify what happened to her? I honestly think if the movie had gone that route, it might have been even more powerful. I kept wondering about it during those last few minutes.

Bugonia’s ending is complex and will likely spark discussion for a long time to come. It’s a film that really benefits from a second watch, especially knowing how everything resolves.

Read More

2025-10-31 11:05