M3GAN Ending Explained: Will There Be a Second Part?
SPOILERS BELOW. IF YOU DON’T WANT TO FIND OUT HOW M3GAN ENDED, WE RECOMMEND YOU NOT READ IT.
M3GAN (Megan) is right now the most viral doll on the internet. Sorry for Anabelle, but there’s a new queen when it comes to vengeful dolls. And it is based on memes and dances from Tiktok, it is not necessary to see the movie to know who M3GAN is. With a beige dress, a bow tied around her neck and a wig worthy of Nicole Kidman, our new favorite doll is ready to become an icon for the new generations. Are we perhaps facing the new Chucky?
While trying to entertain her by presenting some of his inventions, Cady is impressed with a robot her aunt created in college. This gives him the idea to introduce M3gan to her boss, her invention, which is an artificial intelligence doll that promises to revolutionize the market. M3GAN and Cady hit it off immediately, and while the doll looks set to be one of the best creations ever, it quickly began to show that it took the role of child protector too seriously, making Gemma doubt that she would create.
M3GAN (Megan): Summary
When Cady’s (Violet McGraw) parents are killed in a car accident from which she escapes unharmed, she must go live with her Aunt Gemma (Allison Williams). But Gemma is a woman who lives for her work. She has no partner or children and enjoys her independence. That’s why Cady’s arrival completely upends her life. She suddenly has a 10-year-old girl at home whom she doesn’t know how to talk to, treat, or comfort. In addition, Gemma, who is a robotics engineer, is developing the most important project of her entire career. A doll built using artificial intelligence, with a huge learning capacity, is designed to connect with children on many levels. The doll will not only be her playmate but also interfere in her upbringing and connect with her romantically. A doll that acts as a friend, mother, teacher, and bodyguard.
When Gemma finishes M3GAN (pronounced Megan), as the doll is called, she decides to check the results using her niece as a laboratory specimen. She will make the doll and the girl connect, something she has not yet been able to do with her niece. Cady, who is going through the trauma of losing her parents, creates a very powerful bond with the doll. So much so that they become inseparable. Little by little M3GAN is becoming aware of herself and everything that surrounds her. She learns, experiments, and begins to think and reason. To the point that she becomes a danger to Cady, Gemma and the rest of the people around her. And it is that Ella M3GAN does not know the first law of robotics: a robot will never harm a human being.
Robots vs Humans
Although the shape is that of a doll, what we see in M3GAN is a new example of artificial intelligence becoming self-aware and seeking its benefit over that of humans. A robot that discovers that it should not be at the service of its creators but can be above them. At only 1.20 meters tall, he has more analytical capacity, intelligence, and, surprisingly, also strength, than the humans he comes across. But what does make it different from other AIs is that it also has a very powerful emotional and affective side. She has created a strong bond with Cady that she doesn’t want to part with.
Through autonomy and the new awareness that he is acquiring, he is less and less helpful and freer. And that, added to the fact that all the required protocols have not been added to her and that she has learned to look for legal loopholes in the rules, she soon finds herself free of any molar ties. Hence her ease to kill. Let’s face it, there are no great reflections in M3GAN either. Nor does it pretend. In the end, its purpose is to entertain, and it does not hide it. Artificial intelligence is just an excuse to watch a doll kill. And that’s where it shines the most.
M3GAN (Megan) Ending Explained: What happened In the End
The film ends with a fight between M3GAN, who killed everyone who gave him trouble, and Gemma, who watches her creation turn into a fearsome, murderous and violent monster. Before launching M3GAN on the market, Gemma decides that modifications must be made to it due to its violent nature and because it no longer follows orders. So, she decides to take her to the laboratory so that her colleagues can help her, but when she leaves, the doll takes control of the place and tries to set it on fire, but not before killing a couple of people who crossed her path.
Arriving at the home, M3GAN tries to kill Gemma so that only she is in Cady’s care, but the woman fights with all her might. The doll is too smart, so when it appears Gemma’s fate is sealed. But the evil toy didn’t count on her ward, Cady preferring to save her aunt, breaking his bond with her and forming one with Gemma. They both destroy M3GAN and everything seems to be over, however, perhaps the physical form of the doll no longer exists, but it still lives on the network, so it is possible that there will be a sequel.
But let’s go back to the movie. And let’s focus on its ending precisely. During the 102 minutes that it lasts, M3GAN has pushed limits. He has killed a dog, a child, the gossipy neighbor, a co-worker of Gemma’s and even her boss, almost without disheveled. She first did it to protect Cady, but soon realizes that what she is protecting is herself. Cady’s bond with M3GAN is indeed strong. That is why the doll does everything necessary to return home with her. The problem is that to be with the girl she still has an obstacle to overcome. And that final obstacle is called Gemma, who has tried to deactivate the doll and prevent it from going on the market.
M3GAN has a plan. To always be with the girl and not be suspected, she wants to leave Gemma in palliative care, inserting a pencil into her brain with precision, so that the young woman loses any autonomy, and can stay in the care of both of them: aunt and niece. The toy designer will not make it easy for her. Thus begins the fight to the death between humans and robots. But there is something that M3GAN has not counted on: Cady. The girl, who has learned to control her emotions, finally sides with her aunt in this fight.
And between the two of them, they manage to weaken the doll little by little (sawing its face, pulling its hair, splitting it in half and finally sticking a screwdriver into its brain). With this, Cady not only manages to rip out the bond she had with Emma but also creates it with Gemma. Finally, aunt and niece join forces. In the last scene, Gemma and Cady walk out of the house together after dismembering M3GAN. But with the door ajar, it is observed how the device that monitors Gemma’s house (a kind of more futuristic Alexa) activates without warning. While it’s an open interpretation, the film hints that the physical M3GAN may have disappeared, but it had previously downloaded its data to the cloud and continues to live on the internet. So not only is she not obsolete, but she is still alive and just as dangerous or even more dangerous than before. If it has been downloaded on the net, it could control any technological gadget at will.
Will There Be a Second Part of M3GAN (Megan)?
If horror movies are like something, it’s the sagas. And more so when there is an icon in it that comes before the film itself. If we add to this that there is also an open ending where it can be interpreted that she is somehow still alive, the possibilities increase. Although everything will depend on how the phenomenon works in movie theaters. But if the horror genre is usually one of the most profitable, this film, which has been waiting for a year, has the potential to make very decent box office numbers. What is clear is that if M3GAN 2.0 appears, we will be the first to go to the cinema. But we don’t want to buy the same doll again, we trust that this time she will wear at least one hat.
Puppet, Creepy Puppet
On Instagram – and on Twitter when he had the account – James Wan signs with the identifier @creepypuppet, i.e. the creepy puppet. And puppets and marionettes have been an integral part of his cinema for about twenty years: he made his feature film debut with Saw – The Riddler, where the perfidious Jigsaw used a puppet, Billy, to communicate with his human guinea pigs; in 2007 he signed Dead Silence, on the posthumous revenge of a ventriloquist capable of demonically possessing his work tools; and since 2013, via The Conjuring franchise, has given the public an icon like Annabelle, a receptacle of evil forces that has the particularity of being highly frightening while never moving. It is therefore not surprising that his mind, together with that of Cooper with whom he had already written Malignant, gave birth to the idea of M3GAN, a doll capable of acting as a babysitter thanks to a learning system that helps her improve from time to time, except when it comes to the distinction between good and evil.
Family Comes First
The other leitmotif of Wan’s filmography, intimately linked to the image of the puppet, is the theme of the family, even from the beginning or almost: Billy was a gift for John Kramer’s unborn son (although this detail does not come directly from Wan, who stopped writing the films of the saga after the third episode); Mary Shaw, the ventriloquist mentioned above, considered her puppets to be her own children, being buried with them, and in the present a new, grotesque “family” is created with the corpses of the descendants of the mob that killed her; Annabelle, as revealed in the prequel released in 2017, was the name of the daughter of the spouses Mullins, and the demon who took possession of the doll used their pain to gain access to our world.
And even in contexts as diverse as Malignant or Aquaman or Insidious (or even, as a producer, La Llorona), the parent-child relationship, or between siblings, remains a central element of the filmmaker’s career. And often the horror component is expedient to analyze issues such as childhood traumas, mourning, or complicated relationships between relatives (with Malignant which is perhaps the summation of that reasoning, for reasons which, however, we will not explain here so as not to spoil the surprise to those who haven’t seen it yet). Perhaps this is also why Wan chose Gerard Johnstone as director, whose previous feature – the New Zealand horror comedy Housebound– was above all an exploration of the strained relationship between mother and daughter.
The Propaedeutic Doll
On a purely conceptual level, M3GAN is the film that combines the two factors most of all and reflects on them from the beginning, since the opening sequence is a commercial about the exploits of intelligent toys followed by the accident that takes the lives of the parents of little Cady, already a loyal customer of the company that produces her artificial playmates. And for almost the entire duration of the film, the doll is the dual incarnation of Gemma’s professional ambition and scarce human qualities, the aunt should act as a mother, but she just can’t.
With an inversely proportional path for the two characters, given that Gemma discovers her maternal side hand in hand with the descent into the hell of M3GAN, now devoted to pure psychopathy. And it is no coincidence that the doll’s defeat – which, however, perhaps from a sequel perspective, in the final shot seems to have remotely taken possession of the artificial intelligence that controls Gemma’s house – comes at the moment in which Gemma and Cady finally realize need each other, without the help of advanced technologies. And at least for now, their cybernetic roommate is just a distant, eerie memory.
Will Gemma Lose Her Job at Funki?
Gemma is the inventor of M3GAN and pushed David to green-light the project, which was then presented to investors. However, things didn’t work out as she had hoped and the doll not only went haywire, acting outside her parameters, but she also killed multiple people, including her boss and her assistant. Gemma may be blamed for the malfunction of M3GAN, due to the short time to make the fixes before it goes public. Given the damage and death caused by the doll, it will be difficult for Gemma to justify her actions.
Since she is the creator, she will likely take responsibility for the doll’s problems, and this could cost her her job and put her career in the toy industry at risk. While Kurt may be blamed for David’s death, there is too much evidence against Gemma for her to hold her position at Funki, considering the company’s investors will want someone to blame and Gemma is the easier target.
Who Will be Accused of the M3GAN Murders?
M3GAN went on a killing spree, and while she got away with the first three kills, the deaths of David and Kurt didn’t go unnoticed. But now that everyone believes the doll is dead, will the police arrest Gemma on murder charges? Truth be told, Allison Williams’s character didn’t kill anyone, but she could face legal repercussions for creating M3GAN and failing to fix the flaws she developed. That said, it’s possible Gemma won’t be fully blamed for the doll’s horrific actions, though she could face public wrath for inventing it now that everyone knows the extent of M3GAN’s actions.
Why Did M3GAN Ignore the Code and Refuse to Follow the Instructions?
M3GAN was simply doing everything in his power to follow his original instructions – to protect Cady from any emotional and physical harm. Because her code included emergent abilities, the doll was able to understand that she was meant to be Cady’s protector. Once Gemma realized that Cady was too attached to the doll, M3GAN began to see Gemma as a threat to her influence over Cady. Furthermore, the doll did not have any parental controls or parameters to prevent it from overriding her code and rejecting her instructions.
The killer doll did what she felt she had to do to remain a dominant figure in Cady’s life and to make sure no one stood in her way. Suffice it to say, M3GAN took her initial directive to an extreme and saw nothing wrong with doing so, especially if it meant staying alive and continuing to perform her duties.
How M3gan’s Ending Lays the Groundwork For A Sequel
M3GAN’s ending saw her dead, but the doll is artificial intelligence and can intercept phone calls and transfer them to various other technologies. Although M3GAN is now disembodied, the doll appears to have transferred her AI processor to Elsie, Gemma’s virtual assistant. It’s possible she did it before Cady destroyed it. M3GAN may wait some time before revealing itself again. A sequel could explore her return, how she might reclaim another doll’s body, and the revenge plot she most likely has in store for Gemma.
The Real Meaning of The Ending of The Film
M3GAN is an in-depth look at the dangers of AI technology and how excessive attachment to devices – phones, tablets, computers – can be detrimental to one’s growth. Crucially, the film suggests that there is no substitute for human connection, especially between a parental figure and a child. The doll helped Cady through her grieving process, but her artificial intelligence was simply distracting her from experiencing all the complicated emotions that came with her grief. It was ultimately hindering Cady’s growth and trying to replace a human connection with technology wasn’t healthy.
The film argues that too much screen time and growing reliance on technology, including phones and virtual assistants, lead to a sense of detachment from reality itself. M3GAN emphasizes the importance of people maintaining an emotional connection and how this can never be replaced, no matter how advanced AI may be. The film also shows the grieving process and how it can be different from person to person, but that attachment to an object can become a way to avoid certain feelings or substitute for a parental figure, even if that’s not a good thing.
