The Great Flood ending explained: How does An-na escape the time loop? Does she reunite with her son, Ja-in?

On Friday, December 19, the South Korean sci-fi film, The Great Flood, was released on Netflix, starring Kim Da-mi and Park Hae-soo. Directed by Kim Byung-woo, The Great Flood focuses on an apocalyptic scenario, where a flood is expected to mark the end of humanity. An-na, mother of Ja-in, wakes up one day only to be surprised by the shockingly near-death of humans due to the great flood, and immediately takes her son to survive the flood.

However, it's soon revealed that An-na and her son are not just in an apocalyptic world, but they are stuck in a simulation, where a day in her life keeps repeating until she's able to save her son, Ja-in. The story's complexity builds over time as viewers realize that An-na was the one who created the simulation, and she volunteered as the first test subject to repopulate Earth in case of an apocalypse.

At the end of The Great Flood, An-na succeeds by breaking the time loop by finding her son, Ja-in, in the simulation. This was a quest that she designed to test her creation, an Emotion Engine, for synthetic humans who can aid in repopulating the Earth after all of humanity dies.

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The Great Flood's ending explained: What breaks the simulation, why was it created, and all you need to know

In the film, The Great Flood, An-na, who is showcased to be repeatedly waking up in the same apartment complex after dying multiple times in an attempt to find and save her son, Ja-in, is revealed to have been stuck in a simulation created by herself. An-na is a researcher who works at Isabela Labs, which is currently solving problems that might arise during an apocalyptic emergency.

The solution to repopulate Earth after such an apocalypse is to create synthetic humans. While they were able to replicate the mind and body of humans synthetically, the company had trouble recreating the emotions felt by humans. Therefore, An-na steps in to create an Emotion Engine. Currently, Isabela Labs created several synthetic human children, one of whom was Ja-in, to repopulate the earth.

However, since they would need humans to take care of them, there wouldn't be anyone to take care of the synthetic children after an apocalypse. So An-na put forth that they should create children first and then create mothers by attaching them to their children. She also designed a test simulation to see whether her Emotion Engine would work on the synthetic mother.

With the great flood threatening humanity, she volunteers herself as the first subject to test the Emotion Engine, and as per her design, she is made to relive one of the worst days of her life. An-na, a human caretaker of Ja-in, and the first part of the movie, where An-na and Ja-in are stuck in a flooding apartment complex, is part of reality. In reality, An-na is forced to leave Ja-in behind and escapes the flood in a helicopter.

However, she promises to come back to save him, and the simulation makes it happen. To truly test the ability of love and survival, An-na is made to endlessly work towards saving Ja-in from the apocalyptic scenario, and if she dies, she starts from the beginning without any memory of things that happened in the simulation. However, the simulation was not perfect, which aided An-na's escape from it soon.

Since there was no determined number of trials to predict An-na to save and find her son, the simulation was created without any set limits. Therefore, as An-na went through multiple variations of the day, she started to retain memory of not only the previous days of her simulation, but also regained memory from her reality, which soon made her understand it's a simulation.

An-na also realises that the other people in the apartment complex, including Ja-in, who are stuck in the simulation with her, are also gaining back memory. She soon realizes that she was put in the simulation to prove the credibility of her Emotion Engine, and the only way to break the time loop and escape the simulation is to save Ja-in.

With this knowledge, she finally finds Ja-in hiding in the cupboard, and upon rescuing him, Ja-in says that he has been hiding in the cupboard because she promised him that she would come back for him in reality. Therefore, both Ja-in and An-na slowly broke the simulation to find each other. Here, An-na also realizes that she set this quest since the necessity of a synthetic mother's transformation is not only attaining motherly emotions but also fulfilling a promise to her son.

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Therefore, in the movie, The Great Flood, An-na escapes the time loop and is reunited with her son, Ja-in, thereby passing her own test of the Emotion Engine for synthetic humans in case of an apocalypse.

Edited by Aishwarya Sai