The Great Flood ending explained: How maternal love became the key to saving humanity

Directed by Kim Byung-woo, The Great Flood is a South Korean sci-fi disaster film which was released on Netflix on December 19, 2025. The film stars Kim Da-mi as An-na, an artificial intelligence researcher, and Park Hae-soo as Hee-jo, a security agent.

The story initially follows a desperate struggle for survival as a catastrophic flood, triggered by an asteroid strike in Antarctica, submerges a high-rise apartment in Seoul. An-na fights through rising waters to save her young son, Ja-in, while Hee-jo attempts to evacuate her, revealing she holds the key to humanity's future.

Disclaimer: This article contains spoilers about The Great Flood. Viewers discretion is advised.

The Great Flood conclusion reveals that the events were largely a simulation. This digital cycle was designed to create emotionally capable artificial human mothers to repopulate a post-apocalyptic Earth. As biological life ends, these synthetic humans carry perfected maternal love into the stars to ensure humanity's legacy.

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The Great Flood ending explained: The truth behind the 21,499 simulation loops

In the final scenes of The Great Flood, the plot reveals a major secret. While the initial flood in Seoul was real, most of the film actually takes place inside a sophisticated computer simulation. The lead character, An-na, is an AI researcher who was working on an "Emotion Engine" to save humanity from extinction.

The simulation finally ends when An-na chooses to stay with the young boy, Ja-in, instead of saving herself. This proves she has developed true "maternal love." In previous attempts, the simulation would fail because An-na would either die too soon or prioritize her own escape.

However, in the final loop, she makes the conscious choice to stop running and simply hold the child, accepting death as long as they are together. This selfless act of unconditional love is exactly what the computer program was looking for. Once she chooses the child’s comfort over her own life, the simulation recognizes that the AI has successfully learned human emotion, finally bringing the cruel cycle to an end.

It also turns out that the real An-na had died long ago when a meteor hit her ship. Before she died, her brain was uploaded to a computer to teach robots how to feel human emotions. Since the real Earth is completely underwater and humans are gone, these robots are the only way to keep "humanity" alive.

The mid-credit scene in The Great Flood provides a hopeful but deep look at the future of humanity. After the main story ends, we see a laboratory where bio-printers have finished their work. This confirms that the simulation An-Na went through was a success.

The data from her 21,499 attempts at saving the boy was used to complete the "Emotion Engine." This technology allows artificial humans to finally feel real love and care for one another, which was the missing piece needed to rebuild society.

The scene shows that An-Na and Ja-in are not just a single pair. Instead, many shuttles are seen heading down toward Earth. These pods contain a new generation of synthetic humans who have been initialized with these perfected human emotions. Even though the original human race was mostly destroyed by the asteroid and the floods, these new "pioneers" are being sent to repopulate the planet.

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The Great Flood is streaming on Netflix.

Edited by Suchita Patnaha