2016’s Arrival, directed by Denis Villeneuve, is one of the best science fiction movies to ever be released. Though he’s now more well known for his work on films like Dune and Blade Runner 2049, one of Villeneuve’s best outings has to be Arrival, which tells the story of extra-terrestrial’s arriving at Earth, leaving humans to discover what their intentions are. Indeed, the aliens are not really what the story is about — it is about how people would react to seeing aliens and, specifically, how far one person would be willing to go to protect their home planet if an invasion were to occur.

Playing with the ideas of time-travel and alien life forms being able to learn from humanity, Villeneuve alters what the audience thinks they know by the end of Arrival. In fact, the film’s ending leaves viewers with more questions than answers and will keep everyone pondering for days, weeks, or even months, after finishing the movie. This is what Arrival is really about and what this movie’s ending actually means.

Arrival Release Date November 10, 2016 Director Denis Villeneuve Cast Amy Adams, Jeremy Renner, Forest Whitaker, Michael Stuhlbarg, Mark O’Brien, Tzi Ma Rating PG-13 Main Genre Sci-Fi

What Is Arrival About?
Paramount Pictures

Based on the 1998 short story called “Story of Your Life” by Ted Chiang, Arrival tells the tale of Louise Banks (played by Amy Adams), a language expert and professor, who is recruited by the U.S. Army’s Colonel Weber (Forest Whitaker) to try to communicate with a group of aliens who have come to Earth. Throughout the film, Louise sees flashes of her daughter, Hannah, who died at age 12 from an illness that couldn’t be cured. Alongside physicist Ian Donnelly (Jeremy Renner), Louise must discover what these aliens want in an effort to prevent another world war. When rogue soldiers attempt to blow up the alien spacecraft, they almost start that war, but their actions are responsible for leading Louise to the truth.

She continues to experience visions about how she can help prevent all of this from coming to fruition — by working with the China’s General Shang (Tzi Ma) to show the aliens they mean no harm. Learning their language, Louise is able to stop the incursion and save her planet, but the sacrifice is greater than most people believe. Elsewhere, Connelly admits his love for her, and she eventually writes a book about the aliens, now known as Heptapods, and what time is like for them, teaching humans their ways.

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What Did the Heptapods Want?
Paramount Pictures

Fans of the television show Torchwood, a spin-off of Doctor Who, might notice that these aliens share very similar aspects to the 456 from the season, titled Children of Earth. They are both housed in a glass room, are surrounded by a fog-like atmosphere, and want something specific from the humans. Despite all of this, the two are not in any way related, and the 456 are much more aggressive and dangerous than the Heptapods in Arrival seem to be.

Overall, the Heptapods tell Louise that they need her help because, 3000 years in the future, they are experiencing a massive crisis and only by passing on the gifts of how time works to the humans can they be saved.

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What Arrival’s Twist Ending Really Means
Paramount Pictures

What is so unique about Arrival is how it effectively starts at the ending. At one point, Louise asks, “Who is this child?”, leaving viewers to wonder how she does not know her own daughter. The visions and flashes Louise is seeing are not her past, but her future. The Heptapods seem to need special children to be born in order for their future to be saved from whatever is happening to them. Hannah is the child Louise is meant to have with Ian, and despite knowing that she will lose her daughter at such a young age, she still agrees to a relationship with the man (and, by extension, her family’s fate).

The wildest part is that many Arrival fans have theorized that Hannah only dies because Louise and Ian both remove their hazmat suits in the atmosphere of the aliens, exposing themselves to something otherworldly. Whatever the cause, the film’s open ending does not completely resolve all the questions those watching might have.

The ending of Arrival also makes it seem like humans will interact with these creatures again, but no sequel is being produced at the time of this writing. Having earned $203.4 million, against a production budget of $47 million, Arrival was a box office success, and another film could tie up the loose ends about what issues the Heptapods were having that required humanities help in the first place.

Stream Arrival on Paramount+