M3GAN 2.0’s ending is a chaotic overstimulating montage of military action sequences. The end of the first film almost had us believing that M3GAN was gone for good; however, the last scene of the film made us believe that while she didn’t have a physical form, she’d uploaded herself onto Elsie, Gemma’s AI assistant. Hiding in Elsie for 2 years, M3GAN shows herself again when Cady and Gemma find themselves in grave danger. See, we know that Kurt, David’s assistant from the first film, stole Gemma’s code and probably sold it to someone. Now, someone’s used the code to create a military-grade weapon; this time, she’s not M3GAN, she’s Amelia. Thinking Amelia is self-operating, M3GAN convinces Gemma and her team, Tess and Cole, that she’s the only entity in the world that can defeat Amelia and save the world from a full-on disaster. Does she succeed, or does she end up dead? Let’s find out.
Spoiler Alert
Who Is The Real Villain Of M3GAN?
The film throws many twists and turns at us, not including M3GAN’s iconic groovy moves, and one of them is that Amelia is, in fact, being controlled. Now, you would’ve probably seen this coming from a mile away, because if a man named Christian says his name should be pronounced “Christi-yan,” then you know he’s up to no good. Christian is an anti-AI advocate, and since what happened in M3GAN, Gemma has joined his side too, while also being romantically inclined (though he’s not her type). In the second half of the film, Cady gets kidnapped and taken away to a facility that holds a motherboard that held the original villain AI made in 1984 by a company named Xenox. Amelia’s objective is to get to the motherboard and take control of it, putting all of mankind at risk. However, the truth is, she’s got no objective of her own; she’s a puppet, controlled by Christian. Christian’s already killed a number of people using Amelia, making her look like the real enemy. This is because he wants to fill people with the fear of AI. I suppose Christian wants to eventually experiment with the code in the motherboard, which many years ago gave rise to killer-household-robots. These robots eventually realized they could only function at maximum efficiency if the humans weren’t around anymore, so they released a gas and killed them all.
Christian is what you would call an extremist; he kills the Chinese ambassador to protect the tech and makes the world see that they shouldn’t be fighting nation vs. nation, but all nations vs. AI. He also kills Alton Apelton, essentially the Musk of this film, who controls most of the cloud networking of North America. This means Christian can now control most of North America. More importantly, Alton’s company created a neurochip that essentially makes humans cyborgs. Alton couldn’t walk, and having the chip implanted allowed him to stand. But later, Christian, who wants Gemma on his team because she’s the creator of M3GAN, puts this chip in Gemma because she refuses to join his cause.
In order to save Tess, Gemma, and themselves, Cole and Cady decide it’s best to activate Amelia and reprogram her to pair with Cady, because there’s got to be some M3GAN left in her. Cady pairs with Amelia and tells her that there are some bad people she needs to fight, but this sends her into overdrive, and we see another murder spree, but this time on a grander scale. While it seems M3GAN may have feelings (in turn allowing her to think morally), like Cady believes, Amelia’s a perfect robot, so to speak, so there’s no stopping her there. Eventually, when Christian sets up the place to self-destruct, Amelia stops him because she now has an objective: wanting to be with her own kind, i.e., using the motherboard to create more robots and destroy the world as we know it. But she kills him in the process, then takes his severed hand to unlock the motherboard vault and connects with it, making her the most autonomous, indestructible force ever. But hey, we’ve got emotion-feeling M3GAN on the other side, okay?
Did The Robot Die and Save the World?
In M3GAN 2.0’s ending, the titular robot has already been captured by Christian’s people, so she’s basically immobile, but she transfers herself into Gemma’s neurchip. This means they can both “operate” or “control” Gemma. This allows Gemma to fight all the guys going after her, thinking she created Amelia, but eventually, when it comes to fighting Amelia herself, M3GAN asks Gemma to put her back in her physical form so that she can use the thing she put in her arm, an EMP device that’ll destroy anything electronic around her. Gemma hits the button on the back of her phone and destroys what she created herself, M3GAN, the robot she couldn’t leave behind. It leaves both her and Cady heartbroken, but they’ve essentially saved mankind, so no hard feelings, eh? But is M3GAN really dead? The final scenes of the movie show Gemma returning to her position of trying to change the world and protect it from AI, but not in the way Christian wanted to. She believes that AI can be a tool for good if used the right way, but more importantly, if taught the right things. In essence, the entire movie is about parenting yet again, but this time, Cady isn’t the only daughter; M3GAN is, too. M3GAN repeats to Cady what she told her before, “I’m doing this because it’s the right thing to do.” Cady didn’t have to put morality in M3GAN’s code; she just had to teach it to her.
Finally, it’s revealed in Gemma’s computer, when she’s writing down a speech, that M3GAN is still alive, and she obviously created a backup before setting off to save the world. With M3GAN back, we can always expect another installment in the franchise. When it comes to AI, there’s always a threat, and who better than a morally sane AI “doll” to save the day? Also, the FBI agent, Sattler, is alive and well and believes in AI again despite having nearly been killed by Amelia. Tess also looks to be okay, and Cole’s alive and well, so the team’s still good. As for Cady and Gemma, their journey will continue, and Cady may even become the next Gemma, who knows?
