What if one morning you wake up and find out that the world is drowning? Netflix’s new Korean sci-fi disaster film The Great Flood is exactly what the title suggests and so much more. From a seemingly apocalyptic film, it transforms into a sci-fi drama where the future of mankind becomes the ultimately big question. At the center of the story is a mother, Gu An-na, and her six-year-old son, Ja-in. One morning An-na woke up to pouring rain; she decided to skip work and got busy making breakfast when she noticed there was water all around the apartment. She looked outside the window and discovered that there was a massive flood and a couple of floors of the apartment complex were already underwater. An-na had to immediately evacuate her apartment and leave with her son. She had to find an escape, but there didn’t seem to be any way out. Will An-na and Ja-in survive? Let’s find out.
Spoiler Alert
Was Ja-in a part of the scientific experiment?
As An-na and Ja-in tried to find an escape, they crossed paths with corporate security officer Hee-jo. He was tasked with finding An-na since she had the key to the future of humanity. An-na was a research officer who had been working on a secret project at a UN lab, Darwin Center. She was under the assumption that she was working at an AI development lab, but as it turned out, her job entailed way more than that. She was now responsible for creating a new mankind. There were only two researchers who had worked on developing the emotion engine of AI, An-na and the chief researcher, Hyeon-mo. Since Hyeon-mo had been missing, An-na was the only option the center had left. The idea was to create a human prototype with emotional intelligence, and An-na had already mastered developing the Emotion Engine.
As The Great Flood progresses, we find out that Ja-in was a crucial part of the experiment. Five years before the great flood, An-na had approached Hyeon-mo and proposed developing emotional intelligence through experience. But Hyeon-mo believed that training through experience might be a really long procedure, and they didn’t have the time for it. That was when An-na had suggested that they start with a newborn—create a baby synthetically, develop his thoughts and emotions before working on the mother. And that was when Ja-in was born. Not birthed but created scientifically to cater to an experiment. The idea was to study him in the next five years and use his emotional intelligence and thoughts as data for further development of the new mankind. Ja-in was not alone; Hyeon-mo had also raised a baby girl, Yu-jin, for the same experiment. The only condition was that An-na and Hyeon-mo were expected to return the children to the Darwin center after five years. An-na never considered how deeply attached she would eventually get to Ja-in. The first time he’d called her ‘mama,’ she felt an unexplainable joy, and it became her core memory. After she lost her husband to a drowning accident, she’d considered giving up Ja-in because she wasn’t sure if she was meant to be a mother. Since the Emotion Engine was already completed, Hyeon-mo mentioned that they no longer had to raise their children and the center would one day come and take their kids away. Hee-jo was sent by the center to not only rescue An-na from the flood but also to take away Ja-in. There’s no denying that her son and Yu-jin were guinea pigs. Hyeon-mo was determined not to give away her daughter to the center, so she chose to run away with her rather than watch Yu-jin be taken away.
An-na knew that eventually she would be separated from Ja-in, and she must have gotten a hint when Hee-jo showed up. But she’d tried to convince herself that the center would somehow help her Ja-in. By the time she made it to the roof of the building where the helicopter was waiting to take her away, she had no choice but to come to terms with the fact that the center would not let Ja-in go with her. They handcuffed him, shaved his head, and injected him with a sedative before extracting his memories, thoughts, and emotions. An-na helplessly watched, but before leaving in the helicopter, she begged the men to allow her to bid her son goodbye, and in that moment she whispered something to Ja-in that eventually becomes an important element in the film.
Was An-na stuck in a loop?
Due to an asteroid impact in Antarctica, glaciers had started to melt, and it also caused catastrophic rainfall and therefore ‘the great flood,’ ultimately resulting in the end of mankind. For the sake of the prevention of human extinction, An-na was transported to a temporary lab in space. Before she boarded the helicopter, Hee-jo and other security personnel were shot because the center didn’t have room for anyone who couldn’t contribute to the goal. Although An-na was the one who’d come up with the solution to build the Emotion Engine (she’d always known Ja-in would be eventually killed and his thoughts and emotions would be used for data), when the final moment came, she regretted her decisions and actions. She was apologetic for ever considering giving him away to the center before they even wanted him back. An-na boarded a spaceship, and she was immediately contacted by Hwi-so, the director of the Isabela lab. He informed her that tens of thousands of meteor fragments had hit Earth, resulting in the extinction of most life forms. Seven rockets had been launched by the Darwin Center, and they were all that remained of humanity. The goal, of course, was to remain alive and preserve the essence of humanity, and to do so, they had decided to produce a mother and her child.
The Isabela lab had cracked the code to develop human-like bodies, but it was only An-na who had figured out a way to incorporate the Emotion Engine into these artificially created human beings. Since the child’s thoughts, memories, and emotions were already created (Ja-in), An-na’s duty was to create the mother. This meant she had to find a subject who would be willing to participate. Due to time constraint, she proposed to create a simulation where the child would disappear and the mother would have to find him. They will intentionally create several obstacles in the simulation to test as well as hone the mother’s emotional intelligence, and the experiment would only be completed after the mother reunited with the child. But in case the experiment failed, the mother would be stuck in a loop, and she would be perpetually depressed and clueless. An-na believed this was the only way; she offered to become the subject after she was hit by debris, and she figured she wouldn’t survive. Her memories, thoughts, and emotions were used for the experiment, and through the simulation she was made to experience her last day on Earth over and over again, and the loop continued until she was reunited with Ja-in. Perhaps An-na had proposed this method because she believed that she would always feel incomplete if she never met Ja-in again, so it was important that at least in the simulation she found him and made him feel safe.
Were An-na and Ja-in reunited?
An-na was stuck in a loop; every time she failed to find her son, she was back to the start. She woke up in the morning and had to navigate through the mass panic and the flood. But with every failure, she learned a lesson. Surprisingly, every character in the simulation had some memory of the past. She remembered how things had ended the first time (in reality), so she was careful about not repeating the same mistakes in the simulation. She had crossed paths with people who needed help, but at the time, An-na was so consumed with protecting herself and her son that she didn’t even realize how selfish her endeavor was. So, in the simulation, she helped the little girl who was trapped in the elevator, she attempted to fight the looters, she offered a new mother her coat, and she even tried to help Hee-jo. She felt bad for him because at the end of the day, he too was betrayed by the center. And as a result, Hee-jo helped her find her son. They took down the security guards, but even then, An-na could not find Ja-in. She was stuck in this weird loop trying to make sense of the situation.
Towards the end of The Great Flood, Hee-jo told An-na that maybe her son wasn’t running away from her; he perhaps was waiting for her to find him. If she remembered what had happened in reality, then Ja-in did too, which meant that he would do anything to not end up in the same situation. So, he was hiding somewhere where he knew An-na would manage to find him. Hee-jo too was aware that he would be killed anyway, but he never tried to escape because he was interested in finding out the choices An-na would make in the simulation. She initially had assumed An-na was a self-centered woman, but she was ultimately proved wrong. At the end of The Great Flood, An-na finally found Ja-in hiding in a cupboard on the roof. As it turned out, Ja-in remembered what his mother had whispered before she left in the helicopter. He mentioned that she’d told him to hide in the cupboard a long time ago (hinting that the simulation had been going on for a long time). He’d also drawn the same picture (An-na’s face with the helicopter in the background) over and over again that he believed was something he’d seen in his dream. The fact that An-na anticipated such an event indicates that she understood her role in developing the Emotion Engine for the mother figure. This also suggests she intended to reunite with her son within the simulation.
Is the real An-na dead?
Yes, the real An-na is dead. Her physical self didn’t exist anymore, but her memory, thoughts, and emotions were kept alive, which indicates that a part of her, the most integral part of her, was still alive. An-na and Ja-in’s memories were extracted and transmitted to Isabela’s lab. Their transmitted memories would be the base for the new human-like figures that the lab had managed to create. The success of the experiment guaranteed the birth of a new humanity that would be sent back to earth. The final scene of The Great Flood confirms that the experiment was a success, and an exact replica of Ja-in and An-na was created. Were they the same people? Considering they had the same memories, one can say so, but of course they were clones. The new versions of An-na and Ja-in were sent off in a spaceship that was headed to earth. They marked the rebirth of mankind.
Is humanity saved?
Considering Isabela lab had successfully created the exact essence of a human life, it is safe to assume that the extinction of mankind was prevented. Perhaps the lab will continue producing more human-like figures who will take over Earth. The fact that several other space shuttles can be seen heading to earth in the final scene of The Great Flood suggests that there might be several others synthetically engineered human-like beings. Children were absolutely necessary since a new generation would have been unimaginable otherwise. Also, the connection between a mother and a child is so integral to human beings that the scientists believed that should be the starting point of the new mankind. Also what remains unanswered is how the other prototypes were created? Did they go through a similar experience like An-na and Ja-in? We also don’t know how much time has passed, and what the present condition of Earth is. Considering synthetically engineered humans were being sent to live there, it can be assumed that life on Earth is possible again. Presumably researchers would keep a close watch on them and see if they can adapt to the new world. If they manage to survive, then more and more human-like figures will be sent. Rest assured, the scientists won’t give up, and hopefully humans will once again take over the planet. Most won’t have any idea where they came from or that the first humans after the great flood were created artificially. Perhaps the Darwin Center would want to keep it that way as well because if the truth surfaced, it might cause an existential crisis in some individuals.
