[Spoiler Alert] So, The Great Flood’s ending revealed that everything we saw in the second part of the film wasn’t real. It was a simulated reality created using the memories of Dr. Gu An-na. But why? Because they wanted to design perfect humans to repopulate the Earth after the devastating flood had wiped out almost every living being on the planet. I know, this part is quite confusing, so let me break it down for you. Long before the Great Flood started, scientists across the globe had already discovered that an asteroid would hit the planet in the near future. They theorized that this impact would destroy human civilization, just like how an asteroid killed all the dinosaurs on the planet. Therefore, in order to prevent this extinction-level event, these researchers laid the foundation of the Darwin Center (named after Charles Darwin) to kickstart the next step of human evolution.
How Did An-na Die?
You may ask, why not send normal humans back to the planet? The thing is, no one was quite sure what the planet would be like after it had been hit by tens of thousands of meteorite fragments. Hence, sending normal human beings back to Earth might not be a great idea. They needed to create a new race of evolved humans who might be able to survive the aftermath of the Great Flood, and that’s how the idea of developing synthetic human beings, also known as artificial persons, emerged. If you are a fan of the Alien franchise, then you might be aware of these “synths.” So as time passed, the researchers working at the Darwin Center were able to produce perfect human-like bodies with intelligence and the ability to reproduce. But what their androids lacked was human emotions. I mean, you’ve got to understand that it is our emotional intelligence that makes us smarter than AI and different from all other beings. This was where Chief Researcher Im Hyeon-mo and her junior, Dr. Gu An-na, entered the picture. Some five years ago, these two researchers were tasked to create the Emotion Engine for the Darwin Center’s AI, which would make these androids perfect human beings. To carry out this experiment, the Darwin Center approved the development of two android babies, Yu-jin and Ja-in, where Yu-jin was raised by Hyeon-mo, while An-na looked after Ja-in as her own. The experiment was a success, as the two babies started to show the emotions any normal kid would express. The next step towards this evolution was to replicate human emotions to create a perfect mother. I guess Hyeon-mo and An-na might have already been working on that when the asteroid hit the planet and halted their experiment. But thankfully, the center was already prepared for such a setback. They had set up a lab called the Isabela Lab in space to produce physical human bodies, and now all they needed was the Emotion Engine to complete their evolutionary project. As soon as the asteroid hit Antarctica, the center sent forces to bring Hyeon-mo and Yu-jin to safety, but before their men could reach the chief researcher, she disappeared and likely drowned in the flood. The next person on their list was An-na and her son, Ja-in, and that was where Netflix’s The Great Flood began, with Son Hee-jo arriving at An-na’s apartment. His mission was to secure the junior researcher and the only surviving trace of the Emotion Engine, which is Ja-in, and send them to the secure location from where they would be taken to Isabela Lab in orbit. But unfortunately, while An-na was on the space shuttle, the debris of the asteroid hit the rocket engine and severely wounded her. She suffered injuries from which she didn’t survive, but while taking her last breath, she asked Dr. Lee Hwi-so, the director of Isabela Lab, to extract her and Ja-in’s memories and upload them to the Emotion Engine Core Simulator so she could create the mother and save humanity from their impending doom. This experiment was called Project Newman-78, while Ja-in was a part of Project Newman-77.
How Did An-na Create the Simulation?
Okay, so this is the tricky part, because Netflix’s The Great Flood didn’t bother explaining how An-na created the simulation from her memories. But I think I have a few theories that might be able to fill those gaps in. If you remember, moments before the debris crashed into their space rocket, An-na discussed her plan of action with Dr. Lee Hwi-so. She told him that she would create a simulated reality and set the experimental subject as the mother of a child. And in that simulation, she would make the child disappear, giving the mother the task of finding her missing kid. Every time digital An-na woke up, she had a different number on her t-shirt, which represented the number of times this experiment had been run on the simulator. On each level, or the floors of the apartment building, the digital An-na met with familiar faces from her past and faced different obstacles that helped her evolve into a better mother. It’s much like a video game where a player goes through different challenges or campaigns that earn them experience and enhance their skills. In An-na’s case, these hardships and the separation from her kid helped the machine to understand a mother’s emotions and evolve into a perfect human mother. I think, before dying, An-na might have instructed Dr. Lee on how to create the simulation, and after she took her last breath, it was Dr. Lee who developed this virtual reality engine based on An-na’s memories to save humanity from extinction.
However, you may ask the question, why did An-na give her digital construct the task of locating her missing child? And why was it necessary to complete the experiment? Well, it was because that was something the real An-na hadn’t been able to do on her last day on the planet. And therefore her last day was turned into a digital loop where An-na’s only mission was to overcome her flaws and transform into a better individual, both as a mother and a human being. There was a brief flashback in the film where An-na told Hyeon-mo that she thought she wasn’t cut out to be a mother. Her doubts arose from the fact that she hadn’t given birth to Ja-in. He was developed in a lab, so An-na didn’t know what it was like to raise a child in one’s womb. Sometimes, she didn’t feel connected to Ja-in. At first, he was just a lab experiment to her, but as the years passed, she developed feelings for him, which gave An-na the idea that if her digital construct would spend some time searching for her missing kid, it might teach her to become a better mother than her. With each run of the experiment, An-na matured both emotionally and mentally. She helped the young girl on the lift, she tried to stop the rogue kids from looting and hurting other people in the building, and in the end even attended to a pregnant woman on one of the top floors. In short, these hardships made the digital An-na more empathetic towards others, which is the one thing I think we need the most in today’s world.
How Did Digital An-na Finish The Experiment?
After running through the simulation around 7993 times, the digital An-na finally realized her flaws as a mother and the real reason why her kid disappeared. Since the beginning of the film, Ja-in had been trying to get his mother’s attention. He wanted her to look at the drawings he had made, but An-na was so busy with her work (and the end of the world) that she ignored her child’s needs. This was something she had to work upon to become a good mother. The 7993rd An-na understood her mistake and quickly pulled out her phone to check out the drawings Ja-in had sent to her. It turned out Ja-in remembered the day his mother left him on the rooftop, and he drew a picture of the scene to remind her to come back. So this picture was the map or the key to finding Ja-in. Before the Dev Team removed the Emotion Engine from Ja-in’s body, An-na whispered in his ear to wait for her. She asked him to hide in the closet on the roof and wait for her to come find him. A very small detail here. The digital construct was based on the memories of both the mother and the kid, which means it merged the perspective of both An-na and Ja-in. And when you are designing a simulation, it’s easy to make a few tweaks to your characters to make their journey harder and help them reach their full potential. What I am trying to say here is that the real An-na remembered what she had whispered in her kid’s ears, but this knowledge was purposefully removed from her digital avatar’s consciousness. And the key to bringing back this chunk of memory was the kid’s drawing that An-na had been ignoring for most of the film. In short, it was a puzzle that the real An-na had designed for her digital self, and the only way to solve it was to understand her child’s needs. Additionally, it couldn’t be a mere coincidence that Hee-jo told An-na that his own mother had abandoned him in his childhood and promised to come back for him, but she never did. I think that was the reason Hee-jo grew up bitter and lost his faith in humanity, which made An-na realize that if she wanted to give mankind a chance to make things right, she had to fix this gap between the mother and the child.
In The Great Flood’s ending, the 21,499th An-na finally located Ja-in on the terrace and helped him leave the building alive; however, she was about to jump into the water with Ja-in when some men from the Dev Team caught her and tried to separate her from her kid again, but this time, An-na didn’t let them achieve their objective. She fought with all her might and finally made the jump from the terrace into the water to reunite with her kid, thereby breaking the time loop. This not only marked the completion of her mission on the simulator, but also gave the machine enough data to complete the mother’s Emotion Engine. Through this, the surviving researchers would be able to create perfect mother and child synths and send them back to Earth to repopulate the planet. In the closing shot, we saw multiple pods heading towards Earth. I think these shuttles are carrying groups of synthetic mothers and children, including clones of An-na and Ja-in, developed from An-na and Ja-in’s Emotion Engine. So in a way, An-na and Ja-in are not completely dead. I mean, Ja-in was created in a lab, so there was always the option of bringing him back to life, while Dr. Lee extracted An-na’s memories so he would be able to revive her by transferring her consciousness into a synthetic body. I guess it would be appropriate to say that a version of An-na and Ja-in was finally able to make it back to earth, and these androids will lead humanity forward from here onwards.
