We’re going to dig into the movie’s ending, and some of the symbolism throughout that can help us decipher it, but of course, to do that, we’re going into FULL SPOILERS.
What Are the Tethered?
Before we get to the meaning of Us’ final scene, let’s talk about the movie’s antagonists, the Tethered. Red, Adelaide’s tether, explains that the dopplegangers were an abandoned experiment commissioned by some unknown group (maybe the government) as a way to see if the population above ground could be controlled by puppets below. But things didn’t go as planned - big surprise for such an outlandish plan. You see, it ended up being the Tethered who were susceptible to being puppeted by their natural-born counterparts. The only exception to this dynamic that we know of, are Adelaide and Red.Red is seen by her fellow tethered as a Messiah of sorts because she’s able to exert free will, and delivers on that by being the one to lead the tethered to the surface. And how was she able to do that? Because Red is the real Adelaide, the one that went into the funhouse back in 1986, when the movie opens. The Adelaide we spend most of the movie with was born a Tether and trapped her counterpart in the tunnels beneath the boardwalk when the opportunity arose. And after she gets to the surface, Adelaide thrives. We see a great example of this in the dance flashback, where Adelaide is able to dance as expertly as Red. Adelaide went on to have a full and happy life (well, until the events of the movie) - seeming to prove one of this movie’s central arguments - that forgotten and marginalized members of a community can succeed if they’re only given the opportunity.The Tethered, as imagined by Jordan Peele, draw deeply upon urban legends, speculative fiction, and xenophobic paranoia about the Other. The Tethered may be products of government experiments in cloning but they are also an homage to another urban legend. The Mole People was a nickname given to homeless people who dwell in tunnels, subways, and the like, such as those that Hands Across America aimed to help (more on that in a moment).
The Tethered also call to mind the concept of Hollow Earth civilizations as well as the subterranean Morlocks of H.G. Wells’ The Time Machine. The latter were the inspiration for the mutant outcasts of the same name in X-Men comics. What Was "Hands Across America"?
And even though she dies doing it, Red gives the Tethered that opportunity. They surface en masse, and the suggestion is that what’s happening to the Wilsons is happening to countless families. And what was it all for? TO GET HANDS ACROSS AMERICA RIGHT, DAMNIT!
“Hands Across America” was an actual event that happened in 1986. Inspired by the celebrity activism of the ‘80s (such as Band-Aid, Live Aid, and Farm Aid), this massive undertaking by the organization USA for Africa was meant to raise upwards of $100 million to fight homelessness and hunger by having six million people -- who would pledge $10 or more to participate -- form a coast-to-coast human chain, holding hands from New York to Long Beach, CA.
Cool, right? Yes, but the event was kind of a bust. It only raised about $15 million — roughly the same amount it cost to stage — and was hampered by the fact that America is, you know, home to deserts, mountains and rivers. Kind of tough for millions of people to hold hands over hundreds of miles of such challenging topography. But at least Hands Across America left us this weird music video featuring C-3P0 and Robin Williams.
The film ends on a powerful shot of the Tethered hand-in-hand above ground -- showing that the Tethered were able to accomplish what their counterparts above ground couldn't. Red showed the world that if given the opportunity to succeed, anybody can rise to the occasion. It really defies the idea beaten into the Tethered that they have no souls, they just haven’t had a fair shot. And it reinforces the metaphor Jordan Peele spends so much of the movie discussing - that suppressing and forgetting about any group of people in our culture is to hold ourselves back, both in terms of growing our community and in terms of keeping our moral fabric strong.
What Does Jeremiah 11:11 Say?
One of the trickier aspects of the movie to figure out is the serendipitous occurrence of the number 11. One of the most notable appearances is on the vagrant’s sign from the beginning of the movie, which references the bible verse Jeremiah 11:11 , which reads “Behold, I will bring evil upon them, which they shall not be able to escape; and though they shall cry unto me, I will not hearken unto them." - in other words, it’s a pretty bad omen for us surface-dwellers.You can see the number repeated on clocks and even on top of the ambulance the Wilsons escape in, but Jordan Peele’s shot compositions even hide objects and frame things in a way that represent the number if you’re looking hard enough. Like the use of scissors, it’s a strong metaphor that manages to represent both duality and individuality, depending on how you look at it. The movie stresses that the Tethered’s existence is rooted in science, so why then are we seeing this number pop up at an almost supernaturally impossible rate?
Us makes the case that by forgetting about those in a worse-off position than ourselves, we become the monsters. The symmetry of the number 11 as a visual that reminds us how much we share in common, but it’s also an example of Jordan Peele suspending disbelief from a filmmaking perspective in order to reinforce the idea that by willfully ignoring “the other”, we’re missing out on what makes a community strong in the first place. Where will that get us? Judging by the dark omen of Jeremiah 11:11, nowhere good. Is Jason Also One of the Tethered?
One Reddit user’s intriguing albeit problematic theory suggests young Jason Wilson was also switched with a Tethered clone earlier in his childhood. This theory claims the real Jason, living as a Tethered named Pluto, actually did learn that magic trick of his but badly burned his face in the process. The theory also points out that “Jason” was digging tunnels while playing on the beach, not building sand castles as most kids might instead. And, as the user says, Jaosn ultimately “realized that his mother, at one point, has also switched bodies. She gives him a look almost like ‘I also know what you know’ and then he puts on his mask, as a symbol of the masks they will now wear for the rest of their lives.”Reddit commenters have pointed out the holes in this theory, such as the timing involved. Was Jason abducted as a baby or closer to his current age? And if it’s the latter then how did he learn to speak when it would have taken so much time for a Tethered to learn to as well as to adapt to the surface world? (It took “Adelaide” years to.) There’s more to it all than that so feel free to fall down that rabbit hole in the comments below. Oh, and speaking of rabbits …
What’s Up (Doc) With Those Rabbits?
The opening credits play out over the imagery of rabbits in cages. Rabbits are also later seen throughout the tunnels occupied by the Tethered. These bunnies serve as a (raw) food source for the Tethered. Just as Doritos’ slogan was once “crunch all you want, we’ll make more,” the same is basically true of rabbits, animals known for multiplying like … rabbits.
"Rabbits... they have the brain like a sociopath." @JordanPeele explains how nature's cuddly creatures are the most terrifying animals around. #UsMovie pic.twitter.com/94FYwPRjvF
— Rotten Tomatoes (@RottenTomatoes) March 21, 2019
But the inclusion of the rabbits here could be simply because Us director Jordan Peele is afraid of the cuddly-looking creatures. As Peele revealed to Rotten Tomatoes: “They’re supposed to be cute. On paper, they’re adorable, loving animals. Have you ever gotten close to rabbits? … Rabbits, you can tell in their eyes, they have the brain of like a sociopath. If you put a rabbit brain in a human body, you have Michael Myers, the killer. They’re no empathy.”What questions did Us leave you with? Sound off in the comments below!
And for more on Us, check out our rave review, watch Jordan Peele and his cast take our horror quiz listen to Peele on the IGN UK podcast, and learn what films they watched to prepare for Us.
