‘The Tomorrow War’ Ending Explained: Chris Pratt’s Time Travel Movie Spoilers

Warning: This article contains major The Tomorrow War spoilers. Surely you knew that when you clicked on it, right?

The Tomorrow War is now streaming on Amazon Prime, just in time for the 4th of July weekend, because nothing says patriotism like a nonsensical sci-fi action movie.

Starring Chris Pratt in perhaps the final stage of his transition to a straight-man action hero, this movie was originally meant to open in theaters last December. But thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic, Paramount Pictures sold the film to Amazon Studios. The good news for you is that means you can now stream The Tomorrow War from the comfort of your own home, with full access to Google when you get a bit lost in the film’s ridiculous plot.

No judgment! Even without a few beers from the 4th of July celebrations, The Tomorrow War can be hard to follow. Never fear, because Decider is here to help. Read on for The Tomorrow War plot summary and The Tomorrow War ending, explained.

WHAT IS THE TOMORROW WAR PLOT?

Dan Forester is a veteran-turned-high-school-teacher who dreams of someday being a big shot scientist. His plans are interrupted, however, when a group of time travelers arrive and warn humankind that they will be wiped out, 30 years in the future. Civilians are drafted to fight in a future war against a mysterious race of monsters called “the white spikes.”  A time-travel device strapped to their arm will send the civilians to the year 2051 for exactly seven days of military service and then zap them back to the present day. But the only people who can get sent back are ones who are already dead in 2051—and apparently, that includes Dan. After a failed visit to his dad (J. K. Simmons )—an engineer who might have been able to help Dan evade the draft if only Dan could stand to accept his father’s help—Dan promises his wife Emmy (Betty Gilpin) and his young daughter Muri (Ryan Kiera Armstrong) that he will be back.

Dan and a team of recruits get sent to the year 2051 to rescue a group of researchers who are searching for a scientific solution to the invasion. One thing leads to another, and Dan ends up working side-by-side with his grown-up daughter Muri (now played by Yvonne Strahovski). Muri tells Dan that in her past, Dan divorces his wife, and leaves his family, because he was unsatisfied with his life. Then he dies in a car accident when Muri is 16 years old.

In the future, Dan and Muri develop a “toxin,” which is basically a serum that will kill all of the monsters. Muri tells Dan to take the toxin back to his time, mass-produce it, and kill all the monsters before the war even begins. Dan agrees, but he promises to come back to 2051 to save this version of Muri after he does. Unfortunately, that version of Muri gets eaten by a monster almost immediately in the next scene. David’s seven days of service are up, so he zaps back into the present day. He’s informed that the jump link has been cut off and that they are no longer able to travel to the future. Now he has to somehow find where and when the monsters first arrived on earth, and kill them before the war can begin.

WHAT IS THE TOMORROW WAR ENDING EXPLAINED?

In a bit of “OK, sure,” plotting, Dan—with the help of a nerdy teenager who loves volcanoes—traces some volcanic ash from under the creature’s claws to “the Millennium Eruption” from 946 AD, a huge eruption that blew ash all over the world, which can still be found buried deep in glaciers. Dan realizes that this means that the monsters must have dug up from the depths of the earth, meaning they are not aliens. They are ancient monsters who have been on the earth the whole time, and eventually were thawed out, thanks to global warming.

Dan recruits his father to pilot an illegal plane to a Russian glacier where he believes the monsters are frozen. Once on the glacier, they find an alien spaceship that crashed with a bunch of frozen aliens who are not white spikes. Based on essentially nothing, Dan concludes that these more intelligent aliens brought the white spikes here as either cattle or planet-clearing weapons. So… they are aliens after all!

The humans inject the aliens with the toxins, and it seems to work—they die.  Unfortunately, a group of white spikes wakes up before the humans can inject all of them. The team manages to blow up all of the white spikes except for one, a female, who gets away. But after an epic showdown, Dan kills the last white spike for good. Dan and his father go home, and Dan finally lets his father meet his granddaughter.

In a voice-over narration in the film’s final scene, Dan says that he never tells his daughter about the seven days he spent with her in a future that will never happen. “I’m never gonna leave her. I will never leave this family,” he says. Though it is not explicitly shown, we can guess that this means Dan will not divorce his wife and die in a car crash, the way that future-Muri remembered. He successfully changed the future.

Does this movie make sense? Not really! But this is a big dumb military propaganda action movie with alien monsters and time travel. Don’t overthink it.

Watch The Tomorrow War on Amazon Prime