‘No One Will Save You’ Ending Explained: What Did the Aliens Do to Poor Kaitlyn Dever?

Give Kaitlyn Dever the Oscar for “Best Gasp” in No One Will Save You, the new Hulu horror movie that began streaming on Friday. Written and directed by Brian Duffield (Love and Monsters, The Babysitter), this is a nearly silent movie about a woman trying to escape an alien invasion. And it’s very fun!

The plot is about as simple as it gets, and the script features less than ten words of dialogue. Yet a compelling performance from Dever (known for her roles in Booksmart, Unbelievable, and Dopesick) and a sufficiently scary alien will keep you hooked for most of the film’s 93-minute runtime. That said, the overly simple concept does, eventually, run out of runway, and the baffling ending may leave some viewers scratching their heads. As it turns out, dialogue is a pretty useful tool when it comes to explaining your wacky sci-fi ideas.

But never fear, because Decider is here to help. Read on for an analysis of the No One Will Save You plot summary and the No One Will Save You ending explained.

No One Will Save You plot summary:

Brynn (Kaitlyn Dever) lives a simple, solitary life. She’s a skilled seamstress and artist, who sells her handmade clothes online and works on her impressive model town in her free time. Her mom is dead. Though she practices saying hi to her neighbors and strangers in public, no one seems interested in being her friend. She never speaks to anyone… except for her friend Maude, to whom she writes letters. She also, for some reason, ducks out of sight when she sees Maude’s parents in town. More on that later.

One night, Brynn is awakened in the middle of the night by an intruder in her house. That intruder turns out to be a terrifying alien invader. Ahh!! We’re only fifteen minutes in, and we’ve already been treated to arguably the best action sequence in the film. After a terrifying run-and-hide sequence, Brynn manages to kill the alien by stabbing it in the head with one of her model houses. Phew!

But the danger is not over. The alien, using its alien powers, has shut off all power in Brynn’s home and car. Brynn bikes into town to the police station. But before she can report that there’s a freakin’ dead alien in her house, she runs into Maude’s parents again. Turns out, Maude’s dad is the chief of police, and boy, is he not happy to see Brynn! Maude’s mother spits in Brynn’s face. Brynn is so shaken, that she leaves without reporting the alien.

Instead, Brynn hops on a bus out of town. She quickly realizes she’s not, in fact, safe. As it turns out, the other passengers on the bus may look human, but they are secretly possessed by aliens. And they seem intent on killing Brynn. (Maybe they know she killed one of their buddies?) Brynn manages to escape the bus with her life, but it’s now clear that this alien was not an isolated incident. They have invaded the world. (Or at least, they have invaded Brynn’s town.)

Brynn makes her way back home and stops at Maude’s grave on the way. That’s right: Maude is dead, and she died when she was 12 years old. What happened there? Back at home, Brynn is once again attacked by an alien. After a lot of struggling, the alien gets the better of Brynn and shoves a terrifying, squiggly egg-like thing down her throat. Presumably, this is how the aliens possess the humans. When Brynn regains consciousness, she finds herself at home. Her mom and Maude are magically alive. It quickly becomes clear that this is not real—it’s a memory. Brynn once again apologizes to Maude, and then reaches down her throat, and rips the squiggly egg out of her body.

Back in the real world, Brynn tosses the squiggly egg. Unfortunately, the alien spaceship appears and captures the egg in its alien abduction spotlight. This creates an alien Brynn doppelgangerr. The real Brynn faces off with her doppelganger and wins. It’s all very touching and metaphorical: Brynn kills “herself,” but at the same time, she treats her doppelganger with tenderness as she says goodbye. We’re meant to understand that Brynn is metaphorically killing this old version of herself, while also forgiving this old version of herself for her mistakes.

But wait, there’s more: Brynn gets abducted and taken up on the alien spaceship. There, the aliens perform some sort of weird, probing thing on Brynn and are privy to Brynn’s most inner trauma.

No One Will Save You ending explained:

We finally find out what happened to Maude: When they were both preteen girls, Brynn and Maude had an argument that got physical. Brynn bashed Maude on the head with a rock and killed her. No wonder Maude’s parents hate her. Brynn has carried this guilt and shame her entire life. In her mind, Brynn sees herself confronting her younger, guilt-plagued self. She reaches out her hand to young Brynn. Though there is no dialogue, we understand this to mean giving herself permission to forgive herself.

The aliens see all of this play out in Brynn’s head and appear to have sympathy for her. They talk amongst themselves in their alien tongue, and though we don’t get a translation, they must say something along the lines of, “This poor girl has been through enough. Instead of possessing her, let’s give her the happy ending she deserves.”

Brynn is sent back to her home on Earth. In the final scene of the movie, she wakes up at home in a great mood. She does her make up, bikes into town, works on her model, and seems to be back to her perfect, simple life. The difference? Now all of her neighbors wave and smile to her, instead of ignoring her. More than that, they dance with her, chat with her, and just in general seem content to live a simple, happy, old-fashioned life with her.

Why the change of heart? They’re all alien pod people, of course! In the final shot of the film, the camera pulls back to reveal dozens of alien spaceships hovering over the town. Apparently, the aliens decided to possess everyone except Brynn. I guess she was the only one in town with a tragic, sympathetic backstory with whom the aliens felt a connection, so she’s the only one who got to stay a human.

Look, does it really make sense? No. But it is a cool, visually interesting ending to a cool, visually interesting film. Just go with it.