Leave The World Behind Ending Explained is the final part of our analysis. Be sure to check out PART 1, PART 2, PART 3 and PART 4 of this series before you proceed. SPOILERS AHEAD!
Part 5 – The Last One
Archie’s teeth are falling out, Rose is missing and everyone is worried.
Archie’s illness is puzzling everyone. Sure, he was bit by a bug the day before and there was the Noise but no one is quite sure what made him so sick. His symptoms now seem quite severe because he’s now puking blood in addition to everything else. George and Amanda have bonded a bit from the night before with their talk and awkward dance so he offers to help by paying Danny, the contractor, a visit to see if he has some medicine.
While George, Clay and Archie go to Danny’s, Ruth and Amanda head back to the hut in the forest to look for Rose.
Amanda and Ruth who are already great great friends and get along swimmingly (NOT! 🤪🤪, they hate each other) are now alone in the hut where Rose and Archie were the day before. Predictably they get into an argument. We see that Amanda is obviously distraught by her missing daughter and sick son but is also STILL in denial about the true scope and seriousness of the situation. Ruth tries to help her understand but it isn’t working at first.
Ruth, being the catalyst that she is, then bares her soul a little bit and Amanda softens. Ruth gets Amanda to talk about her anger issues and we confirm what we suspected before: it comes from the falsehood of her career. We learn that her day job is to “…understand people well enough so that I know how to lie to them so I can sell them things they don’t really want”.
Clearly Amanda knows the truth but lives a lie, wearing a mask. She concedes the crass hypocrisy of humanity in general and its failure to face the truth about itself.
BINGO! This is where Ruth and Amanda finally find common ground and we see a bond beginning to form. But it is exactly at this moment that there is a disturbance outside of the hut. It is our old friends the Deer from earlier.
Back outside they discover bike tyre tracks leading away from the hut so Amanda chases them thinking they will lead to Rose. Behind her however Ruth is surrounded by deer and is petrified. The deer don’t attack her (or seem afraid of her) but are really quite close and have her surrounded. They just stand there blinking at her, as if waiting for something to happen.
Out of the midst of the herd of deer there is a disturbance. The multitude part and shuffle aside as a stag with majestic antlers emerges to greet Ruth. He is non threatening, approaching her slowly but there is no mistake from his slow, confident gait (and size) that he is the leader of the herd.
What is happening here is quite deep. Ruth is worried that her father will never return from Danny’s house. With one parent very likely lost forever (her mother, Maya, the illusion) and with her father’s survival 50/50, Ruth fears that she will be left all alone in the world as an orphan. She concedes this much to Amanda, who, with her own kids to worry about, doesn’t have the bandwidth to give her the attention and comfort that she needs.
We’ve already explained the transformation of the psyche/self that is core to the movie. We’ve also explained what the deer represent as primitive, instinctual forces of the subconscious arising to reclaim their “lost territory”. They have already connected with the “id”, Rose, and as we shall see, led her to the things that she wanted the most. They helped her obtain her greatest desires.
The “id” and these deer are very similar in nature but slightly different in function. To describe their relationship, one is the rider and the other is the vehicle. The “id” is the rider and the deer is the means through which the “id” will attain its goals i.e. the vehicle. Put another way, the “id” is the intelligence and the deer is the tool that the intelligence will use to obtain its desires. This tool however is really a force of nature: powerful, majestic, pure and willing to serve.
Recall the tarot key The Sun from Part 4. The babe is the “id” and the horse is the deer in the movie.
The standoff with Ruth and the deer then is not a hostile one. They are actually there to “adopt” her, so to speak. Ruth, a young woman, with the life of both parents in question, is about to be a “lost child” and these primal instinctual forces manifested and presented themselves when she needed them most, to protect and serve her.
Ruth is frozen by the hut door with fright just before Amanda runs to her rescue and begins to yell and wave her hands wildly to scare them off. The deer however don’t budge (🦌🦌🦌) and just stare at them blankly.
Ruth, empowered by her presence, begins mimicking her and joins in the frantic handwaving and yelling. Apparently this is the “sign” that the deer were waiting for and, with the goal accomplished, the entire herd turns suddenly and scampers in all directions, returning into the depths of the forest from which they came 🤯🤯.
The deer came to serve Ruth but Amanda, who returned to her aid in time, symbolically took the role of her deceased mother. Despite her faults, Amanda is a good person. Sensing that she is in good hands, the deer dissipate. Ruth no longer needs them. Amanda is her mother and protector. Reciprocally, Ruth views her as such and we see it in the way they embrace following the experience. Pow-er-ful! 🥲🥲🥲 Trauma forms powerful bonds and that is what transpired here.
As they continue to follow the bike tracks to find Rose, Ruth stops transfixed by another scene before her. In the distance is New York City and plumes of fire and smoke tower above the buildings. Amanda sees it too. Both are devastated as the true scope of the problem sinks in. They join hands. All they have now is each other to rely on.
Revelations
Meanwhile, Archie and Clay arrive at Danny’s house. Danny is testy and abrasive (understandable given the circumstances). He finally emerges to greet them outside, shotgun in hand.
We notice how quiet and serene things are at Danny’s dwelling in contrast to the rest of the neighborhood. He is a known “prepper” so his lifestyle is to stay prepared for anything and now his choices are validated. But even as he speaks we see that he himself is not sure of the truth of what is going on: we hear paranoia, mistrust of the establishment and possible loss of faith in God and religion, for starters. Danny isn’t operating at the instinctual level of Rose but rather he owes his survival thus far to being LUCKY. Pure, blind, luck! Being in the right place at the right time with the right habits just work sometimes I guess 🤷🏽🤷🏽🤷🏽.
As our confirmation, we see behind him, above the door, a horse shoe, the universal sign of good luck.
George is focused on his mission to help Archie, his morality won’t allow him to sit idly by while this boy perishes. He presses Danny and pleads for help. Danny ain’t having it and he initially refuses.
Clay, the mediator, steps in and offers Danny cash for his help. This appears to soften Danny a bit but it will take more to win him over. He let’s slip that a family called the Thornes (remember this name) living in the same neighborhood, secretly did a basement conversion a while back. Danny thinks their new basement is actually a doomsday bunker.
George stands his ground even as Danny tells them to leave. Things reach a boiling point and guns are drawn both Danny and George are ready to go to war. Clay the mediator desperately pleads for cooler heads to prevail. George, the superego, moral to a fault, will not back down. He is there to get help for Archie because he made a promise to his mother.
Eventually it is Clay who gets Danny to settle down and help his son. He hands over the money and gets a vial of blue pills. We are not sure what these pills are or if they will even save Archie’s life but they give it to him regardless.
Danny compares notes with George and Clay and it appears that the Arabic propaganda flyer from earlier isn’t the only one. The implication is that it is part of a strategic, co-ordinated campaign by parties unknown.
Back in the car, we see George about to drive off with Clay and Archie when he pauses. Something is happening within him. The whole episode with Archie and his illness (also being a catalyst) and the new information from Danny has triggered something within him. He is FINALLY ready to tell the whole truth of what he knows because the situation is far more dire than he anticipated.
We know that George’s day job involves “understanding the curve” i.e patterns and trends in the world. He explains that he spent a lot of time doing analysis of military campaigns. He recalls a particularly effective 3-stage maneuver designed to topple a country from the inside. It comprises of three stages which are ISOLATION, CHAOS and COUP D’ETAT.
For the benefit of the viewer, George is actually summarizing the stages of the transformation of the self/psyche. The first stage is isolation i.e. manipulation of the brain and nervous system to bring everything to a dead stop, this is the “cyberattack”. As explained before the brain is the visible counterpart of the invisible self/psyche which is really just an idea/conceptualization. This is the shock to the brain that will affect movement and the ability to act in general. No power, no phone, no satellite, no TV. Everything is “off”. With this newly quieted state its easier to work without distractions.
Chaos is the stage that comes next when the ego and superego are ejected from their position of dominance in the psyche. Because these aspects of the psyche rely on the physical senses to guide them and empower them, these senses must be “bound”. The propaganda leaflets were designed to confuse and overwhelm the senses so as to make them unreliable. It is at this stage that the “id”, residing in the subconscious begins to mobilize properly. The ego and superego can’t act with power and authority because they can’t see or hear, and the “id” whose power is raw, primitive instinct is not reliant on physical senses. The Noise and the Flood are merely agences used to prepare the way for the incoming change, that is the victory of the “id”.
The final stage is Coup D’Etat aka Civil War aka Revolution whereby the ego and superego, finally deposed, now become reabsorbed into the primal “id” from which they came thereby obliterating their individuality. The “id” aka the Crowned and Conjuring Child emerges victorious as the new “king” of the psyche/self, riding triumphant on the back of raw, primitive, animal instinct which serves its every need and is the force it uses to achieve its desires.
The designers of this 3-stage plan aren’t clearly identified, only speculated about. This symbolizes the mystery. The unknowable forces that act to transform the psyche/self are beyond our ken as humans. They might possibly ancient cosmic forces or forces closer to home but they never fully reveal themselves. What is important is that they have our best interests at heart.
Salvation!
From Amanda and Ruth, the camera pans over to the house Rose discovered earlier with her brother. The bike she borrowed from the shed is parked in front of the door, which means she is inside.
Outside, on the door, we see the residence is owned by the Thornes. Rose broke into the mansion and as the camera snakes its way from the front door to the dining room we find Rose enjoying a buffet of snacks 🤣 🤣 🤣. She seems content!
After a while she gets up to leave and notices a light at the far end of a hall. Again, she is drawn to it. The hall leads down some steps and to a thick vault like door. The door is open (no surprise there) so she slips inside. Going down another set of steps, she enters another room. She sees and turns a dial which activates the light.
As she turns the light on and illuminates the space we see that it is quite large. In fact it immediately becomes clear that she has found the Thornes’ secret bunker! There are beds, kitchen, dining, gym and enough food and water to last a long time. There is also a monitor which is connected to the Emergency Alert System and from the words on the screen it is now certain that the collapse of civilization is fully underway. Rose has found the Doomsday bunker that Danny was talking about.
She soon spots the TV and near to it an incredibly large library of DVD/BlueRay movies and TV series. She spots her show, the final episode of Friends, puts it on, presses play and you see a satisfied smile on her face as she finally gets what she wants. Pure joy!
This is the climax and the true lesson of the movie. Rose, the “id”, the inner child, motivated by pure desire alone and guided by instinct is able to find happiness for herself and salvation for the people she loves. The ego and superego have failed to be of any real use in time when the way forward seems isn’t clear. The Crowned and Conquering child, restored to the throne of the psyche, the New Sun/Son, is its new Lord and Savior.
One of Jesus’s names is the Rose Of Sharon. His life, death and resurrection in many respect mirror the events in this movie. We are NOT SAYING ROSE IS JESUS BECAUSE SHE IS NOT. But what she accomplishes in the film is based on the same principles.
The END. Thanks for reading. 🌹🌹🌹