Paradise ending explained: did Max get his wife back?
In Paradise, a new German sci-fi movie on Netflix, humans can sell the years they have left in their life to others, making them lots of money but becoming much older, while the buyers will de-age and retain their youth.
In this dystopian world we follow husband and wife Max and Elena as the former fights to reclaim forty years that were taken from the latter and go back to their happy married life. As you can imagine, complications ensue.
The movie ends with quite a few dark twists and turns, so if you watched it and wondered "wait, what happened?" you're in the right place, because we're going to explain the ending to Paradise. Spoilers ensue, of course, and we've also got a guide to the Paradise cast for if you've really enjoyed the movie.
Warning: spoilers for Paradise on Netflix from hereon
Did Elena get her years back?
After we discover near the end of the movie that Max and Elena's captive is not Aeon CEO and their antagonist Sophie, but her daughter Marie, Max has a change of heart about stealing this girl's years, even if it will go back to his wife and renew their marriage.
Elena doesn't quite care for this change of heart though, and kicks him out of the car as they near the doctor at the refugee camp. Then she drives on, and offers up Marie to get her youth back. She doesn't go back to Max afterward though, despite the whole movie being his quest to save her.
At some indeterminate time in the future, but likely over a year after the main events of the movie, we see her pregnant again on a beach. However her partner isn't Max but an unknown surfing man — evidently, she's moved on. Even the father couldn't be Max, as it's explained to us that the aging process causes miscarriage, and Max and Elena don't meet after he's kicked from the car.
Who was Max with at the end?
After being kicked out of the car by Elena, Max stumbles upon a refugee camp, where years are being harvested from innocents for the benefit of the rich.
When we see Max in the future, he's watching Elena, silently saying his last goodbyes. Then he reunites with the Adam group, anti-age-tech vigilantes who attack clinics, whom we've seen at certain points in the film (notably the climax).
It's clear that Max is one of these people now, and the movie ends with them driving off to attack another clinic and kill people. He's gone full circle from his character at the beginning of the story!
How did Sophie survive?
We see Sophie get shot in a shootout with the Adam group, and it's why Elena has to use Marie to reclaim her years instead of using the Aeon leader.
However later it's shown that Sophie was wearing a bullet-proof vest during the combat, and so survives unscathed.
Where does Kaya go?
Sophie's long-time bodyguard Kaya spends the whole movie fighting to save Marie and protect Sophie, however it's clear from her chat with Nowak that she's getting tired of it, especially when she ends up having to kill him.
In her last scene of the movie, Kaya tells Sophie that she's quitting, and it's implied that she's going to kill herself in order to contend with the actions she's taken out over the course of her employment at Aeon.
Why is Marie still old?
After Elena took forty years from Marie, the latter is let go, and is eventually rescued by Sophie.
However some time later Marie has aged these forty years, despite the fact that Sophie could donate her lives to de-age her daughter. Why? Well, Sophie gives a Black Mirror-esque explanation, in that she's very important to developing more anti-aging treatments, and can do so better when she's young.
So Sophie gets to remain younger while Marie is now old. That's dark! Sophie promises that she'll try to find a donor that's compatible to get Marie's years back too, but given that Sophie was hunting Elena due to compatibility with the Theissen family being incredibly rare, it seems highly unlikely that Sophie will be able to find someone else compatible.
