The Ending of Netflix's The Wonder, Explained
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Spoilers ahead for the ending of The Wonder.
Florence Pugh's newest period drama, The Wonder, tells the story of Anna, an 11-year-old Irish girl who reportedly stops eating but remains miraculously alive and well—she says she is surviving on "manna from heaven." A nurse, Lib (Pugh) is sent to observe Anna (Kíla Lord Cassidy) to see if she indeed is surviving without food or water.
Based on The Wonder by Emma Donoghue, the movie, directed by Sebastián Lelio takes an innovative approach to the story, beginning with the breaking of the fourth wall. It starts with a panning shot of a large warehouse set filled with film equipment.
"Hello. This is the beginning," a woman, actress Niamh Algar, who plays Anna's older sister Kitty, says. "The beginning of a film called The Wonder. The people you are about to meet, the characters, believe in their stories with complete devotion. We are are nothing without stories. And so we invite you to believe in this one. It is 1862. We left England, bound for Ireland. The Great Famine still casts a long shadow, and the Irish hold England responsible for that devastation. There sits a nurse. An English nurse, traveling all on her own. And it's with her, we begin."
Of the opening, director Lelio explains, "I thought it was important for the film itself to say to the viewer, 'Listen, you will be exposed to the power of fiction, your disbelief will be suspended. And then you will be kindly reminded that you have been, hopefully, fervently believing in the film, in the same way in which the characters are believing their own stories.'"
He continues, "It is a film also about the collision between reason and magical thinking or science, and extreme religiousness; between spiritual and intellectual elasticity versus fanaticism. In that sense, this little framing is saying to the viewer, 'What do you believe in? Are you fixed in your position? Or are you willing to change, adapt, and evolve? What sort of viewer are you?'"
The viewer does not return to the modern film set until the end; the majority of The Wonder is spent entirely in 1862 Ireland. There are a few brief breaks of the fourth wall by Niamh Algar's Kitty, but it mainly focuses on the story of Lib and Anna.
Lib, a nurse who believes in science, is determined to find out how Anna is surviving without food. Soon, she isolates Anna from her family—and the girl begins to actually starve. Lib realizes what has been happening: Anna was surviving on food passed by her mom through kisses.
Lib also learns the reason Anna was convinced to go along with the religious fast. Anna's brother died four months earlier, and he had been abusing her for years. Anna's mom held her responsible for her brother's death, and makes Anna believe that by sacrificing her own life (through fasting) she can save her brother from eternal damnation.
When Lib tries to convince the council overseeing her watch that Anna is dying, and of the mother's involvement in keeping her alive, they do not intervene to save her. So, Lib decides to fake her death, enlisting her journalist friend to sprint Anna, now Nan, away to safety. Lib burns down Anna's home, tells the council the girl has died, and then meets up with Will and Anna.
At the very end, the movie returns to the framing device of the modern set. The last scene shows Lib, Will, and Anna (now Nan) on a ship bound for Australia. They're sitting at dinner, and Anna is slowly eating. The film then pans away from the scene to pull back to the film set, and actress Niamh Algar, no longer dressed as her character, Kitty, is standing there in all black.
She says, in a whisper, "In. Out. In. Out."
The four words are a reference to the thaumatrope that Will shows Anna earlier in the film, of a bird who seems to be both inside of a cage and free at the same time. "Is it trapped or is it free?" Anna asks him. Will responds, "That's for you to decide. Inside. Outside. Inside. Outside." Anna then echoes what he says, saying, "In. Out. In. Out," as the image of the thaumatrope fades away.
Algar, who plays Kitty, explains her character is "part of the story, but she gets to dabble between the two. As Sebastian so beautifully put it, it's challenging the audience if they can get lost in the idea of this narrative. Kitty's someone who's stuck to the old world and the new, she's someone who's bridging that but also questioning Lib, who's very much an outsider that has been placed within this community that she does not understand."
Lelio explains that the point of bookending the film with the shots in the modern studio is to illustrate the story's modern resonance. "To talk about the opening and the role that Kitty plays, that consciousness, self-awareness of the film, it's also a way of saying, 'Of course, this is not really 1862.' It might be evident to say it, but let's say it because the characters are fictional, but what they represent is not. And the power dynamics might have happened in the 1860s, but they are completely resonant with the power dynamics that are still operating today. So we are somehow trapped in the same sort of storytelling. The opening and the ending is a way of saying, 'This is today. This is now.'"
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