Lifeforms Movie Ending Explained & Full Story: Does Matthew Return?

At the heart of science fiction lies science, but the weave around it deals with human emotions across time and space. For science fiction it is easier to expand and make room for emotions that have not happened yet– nobody has yet known the longing for a lover lost at the far side of the Saturn, nobody has traveled to the future leaving their loved ones in the past while taking a trip through a worm-hole. This makes us wonder if the genre is only about science and technicalities, or is it also about the future of emotions. Films like Interstellar, Arrival, and Gravity in the modern times, and Solaris and The Space Odyssey in the past have curated a niche genre of science fiction that holds a pulsating heart in the middle of its fantasy weave. While being a low budget independent film, Lifeforms is exceptional and worthy of fitting into the genre of science fiction with hearts.

Spoilers Ahead

Lifeforms is a story of estrangement between two lovers with a universe in between them. Matthew, an astronaut, and Robin, are lovers building a future together, until Matthew is summoned for a space mission which would require him to travel in space for 17 years. Matthew’s father had gone on a similar mission before and never returned– he longs to go in the same direction. While he would be asleep through cryogenics for the majority of his journey, he would also be awake among the strange lights, images, and noises of space– passing through distant planets and encountering strange beings. Before leaving Matthew leaves a transmitter set to his fiancee Robin through which the binary code of the spaceship can be reached.

However, Matthew travels into a wormhole and ends up at the far side of the Saturn. The controls are taken over by an AI, and Matthew seems to be unable to overwrite it. There is no way for him to go back home with the fuel and battery remaining in the spaceship. From earth, Matthew’s boss has observed that the wormhole has closed. Matthew starts conversing with the AI and figures out that there are other life forms present around him, including his father who are trying to communicate with him. Together, they find out the existence of another wormhole three hundred miles from the location of the spaceship and travel through it to reach another homeland which looks just like earth. The state of the planet seems hyperreal– there are spaceships parked in the sky, but the landscape looks like an uncanny valley version of earth’s landscape. Here, Matthew meets his father who tells him that this is one of the millions of earths that exists in the universe. He admits to have visited seven hundred other planets. He seems to have transmuted into a lifeform that denies the logic of physics as we know it. He admits to having been transmitting the signals that Robin and Matthew’s boss were receiving– trying to give them closure. After being decoded, the signal translates to “Let me go.”

The new earth has everyone– it has Robin too. However, when Matthew goes to her, she seems to have no memory of Matthew. Distraught and disillusioned, Matthew ejects from the planet’s alternate reality and decides to travel to earth. As reentry is made, he realizes that not only in space, he has travelled through time by a century– the earth is burning, there is no existence of countries as we know it. Matthew tells the AI that he would like to take a walk, and ejects himself from the spaceship, floating in the endless darkness in the gravity of the planet he once knew as home. In the past, Robin opens Matthew’s farewell letter and figures out the message of letting go– putting the goodbye in the past while it may not have happened for Matthew yet.

The AI admits that the Lifeforms are not akin to humans. They are entities of light– entities that define known logics of physics. In the entirety of his space travel, we see Matthew’s from a close shot, as a head in the darkness. This image imitates his belief that space is but darkness– and the visual language evokes the strange isolation experienced by only a few of the human race. Wormhole is a concept which has yet not been proved by physics, yet they exist in the realm of fiction. Travelling through a wormhole can alter the perception of time and space and elevate the being into a hyperreal state. Perhaps, this is why Matthew’s mind became a space where he could experience the reality of these lifeforms. We initially think Matthew physically travels to a different earth, but a sharp cut which brings us back to the same visual of isolation confirms that Matthew has not moved an inch physically.

Given Matthew’s travel through the wormhole which looks like the singularity of a black hole too, time may have bent for him. There can be another theory that Matthew actually did not survive the journey– and the state that he reaches is a hyperreality we can compare to heaven. Or it may be that the film is the last seven minutes of memory recap in Matthew’s head before he became strands of light sucked in by the event horizon. It is probable since Matthew’s attempts at closure are wistful fantasies– he meets his long lost father, he also meets Robin. The AI had been telling him that his last memory before death would be Robin’s, confirming the possibility. However, this is not the closure Matthew was seeking– he longs to return home.

If we register the alternate reality as real, then Matthew ejects himself from it, and decides to make a re-entry to earth. The alienation of reality weighed heavily upon him. The film subtly comments on romances by showing the growing distance between couples that can expand to the extent of separate universes, yet none of them can let go of each other’s hands. For Robin, it is difficult to accept the reality that Matthew chose a life without her and is not coming back, and for Matthew the impossibility of returning home from what he chose becomes a heavy weight. But at some point, one has to let go, for love, and for peace. It is as if the lifeforms– ethereal, beyond logical purview, delivered the cosmic message. Robin keeps transmitting the message that the cosmos is not around them, but they are the cosmos– and it is partially true. Perhaps the lifeforms are nothing but a subconscious presence that surfaces with a reality when our mind is trying to fight hard against it.Yet, the pull of the home is as such that Matthew risks his life to make the return. Even knowing that he is far into the future and lost all that he had, he ventures into the great darkness. The last scene seems eerily similar to a space jump– and we can see a chute bag on Matthew. While it may seem like Matthew chose a quiet space burial for himself, if we look closely, there is a possibility that he had taken an impossible space jump and would land on a burning earth as seen from space. 

Matthew’s long, lonely trajectory past Saturn is a metaphor stretched to cosmic proportions: the ache of distance lovers know, the impossible mathematics of ambition versus intimacy, and the fragile hope that some fragment of our love might still get through. However, as often, it is sometimes too late for returns.