'Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice' Ending Explained: Is Nick Dead Or Alive?

The ending of Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice was all about Mike and Alice making a final Hail Mary attempt to save Nick from dying. Well, why were they in that situation in the first place? Mike and Nick used to work for a criminal enterprise led by Sosa. And one fine day, Sosa’s son, Jimmy Boy, was ratted out to the police by another mercenary named Jackie Napalm, and Jimmy Boy went to jail. When Jimmy Boy was released, Sosa commenced a rat hunt to kill Mike. Why? Since Nick’s wife, Alice, was having an extra-marital affair with Mike, he pointed Sosa and his mercenaries in Mike’s direction to get back at him for being a better lover to Alice than he himself ever was. Sosa hired the cannibal assassin called the Barron, and had Mike killed. 6 months went by and Nick went about looking for Symon, Alice’s friend, because he owed Nick money. That’s when he found out the time machine that Symon had built, and used it to go back to the day that Mike had died to save him. Why? Because after Mike’s death, Nick found out that Alice was pregnant with Mike’s baby, and Nick didn’t want the baby to grow up fatherless. Hence, time travel. The initial mission was for Future Nick, Present Nick, Mike, and Alice to team up and devise a plan that’d keep Mike safe. Then things spiraled out of control and led to the second mission, which was keeping Nick alive. So, did the characters succeed in either endeavor? Let’s find out.

Spoiler Alert

The Barron Died, But the Hunt Was Still On

Future Nick was under the impression that killing the Barron and his henchmen and then telling Sosa that Mike was responsible and had fled would compel Sosa to call off the rat hunt. So, while Present Nick, Mike, and Alice served as the bait in Nick’s “love shack,” Future Nick perched himself atop the building opposite that apartment with a sniper rifle, and as soon as the Barron stepped into his crosshairs, Future Nick blew off his face. After that, Alice proceeded to blow the Barron’s henchmen to smithereens. And then Future Nick informed Sosa that the Barron was dead and Mike was gone. Now, here’s the issue: why didn’t Future Nick just say that Mike died in the crossfire along with the Barron and his henchmen? It seemed like Sosa trusted Nick enough to take his word for it. So, I think he would have believed Nick, and then Mike would have been free to travel to some far-off country with Alice and live happily ever after. 

Of course Sosa heard that Mike was on the run and decided to order all the mercenaries that were on his payroll to go after Mike. I know that this part of the narrative was out of Future Nick’s syllabus, but couldn’t he have figured it out on his own? I guess underestimating his boss’ IQ was another one of Nick’s fatal flaws, other than only learning from his mistakes. Anyway, since all the mercenaries that Sosa was about to send after Mike were at the After-After-After Party, because just two after parties weren’t enough to celebrate Jimmy Boy’s freedom, Mike decided to crash it, kill them all (and Sosa and Jimmy Boy), and bring this rat hunt to an end. Once Future Nick, Present Nick, and Alice signed off on that, they hit Sosa and his criminal enterprise, and they hit them hard. While they succeeded in that endeavor, Present Nick got shot in the neck, and that jeopardized the existence of not just him, but Future Nick as well.

Nick Died, But There Was A Second Time Machine

In order to avoid overcomplicating the sci-fi aspect of the film, BenDavid Grabinski used the closed-loop method of time travel for this narrative. You have watched Back to the Future, right? Yeah, same thing. If the past version of a character is injured or dies, then the future version of the character will be injured and die as well. Since Present Nick had been shot through the neck, he’d bleed out, and that’d lead to the death of not just Present Nick, but Future Nick as well. Hence, Present Nick, Future Nick, Mike, and Alice boarded their car and rushed to the nearest hospital. Sadly, by the time they reached the ER, Present Nick had bled to death, and Future Nick had disappeared. Mike and Alice began mourning his death, because they thought that there was no way to turn back the clock and redo this whole mission because Future Nick had accidentally killed Symon while stepping out of the time machine and destroyed the time machine itself as well. Thankfully, Alice remembered that Symon had built not one, but two time machines. 

So, in the film’s ending, Mike and Alice rushed to Symon’s secret storage unit, which only Alice knew about apparently, unboxed the second time machine, and, since there was only room for one person, Mike stepped into it and seemingly went back in time. I say “seemingly,” because the movie didn’t reveal that Mike was actually able to go back in time. The machine was labeled a prototype, so there’s a pretty good chance that it didn’t work as well as the one that was destroyed. Also, what’s the fun in Mike just time-traveling like it’s a walk in the park and saving Nick from dying at the hands of Jimmy Boy? If a sequel happens, I’m guessing it’ll focus on Mike and Alice finding a scientist as good as Symon and employing him to make the time machine functional. And if Mike doesn’t accidentally destroy the time machine after traveling to the past, then I suppose we’ll see him taking multiple shots (instead of the one-shot plan that Mike had) at saving Nick.

Learning Lesson

What was the point of Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice? What are the lessons that the movie wanted to impart on its viewers? Well, for starters, don’t be a cheater and then try to clamber your way onto some kind of moral high ground when your partner (who you have cheated on) finds love again. And then certainly don’t try to have your partner’s current lover killed, because you’ll certainly regret it and, unlike Mike, you won’t have a time machine that’ll allow you to fix your mistake. To be honest, more than anything in the movie, Nick killing Mike because Alice was in love with him was the biggest shocker for me, especially after I learned that Nick had a “love shack” that Alice didn’t even know about. How can you stab the woman that loves you in the heart and then have your ego hurt when she finds love again? That has to be some next level egotism. But yeah, if you don’t love your partner, break up with them, let them live their life however they want, and just walk away. I will admit that that’s easier said than done, especially when you are a criminal. Well, that’s where regret and reparation come into play. 

It’s completely human to make mistakes, but the movie is trying to tell us that we shouldn’t move on after erring. We should regret our actions, and, if there’s opportunity for rectification, we should take it. Of course, time machines don’t exist, but we can start by apologizing to the person whose life we have ruined. And then we can begin helping them out of the predicament that we have created. If you do that, much like Mike and Alice, you’ll find a helping hand reaching out to you during your darkest times. I mean, Mike and Alice could have said “good riddance” after Nick died, because not only did he have Mike killed, but he had also cheated on Alice repeatedly. However, after seeing him travel through time, move heaven and earth to change the narrative in their favor, and die in the process, Mike and Alice felt compelled to return the favor. Based on all that, I suppose the moral of the story is that we don’t have time machines; we just have this one shot at life, and we should live it responsibly and with love in our hearts. 

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