Abhiroop Das
Written and helmed by BenDavid Grabinski, Hulu’s ‘Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice’ follows criminal enforcers Mike and Nick through the course of a single, truly unpredictable night, one that spices up their understanding of reality itself. When Mike tries to retire from the job and settle into a peaceful, romantic lifestyle, his friend Nick offers him one last job, except that it involves time travel. After living through a completely different version of this exact night, Nick chances upon a time machine and uses it to go back in time, just enough to help Mike navigate the complex world of organized crime and make it out alive. However, the world isn’t exactly ready for such shenanigans, and what follows is a chaotic blend of action and drama that gives the movie its distinct character, all the way to the end. SPOILERS AHEAD.
Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice Plot Synopsis
‘Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice’ begins with a criminal named Jimmy Boy returning home after a six-year stint in prison. His father, the mob boss Sosa, proclaims that there is a mole inside the system and that he will be dealt with swiftly. Sosa’s chief enforcer, Nick, is on duty that evening, which means that his partner, Alice, gets to secretly reunite with her lover, Mike, who just so happens to be Nick’s partner at work. However, before Mike can head out to meet Alice, he is stopped by Nick, who proposes an urgent, last-minute job that only he can pull off. Armed with no explanation and only a bottle of chloroform, Mike knocks on the door of the guy he is supposed to knock out, and is surprised to find none other than Nick himself. After a fierce brawl, Nick escapes, only for the second Nick, whom we met earlier, to emerge from an altogether different corner, confirming that he is from the future.
As it turns out, sometime back, one of Alice’s friends, a scientist named Symon, took money from Sosa to create a time machine, and then disappeared. Six months from now, Nick walks into Symon’s lab to discover the time machine and chooses to return to this very day, but accidentally kills Present Symon in the process. Not long after, Sosa enters the house and, believing this to be Nick from the present, claims that the mole is none other than Mike, who is scheduled to die at the hands of a cannibal assassin named Barron later that day. Once Sosa is gone, Future Nick reveals that, six months ago, he discovered Mike and Alice’s affair, and decided to take revenge by framing Mike as the mole. However, regretting his best friend’s death, he has decided to undo time’s advances and fix everything this time around.
The first and perhaps most important process in this entire ordeal is to tame Present Nick, which they do at a local gas station. By this time, Alice is also clued in on the plan, and she even learns that she is pregnant with Mike’s child. While Present Nick is hardly able to process this avalanche of information, he seemingly agrees to help his future self bait and kill Barron, only to backstab at a critical moment. Luckily, Nick knows himself and anticipates this betrayal, and instead orchestrates Mike’s fake death to make Present Nick feel the same sadness.
With the miscommunications now cleared up, the trio makes light work of Barron and his forces and then heads to Sosa’s house, where Jimmy Boy is having an after-party. What follows is a rain of bullets that wipes out Sosa’s entire crew, but ultimately, Jimmy Boy dies by pure accident. An enraged Sosa tries to shoot down Mike in revenge, but Present Nick leaps in his place and gets shot in the neck. Despite the trio rushing to the hospital, Present Nick passes away, leaving things gloomy, that is, until Alice remembers that Symon created a backup time machine, which is alive and well.
Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice Ending: Does Mike go Back in Time? Will the Machine Work or Fail?
The ending of ‘Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice’ throws yet another curveball at us, as Mike locates the backup time machine and determines to go back in time and save Nick from certain death. In an almost poetic way, this reverses the roles these two have played thus far, as it is now Mike willing to risk it all just to save his best friend’s life. Although there is no way to check whether this backup time machine even works, Mike is essentially throwing a Hail Mary, which might not even work out. Still, given how flexible this story is with time travel mechanics, the more likely solution is that he does make it back, most likely to the start of this very night. From there on, he has to track the past version of himself, as well as both the past and future versions of Nick, and reenact the entire story with an extra pair of hands.
While there is no guarantee that Mike or Nick make it out of this time reset in one piece, Alice doesn’t seem to be very worried about things. Based on her reaction in the end, the time machine seems to be working without any glitches so far, which means that even in the worst case scenario, she and Future Nick can themselves go back in time to save the day. Where things get really muddy, however, is how Mike can possibly return. Based on everything we have seen in this movie thus far, going back to the past doesn’t actually change the future, but rather, it places the user in a different timeline. If the opposite were true, Future Nick’s reality would have changed the moment he set foot in this present world, thus inviting a classic bootstraps paradox. Thus, the question now is whether Mike can even return.
It is likely that Mike’s return journey to the start of the night pans out in a telegraphed fashion, with him finding and collaborating with Future Nick to make the rescue process more streamlined. With Mike knowing more or less when and how everything will happen, he can assure the team a much easier win without actually risking a paradox in the process. However, in the off chance that the time machine fails or accidentally sends him to a different reality altogether, Mike might have to live with the fact that his best friend’s death cannot be overturned. Such a conclusion has its place on a thematic level, as unlike Mike, who is originally killed for malicious reasons, the Present Nick voluntarily sacrifices himself to make up for his sins, which is a cathartic conclusion by itself, and doesn’t necessarily need a revamp.
Will Mike and Alice Reunite and Start a Family?
Based on the assumption that the time machine only affects one present timeline at a time, and cannot bend pasts and futures simultaneously, Mike’s return trip to Alice makes for a conundrum in itself. In the case where he does save Nick, we can assume that his reality catches up with the original world at some point, but based on what we know, there is no real way to bridge these two. To that end, a rather grim possibility is that Mike and Alice, at least the version of them we know, are doomed to stay in separate realities forever. However, given the movie’s tone thus far, such a bad ending is unlikely to be in the cards for these lovebirds, meaning that there is most certainly a backup plan in place.
It is possible that going back in time in ‘Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice’ doesn’t exactly create an alternate universe, but rather erases the past universe as a whole. This explains why Nick can seemingly return to the past with no worry about how his own reality might play out, but that in turn makes for another problem. In this scenario, it is Alice instead of Mike who has the crueler fate, as her reality, memories, and existence are essentially wiped out. The fact that she is pregnant with Mike’s child in this timeline, as well as that of Future Nick’s, further complicates this equation, making it unlikely for the creators to outright erase such a huge part of the story.
Given that Mike’s journey to the future is contingent on saving the lives of both past Mike and Present Nick, this means he is not fated to have a relationship with past Alice either. While this entire thread can almost be considered a plot hole, chances are that the crew already has a backup plan in place, as the time machine will certainly be available in the timeline that Nick might step into. At the very least, he can return to his own world after saving Present Nick in at least one reality, if not his own.
What Happens to Future Nick?
As we don’t know how Mike’s journey to the past pans out, our most concrete grasp of reality rests on the fact that the Present Nick is dead. As such, Future Nick is now faced with two choices: either to assume Present Nick’s place and settle in this timeline, or use the backup time machine to return to six months in the future, where there may or may not be a version of him active already. On a narrative level, it makes most sense for Future Nick to stay in this world, as the place left behind by his past self can effectively be filled by him, both physically and in spirit. Present Nick’s death comes as a closure to his arc of nearly giving into selfish rage and getting his best friend killed, and as we know, Future Nick is someone who has already grown past that emotion; his stay makes more sense for the story.
In the scenario that Future Nick stays, he is unlikely to simply let go of the backup time machine, as he and his team may be the only ones who even know about this scientific marvel. The most logical route from hereon out is to return to the past and contact Symon in order to create a mechanism that can potentially allow time travel into the future, provided that isn’t possible already. However, this constitutes a challenge of its own, as in the case that Nick fails to fulfill the mission, or accidentally kills Symon like last time, he is once again trapped in an unfamiliar realm, with at least one more version of himself already calling the place home. In a way, Nick’s character arc makes for the real tragedy of the movie, and a fitting conclusion is for him to make this second chance at life his own.
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