Pratik Handore
Hulu’s ‘No One Will Save You’ stars Kaitlyn Dever (‘Dopesick‘) as Brynn Adams, a creative young woman alienated from her local community for a past mistake. As a result, Brynn lives an anxiety-driven life in her childhood home and seeks comfort in the past. However, when a sudden alien invasion bursts her bubble of security and comfort, Brynn is forced to rely solely upon herself to fend off the hostile, unearthly invaders and save her life. Brynn’s final stand for survival and her fate form the ending of ‘No One Will Save You.’ SPOILERS AHEAD!
No One Will Save You Plot Synopsis
‘No One Will Save You’ is set in the small town of Mill River and focuses on a young girl named Brynn Adams. Brynn lives alone in her childhood home. She does not appear to have any job and spends her time creating a model version of her town. Brynn dreads venturing outside her house. Her fear is validated when she visits her mother’s grave. The local community ostracizes Brynn, and the townsfolk seem generally unhappy with her presence. She also avoids interacting with Mr. and Mrs. Collins, who are later revealed to be the parents of her childhood best friend, Maude.
After returning home, Brynn practices dancing, cooks for herself, and writes a letter to Maude. It quickly becomes evident that something bad happened between Brynn and Maude. Brynn has written several letters for Maude but never posted any of them. After finishing her chores, Brynn goes to bed but awakens in the middle of the night with a strange sound. She quickly realizes that there is an invader in her house. Brynn looks around the house and is mortified to find an alien wandering in her safe space. Brynn hides in the house while the alien creature tries to capture her. Eventually, she succeeds in killing the alien and ventures outside the comfort of her house to seek help.
Brynn slowly discovers that the alien creatures are possessing others from her town. She goes to the police station for help, where she encounters Maude’s parents. Mrs. Collins spits on Brynn’s face, making it clear that no one from the town would be willing to help her. A devastated Brynn has a breakdown and decides to leave the town behind. However, on the bus, she is attacked by some townsfolk possessed by the aliens. Brynn barely manages to escape from the townsfolk and returns to her home, where she is attacked by another alien at nightfall.
Brynn kills another one of the aliens invading the house and encounters a few more throughout the night. Eventually, she finds herself trapped and overpowered. The aliens try to possess her with a parasite that lands Brynn in a dream-like state where she wakes up in the comfort of her home, and the alien invasion is just a nightmare. However, Brynn’s unresolved past with Maude reminds her that she is living a fantasy, and Brynn repels the parasite. The aliens use the parasite to send a clone of Brynn to capture her. When the clone stabs Brynn with a knife, Brynn uses her cutter to slit its throat. However, with nowhere left to run and no one coming to her rescue, Brynn must find a way to survive.
No One Will Save You Ending: Do the Aliens Capture Brynn?
After an action-packed final act, the film approaches its inevitable conclusion when Brynn finds herself out of options and bleeding out after an encounter with a clone of herself. She is beamed to the alien spaceship where the unearthly creatures study her. When Brynn awakens, she is surrounded by the aliens discussing something among themselves. One of the aliens unlocks Brynn’s past, and the creatures see her memories in a disturbingly red strobe of light, which indicates Brynn’s guilt over her past. Brynn’s memories confirm that Maude is no more, and the letters she had been writing were a simple coping mechanism.
However, the traumatic incident Brynn experienced as a twelve-year-old also explains why she is an outsider in her local community, and her presence is generally disliked. Nonetheless, the dream-like vision spurred on by the aliens interacting with her memories causes Brynn to let go of her past. She reconciles with a vision of her younger self, which seems to spark empathy within the aliens. As a result, the aliens return Brynn to Earth, where she recovers from her injuries. In the final moments, we see Brynn interacting with the townsfolk, who seem to enjoy her presence while under the control of the aliens. The film ends as Brynn attends a party with the townsfolk while the aliens continue taking over the planet.
What Happened to Maude?
The film’s opening moments indicate Brynn’s past with Maude, who is confirmed to be her former best friend, through pictures and letters. However, as the contents of the letters Brynn wrote for Maude are revealed with the unfolding narrative, viewers are left to wonder about Maude’s fate and psychological impact on Brynn. Moments before the aliens capture Brynn, she passes by a graveyard, clearly showing Maude’s grave and confirming that Brynn’s friend is no more. However, when the aliens peek into Brynn’s memories, we finally learn what transpired between the girls when they were young.
As the flashy dream sequence reveals, Brynn and Maude argued when they were young, resulting in Maude smacking Brynn. In retaliation, Brynn hit Maude with a stone, resulting in Maude’s death. While the exact nature of the argument is never revealed, it is evident that high tempers drove Brynn and Maude, and Brynn mistakenly took things too for. Consequently, Maude died, and a young Brynn was left out of her local community, who viewed her as a monster. Moreover, Brynn’s situation is made even more tragic through the letters she writes to Maude, hoping for a reunion with her friend.
The film heavily implies Brynn’s guilt over Maude’s death only worsened over the years as she realized the gravity of her actions. Ultimately, the aliens become an unlikely force in Brynn’s reconciliation with her traumatic past. When the parasite tries to possess Brynn, she lands in a fantasy sequence, reuniting with Muade and apologizing to her friend. However, the encounter with a clone of herself proves to Brynn that Maude is gone, and no amount of apologies will fix the situation. Instead, she must now reconcile with herself and move on in life instead of clinging to the fantasy of reconciling with her deceased friend.
Why Did the Aliens Spare Brynn?
After Brynn reconciles with her past and seemingly forgives herself, the aliens decide to spare Brynn. The film’s final moments depict Brynn living her version of an ideal happily ever after she gains her town’s approval and lives within the community that had ostracized her since her childhood. Given that the aliens appear to be on a mission to invade and take over the planet, their decision to spare Brynn is baffling, to say the least. Some viewers might deduce that the final moments are just another fantasy sequence where Brynn lives a happy life. However, the idea is dismissed by the visible scars left behind by Brynn’s encounter with the aliens.
The aliens’ decision to spare Brynn stems from their empathy toward her past trauma. The aliens do not appear particularly violent in their approach to possessing other humans. However, Brynn is the only one to fight back, forcing them to use violent methods against her. When they repeatedly fail to capture Brynn, the aliens decide to decode why the seemingly normal and powerless human is fighting back. A peek into Brynn’s memories reveals that she is fighting back because of her traumatic childhood, and she craves to live a happy life while feeling a part of her local community.
Earlier, the film establishes that Brynn is alienated in her hometown because of her past mistakes. As a result, she is viewed as an “invader” and an “alien” presence, similar to the actual aliens who invade her hometown. The aliens empathizing with Brynn’s traumatic past suggests they are more similar than meets the eye. Like Brynn, the aliens might also be looking for a community where they can belong, leading to their invasion of Earth. As a result, it is likely that the aliens relate to Brynn’s longing for acceptance and decide to spare her. The idea is supported by the closing moments where the other humans, although possessed by the aliens, appear unharmed and live peacefully as a close-knit community.
Read More: Where Was No One Will Save You Filmed?
