Abhiroop Das
Created by Julie Gearey, Netflix’s ‘Unchosen‘ is a psychological thriller series that zeroes in on the inner workings of a cult that calls for a return to traditional ways of life and learning. Behind that broader claim, however, rests a close-knit system built on oppression and abuse, with the women of the cult suffering the most. Rosie, the wife of Adam, one of the cult’s most prominent members, begins doubting everything she has learned after a chance encounter with a runaway convict named Sam. As she learns more about the secrets the cult’s leader is hiding, she contemplates starting from scratch, with or without her husband. The journey ahead turns out to be a lot more complicated, however, when she also realizes that Sam might not be who he claims to be. SPOILERS AHEAD.
Unchosen Plot Recap
‘Unchosen’ begins by introducing the Fellowship of the Divine, a cult that forbids all use of digital technology and most interactions outside the commune. When Adam and Rosie realize that their daughter, Grace, is missing amid a storm, they decide to split and search the surrounding forest. Though Rosie ultimately finds her daughter drowning inside a pond, a thicket stops her from going in. Luckily, a stranger with an arm injury jumps in to rescue Grace, but disappears into the forest soon after. Everyone tells Rosie she merely hallucinated a helper, but she remains adamant that someone is there. It doesn’t take long for the man to reappear in her life, this time as an unhoused person desperate to find his place back into society.
Though Rosie chooses to help the man in secret, what she doesn’t know is that he is an escaped convict who was in jail for murder and recently killed another person, albeit in self-defense. Meanwhile, Adam discovers that his brother, Isaac, has a secret phone, and lambasts him in front of the entire cult. As punishment, the cult leader, Mr. Phillips, orders him to be contained in the punishment room and only be allowed outside to be tortured with alcohol. Rosie doesn’t wish for this to continue, and secretly helps Isaac escape to the city, where he has a second partner. However, on her way back, Rosie is ambushed by Sam, who wishes for a way into the cult. While he gets a spot, Rosie is put into the punishment room for letting Isaac escape, and is also sexually abused by Adam not long after.
When Sam gets employed in the cult’s sawmill, he begins to see Rosie more frequently, and they grow closer. On one occasion, she successfully cracks Adam’s safe and discovers that Mr. Phillips has been getting updates on his family via letters for years, unlike the rest of the members. Deciding this to be the tipping point, she lets go of all inhibitions and begins an affair with Sam. In the meantime, Isaac, who is now free to access the internet, learns just how deadly Sam is and tries to get his family to listen, but to no avail. Before long, however, Sam’s actions begin to get more suspicious, and in his desperation not to be arrested again, he kills Isaac with Mr. Phillips’ car and lets the latter take the blame. Still, it doesn’t take Rosie long to figure things out and begin working on her way out before it’s too late.
Unchosen Ending: Does Rosie Escape the Cult? Why Does Sam Let Her Go?
At the end of ‘Unchosen,’ Rosie manages to escape the Fellowship of the Divine with her daughter, Grace, severing all ties with the cult for good. Following in the steps of Mrs. Phillips, she becomes the second character to find her voice and leave a toxic lifestyle behind. However, unlike Mrs. Phillips, Rosie has to come face-to-face with Sam, who by then is destabilized enough to perceive anyone and anything as a threat to his self-preservation. Realizing that she cannot be safe in the same space as him, Rosie urges Adam for a way out, in the process telling him the truth about her affair. Though Adam is in the same boat as Rosie, having performed oral sex on Sam not so long ago, he keeps shut and doubles down on chiding her, before realizing that the problem at hand eclipses any of this.
Though the scene of Adam stacking blame on Rosie gets lost in the larger scheme of things, it is the key to understanding her decision to break free of the cult. At the start of the show, she quite literally interprets Sam as a Jesus-like figure who has come to take away her misery. That attachment gains a sexual component over time, but it is only after the murder of Isaac that Rosie gets the complete picture. In putting all of her trust in a figure like Sam, she merely ends up replacing one source of abuse with another. Instead, her real escape lies outside of this entire community that has decided to maximize the interests of the few, mostly at the cost of women’s freedom. For Adam, a similar realization comes when he finally admits to sexually assaulting Rosie and realizes that she deserves a different, brighter future.
As Adam helps Rosie flee with Grace, a storm draws closer, mimicking the start of the story, when Grace fell into the pond. After the incident, Rosie begins imagining herself as the drowned person who is rescued by Sam, but that fantasy is dispelled in this final exchange. Realizing that she might tell the police about his whereabouts, Sam chases her car down in the middle of a torrential downpour and strikes Adam first. Though Rosie is able to hide Grace in a safe place, she herself gets cornered by Sam next to a water tank and is nearly drowned. Moments before Sam kills her, however, his mind goes back to when he killed Aisling. Despite it being years ago, Sam is still haunted by his own actions, which is why he stops and lets Rosie go instead of repeating his sins.
Does Sam Become the Next Cult Leader? Why Does Adam Not Turn Him in?
In letting Rosie and Grace go, Sam seemingly welcomes the possibility of an arrest, but not without a last plan up his sleeve. Adam, who wasn’t hit with a serious injury, manages to get back to the scene and holds Sam at gunpoint. However, Sam retorts by repeating “Thou shalt not kill,” before proposing a different alternative: calling the police. However, even this turns out to be a thinly veiled strategy, as when Sam hands over his phone for the call, he turns on the video of Adam performing oral sex. As someone who has emerged as the cult’s de facto leader after Mr. Phillips, Adam has no plans to make his sexuality public, especially when it’s hinted that the cult is built on prejudice. All of this becomes a part of Sam’s plan to seize control from Adam and essentially confirm his survival indefinitely.
Though the show begins with Sam coming off as a misguided, but genuinely good person, the ending wholly subverts our understanding of him. Having won the psychological battle against Adam, he openly confesses to having manipulated things from the start, with hardly any interest in restoring his bonds with the community. Instead, it is likely that he sees figures like Adam as a pawn in his chess game, all to survive against the police for as long as possible. Though the authorities already suspect the cult of housing Sam, they are unlikely to look too deeply, especially not with Adam himself lying for him. Thus, the video secures Sam’s status in the cult as an insider, all the while stripping Adam of the control he has amassed over the years.
In a twisty turn of events, the final moments of the show, which take place a year after Rosie’s escape, show that Sam is now the new leader of the Fellowship of the Divine, having convinced the entire cult of his wisdom and belongingness. In a way, this evolution is almost fitting when we consider just how abusive the cult is, and how it is designed to let men like Sam, or earlier Mr. Phillips, thrive. At the end, Sam refers to every one of his disciples as the chosen ones, which confirms that he has internalized the idea of being saved by God with respect to his crimes. In reality, however, Sam’s status rests on every vicious act he has committed over the years, and will likely never stop committing.
What Happens to Adam and Mr. Phillips?
While Rosie and Sam end their respective arcs on entirely different ends of the spectrum, the fates of Adam and Mr. Phillips are left much more ambiguous in contrast. Following the one-year timeskip, it is implied that Rosie reconnected with Mrs. Phillips and possibly found a new path in life. Sam, on the other hand, seems to have escaped the police’s clutches for good and is fully settled into the mold of a cult leader. However, Adam is conspicuously absent during all of this. Though it is possible that he has left the cult behind, that doesn’t explain why he still hasn’t reported Sam to the cops. The more likely solution, as such, is that Adam has been pushed down the ranks in the cult and is possibly under Sam’s complete control.
The motif of the phone becomes synonymous with Adam’s journey over the course of the show, as he only discovers it when Isaac calls for help with Rosie. Given that Sam is introduced in the same scene, both elements are linked as symbols of external influence and, from the cult’s perspective, perversion. It is because of the phone that Adam cuts all ties with his brother, not long before Sam literally kills Isaac and ends any chances of reconciliation between the brothers. As such, after finding the phone at Mr. Phillips’ office, he makes the calculated decision of filming Adam ahead of time, all so that he can use Adam’s worst fears against him. Once desperate to amass power within the cult, Adam winds up becoming a puppet to an outside force, that is, if he’s not dead already.
Much like Adam, the last we see of Mr. Phillips is ambiguous yet grim. While Rosie makes her escape, Mason comes across the punishment room in Adam’s house, where Mr. Phillips is currently being kept. Though Adam now knows the truth about Isaac’s murder, he no longer has the power to undo Mr. Phillips’ fate, especially with how it’s in Sam’s best interest to keep the blame away. Mason has a distraught expression when he glances at Mr. Phillips’ slumped frame, and it is possible that he feels guilty. That also explains his decision to leave the country, and possibly bid Sam goodbye forever. While it is likely that Mr. Phillips doesn’t make it out of the one-year timeskip alive, in an almost cruel fashion, the one thing that remains unchanged is the cult, in all of its toxicity.
Read More: Where Was Netflix’s Unchosen Filmed?
You must be logged in to post a comment.