‘The Great Flood’ Ending Explained: Does An-na Rescue Ja-in?

Netflix’s latest science fiction disaster movie has caused quite the buzz!

The Great Flood stars Kim Da-mi and Park Hae-soo as characters fighting for their lives after a massive flood envelops Seoul, South Korea. In addition to trying to find safety, Gu An-na (Da-mi) must also search for her son, Ja-in (Kwon Eun-seong), who got lost in the chaos of the flood.

The South Korean film “follows those holding onto the last shred of hope for humanity struggle to survive in a flooded apartment building on the last day of Earth overcome by a great flood,” per Netflix’s description.

However, just when the movie appears to be another post-apocalyptic disaster movie, it takes a major turn and brings into question the entire existence of humanity.

Here’s everything to know about how The Great Flood ends and the many shocking plot twists.

How did The Great Flood end?

The Great Flood follows mother An-na as she desperately tries to save her son, Ja-in, from a flood engulfing their apartment building and the world around them. Along the way, she meets security officer Hee-jo (Hae-soo), who joins her on her mission and tells her that an asteroid hit Antarctica and caused worldwide flooding.

During their heart-pounding journey, it’s revealed that An-na works as an artificial intelligence researcher at the Darwin Center, an outer space research organization aiming to prevent human extinction through technology affiliated with artificial intelligence. Specifically, An-na has been in charge of the Emotion Engine, which is an experiment dedicated to discovering how to give synthetic humans authentic emotions, feelings and thoughts.

As part of her Emotion Engine work, she was given a synthetic infant — Ja-in — and tasked with raising him to procure the same emotions as an authentic child. Throughout their five years together, An-na raised him as her own human son with the same love and dedication.

Hee-jo explains that he has been sent to rescue her, as her only other colleague died in the floods. An-na is eventually rescued by a helicopter and discovers that the rest of the planet would have also been affected by the asteroid. Hee-jo informs her that the fellow researchers at the Darwin Center have completed making human bodies capable of possessing real intelligence and reproductive capabilities, but they are lacking her emotional expertise.

In a shocking turn of events, it’s revealed that the real An-na died after she was rescued from the apartment. The spaceship carrying her to the Darwin Center in space collided with asteroid fragments.

Before she died, the real An-na requested that the researchers use her past emotions to be transmitted into a synthetic body to continue her work of creating genuine human emotions in robots.

As the movie unfolds, it’s revealed that in order to protect the future of human existence, An-na has been living in a virtual simulation created by AI to perfect how synthetic humans can obtain genuine emotions and how those emotions alter the course of humanity. As the researcher, An-na determines that there is no greater emotion than those a mother has for her son and tests that in the experiment.

Was the flood real?

The movie initially opens up with a catastrophic flood in South Korea that occurred after an asteroid hit Antarctica and resulted in all the ice sheets melting and all-time high seawater levels. Several countries have already been swallowed as a result of the water, with Korea seemingly next.

While one initial flood that resulted in An-na’s death was seemingly real, the cataclysmic event seen on-screen is actually one of many simulations to train the Emotion Engine.

What experiment does An-na create?

It’s later revealed that An-na has been reliving the experiment thousands of times to train a robot to perfect its human emotions and successfully find her son. An-na is tasked with completing the Emotional Engine to finish the final piece of the puzzle in making synthetic humans who can potentially return to the earth and restart a population.

The flood scenario ultimately becomes a virtual simulation dealing with raw emotion to determine how engineers could design a synthetic person to contain those same emotions that would allow a mother to successfully save her child.

As part of her job to prevent the extinction of humanity, An-na relives the simulation thousands of times for years on end and makes different choices each time to try and find her son. Each time, she finds herself getting rescued without her son by her side.

For years, she plays out the scenario day-after-day, and remembers more and more things about her past life and her son, thus creating a human-like robot with full thoughts, emotions and memories.

It’s revealed that An-na has participated in the experiment 21,499 days in a row — nearly 60 years. Each time, she is tasked with finding Ja-in in the midst of the devastating flood and must unlock different parts of her memory — just as a mother would in real-life.

Does An-na rescue Ja-in?

In the very end, An-na unlocks a new part of her memory and finally locates Ja-in in a closet in the 30th floor of the apartment where she told him to hide in the very first scenario. A flashback shows An-na telling Ja-in to “wait” for her in the closet, but she doesn’t remember until the last scenario.

The last scene shows An-na holding Ja-in as they travel back to earth in a rocket. As they look at the planet, it appears that much of the world is covered in water, and they’ll be joining the population for good.

Is An-na a human in the end?

Although the mother and son have reunited after she finally finds him, the movie still ends on a major question mark.

It never fully reveals whether the An-na sent to earth with Ja-in is the original woman with her memories transmitted back to her or if she’s the synthetic human created through thousands of experiments.