How The World Learns About Alien Life

Stop reading if you don’t have top-level security at Wardex — this article contains massive spoilers for the entirety of “Disclosure Day.”

Steven Spielberg has done it again. His latest summer blockbuster, “Disclosure Day,” earned a rave review from /Film’s chief critic Chris Evangelista — and garnered great feedback from critics across the board — and proved that this universally acclaimed director still, to put it casually, “has the juice.” So what happens in this movie, and what does that epic ending really mean?

Let’s start with some basics. “Disclosure Day,” Spielberg’s first movie since his 2022 autobiographical film “The Fabelmans,” gives the game away a bit in its title: what would happen to our world as we know it if the powers that be disclosed the truth about extraterrestrial life? This neatly ties together a few concepts Spielberg is quite fond of — aliens and the search for truth, the latter of which is a running theme throughout his work but is addressed pretty bluntly in his 2017 movie “The Post.” Unsurprisingly, “Disclosure Day” also has a stacked cast. Oscar nominees Emily Blunt and Colman Domingo, Oscar winner Colin Firth, Josh O’Connor, and Eve Hewson serve as the five main characters, and behind the scenes, Spielberg worked with all-timer composer John Williams and cinematographer (and his other frequent collaborator) Janusz Kamiński, another Oscar winner, to craft the look and feel of the film.

“Disclosure Day” is yet another triumph for Spielberg, a man whose very name has become a synonym for “good director” — so let’s unpack this epic adventure and its wild ending. Here’s everything you need to know about the ending of “Disclosure Day,” explained.

As “Disclosure Day” opens, we meet our main cast of characters quickly, starting with whistleblower and math prodigy Daniel Kellner (Josh O’Connor), his girlfriend and former nun Jane Blankenship (Eve Hewson), and Noah Scanlon (Colin Firth), the CEO of a massive and shadowy corporation known as Wardex. Wardex, as it happens, has been holding Jane hostage to get their hands on flash drives containing sensitive information — flash drives in Daniel’s possession — as well as a mysterious device called, well, “The Device.” Unfortunately for Noah and his pack of Wardex goons, Daniel and Jane escape with The Device and all the flash drives.

So what do those drives contain? As Jane finds out, they’re filled with footage dating back a whopping 79 years that reveals Wardex’s attempts to cover up the existence of alien life — a mission it carries out in cooperation with the United States government. Worse still, some of the footage shows Wardex experimenting upon and torturing the aliens. (We don’t learn which planet the aliens hail from, nor do we know the name of their exact species.)

As Daniel and Jane try to evade Wardex — and Noah uses his own Device to infiltrate Jane’s mind — weatherwoman Margaret Fairchild (Emily Blunt) heads to her job at a local Kansas City affiliate and experiences a strange episode where she starts speaking in clicks and odd noises before collapsing, preceded by an interaction with a cardinal. After that, Margaret realizes she can experience other people’s feelings, thoughts, and emotions, and uses this newfound and bizarre power to get herself out of numerous dangerous situations … helpful, as Wardex is also searching for Margaret. As it turns out, she and Daniel are “special.”

When Daniel Kellner and Margaret Fairchild finally get to the leader of the whistleblowers, Hugo Wakefield (Colman Domingo), it’s revealed that Hugo and his team have been building a replica of Margaret’s childhood home on a Kansas City soundstage, hoping that the structure will help her remember a pivotal experience from her youth. With the help of The Device, Margaret is able to re-experience her visit with aliens, which happened when she was just 10 years old. The aliens, disguised as friendly animals to put young Margaret (Delaney Cuthbert) at ease, entered her bedroom and led her to their ship. As it turns out, they did the same thing with Daniel, who was even younger, and imbued both of them with powers using a ring of the objects we know as The Device.

This means that, as children, both Daniel and Margaret were essentially handpicked by this alien race and given the knowledge to show the world that extraterrestrial life actually exists — despite Wardex’s decades-long attempts to cover it up. Using her powers and The Device, Margaret keeps the lights on in her Kansas City TV studio — even as Wardex forces the shutdown of the power and backup generator — and shoots a broadcast revealing that aliens are real and among us on Earth, but that the government hired Wardex as an outside firm to conceal their very existence. Using Daniel’s collection of flash drives, the entire world watches, gripped by horror and fascination, as official government footage of aliens is released. Noah Scanlon gives up the fight, knowing it’s over. Then, Daniel and Margaret meet an aged alien, thanks to the whistleblowers … and it delivers a message to Margaret before she looks into the camera and says, “Listen.”

Again, it’s easy to connect “Disclosure Day” to a whole bunch of Steven Spielberg’s movies. “E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial,” “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” and “War of the Worlds” all focus on aliens, but in some ways, “The Fabelmans” and “The Post” are more helpful for fully understanding the message of “Disclosure Day.” The former hones in on how formative our childhoods can be — obviously, tying into the revelations about both Margaret and Daniel and their interactions with the aliens at a young age — but “The Post,” which centers on the Washington Post’s publication of the Pentagon Papers, is about the righteous search for the truth. When all is said and done, “Disclosure Day” isn’t so much about aliens as it is about the quest for full transparency; the main conflict of the movie is Wardex’s attempts to hide the truth, not an actual conflict between humans and the aliens.

To that point, the way we learn about the aliens in “Disclosure Day” is truly horrific. The first footage we see, through Jane’s eyes, is that aforementioned video of Wardex employees experimenting on a shrieking alien that seems to be in pain, and we also see archival footage of President Richard Nixon showing a Hollywood actor he hoped to impress three different alien corpses in a top-secret morgue. (This particular moment got a dark, wry chuckle out of the audience at my screening.) Humans, not aliens, are the enemy in “Disclosure Day,” especially when we see how gentle and kind these aliens were towards young Daniel and young Margaret. Knowledge is power, which is why Wardex fears Daniel and Margaret; the aliens gave them knowledge, and the pair then empower the world with it.

As of this writing, there’s absolutely zero confirmation about a potential “Disclosure Day” sequel. I’m not a gambling woman, but if I were, I’d bet that we don’t get a “Disclosure Day” sequel for two big reasons. First, if you’ve seen the movie, it feels like a pretty closed loop. Margaret and Daniel “disclose” information about aliens to the entire world; Wardex’s crimes are revealed; and they come into contact with one of the gentle aliens who had shown them kindness decades earlier. Even if I tried very, very hard, I’m not sure I could come up with a path for this story to continue, and I sincerely hope that screenwriter David Koepp and Steven Spielberg feel the same way.

Plus, let’s consider Spielberg’s track record with sequels. Not only did he fight tooth and nail to stop an “E.T.” sequel, but he also didn’t direct any “Jurassic Park” sequels beyond the second film. Yes, there’s the “Indiana Jones” franchise, but let’s be honest: that story lends itself beautifully to sequels, and “Disclosure Day” just doesn’t. Again, nothing’s been confirmed either way, but in my humble opinion, it’s safe to assume that “Disclosure Day” is a standalone story.

“Disclosure Day,” Spielberg’s spectacular return to summer blockbusters, is in theaters now.