WARNING: The following contains major spoilers for I'm Thinking of Ending Things, available now on Netflix.
Netflix's I'm Thinking of Ending Things has several head-scratching moments as it hurtles towards a psychedelic ending where the truth about Jake's (Jesse Plemons) life is discovered. It turns out his unnamed girlfriend (played by Jessie Buckley), as well as the dinner with his family at their farmhouse and their trip to his high-school during a snowstorm, are all fake -- being creations in the mind of an older Jake, the school's janitor.
One of these confusing scenes occurs right at the end when Jake prepares to say goodbye to a world that's been cruel to him as a social outcast. An animated maggot-infested pig shows up seemingly randomly, but it turns out this animal is a very important part of his constructed world, tied to a key event in his childhood.
Old Jake's accepted he was a creeper and wants to end his regret of not talking to that girl on trivia night decades ago. The movie's title is actually about him wanting to commit suicide by freezing to death in his car, and as he takes his clothes off, ready to embrace death, the pig shows up. It escorts him through the school halls and towards the blinding light, acting as a sort of Grim Reaper. It consoles Jake, but this isn't a random pig at all as it's a spirit guide linked to his youth on the farm.
Early on in the film, before he and his girl go into the farmhouse to meet his parents, he shows her a spot in the barn where they reared a couple of pigs. He reveals his dad kept throwing food there, but they seemed to be lazy, not moving to eat. They didn't realize the pigs mysteriously died, and it's only when they turned them over, they saw maggots inside. This event stuck with Jake deeply because the laziness was actually on his family's part as his dad didn't pay attention to the damage he was causing. Had they been more attentive, they'd have known the pigs were dead, but instead, they kept feeding and nurturing something that had no life.
This is the equivalent to Jake's made-up world where he's watering the dream about that mysterious girl from trivia night. He keeps shifting her identity, from her career to mannerisms to life's ambitions, with each attempt being tantamount to his dad throwing grain for the pig. In other words, he's wasting time and wasting his life away by creating this illusion, and seeing as he's in control, Jake wants to stop the vicious cycle.
He views the pig, dead and rotting, as a life he's feeding with no result. And now, the only solution is to throw it away to heal himself as he's been torn apart emotionally for far too long. It's why when Jake accepts it's all over and ends the fake world he built, the pig shows up to escort him into the afterlife as if they're going to the slaughter. The pig is bleeding and damaged in this hallucination, representing the pain Jake tried to heal with this fictional world, and now it's time for them to both be put out their misery.
Starring Jessie Buckley, Jesse Plemons, Toni Collette, David Thewlis and Guy Boyd, I’m Thinking of Ending Things is now streaming on Netflix.