How Netflix's Extinction Sets Up A Sequel

WARNING: The following article contains spoilers for Extinction, streaming on Netflix now.

Netflix's Extinction looked like a run-of-the-mill alien invasion in trailers, seemingly taking lead from movies like Battle L.A., Skyline and even War of the Worlds. It teased Michael Peña's Peter dealing with premonitions of the invasion, and eventually trying to protect his family when these visions come true.

However, the film has a big twist around the midway mark which really changes the dynamic of the invasion, and leaves the audience wondering just who should they be rooting for. As the war heats up for ownership of the planet, Peter and his fellow citizens are forced to take drastic action, and as his characters discover how to save themselves, director Ben Young sets up a very intriguing angle for a sequel to take place.

As Peter goes through the motions, his wife Alice (Lizzy Caplan) and their daughters Hanna (Amelia Crouch) and Lucy (Erica Tremblay) struggle to cope, thinking he's going insane with these visions and dreams. When they come to pass though, everyone starts looking to him for answers. As he eventually takes his family, with a badly-wounded Alice, to a resistance led by his boss David (Luke Cage's Mike Colter), we find out the 'aliens' attacking are really humans and Peter and his people are droids who rebelled against humanity's oppression and ran them off the planet centuries before.

The humans colonized on Mars and are now invading to take Earth back and render the robots extinct. Peter and Co. are helped by a human, Miles, one of the soldiers who can't stomach the genocide they're trying to inflict, and who actually saves Alice from death. But the droids won't have any of it, as they've been assembling armies of their own. After the uprising, most of them had their minds wiped so they could restart lives thinking they're human, with Peter's visions now revealed as memories of humanity's first culling. Droids like David though kept their memories and were secretly planning for this moment when humanity would hit back.

David takes Peter and the survivors to a special train, similar to Snowpiercer, and they kill off a vast portion of the soldiers as they head to an underground bunker. As the train reaches this cave, the bridge retracts into the water so their new stronghold can't be traced, with David indicating more military units from all over will be banding together for all-out war. They simply cannot repeat the mistakes of old and trust humans again.

Young seeds a few interesting plot points moving forward. Miles reveals many soldiers have never seen Earth and don't know war, so there are several like him who don't want to commit genocide; they simply want to atone for the past and share the planet in peace. It's something we see Peter and his family contemplating as well, realizing they became what they hated most. Then there's David and Co., who are just as vicious, unforgiving and selfish as the humans, and who won't want sympathizers within their camp.

In other words, both sides have good people who want to co-exist, teasing internal conflict and civil wars to come. Given both armies have now unveiled even more powerful technology for the battle to come, the story is certainly poised to become more brutal and blood-soaked than this first chapter, with the moral compass of both sides to be tested like never before.

Streaming now on Netflix, Extinction is written by Spenser Cohen, Eric Heisserer and Brad Kane, and stars Michael Peña, Lizzy Caplan, Mike Colter, Israel Broussard, Emma Booth, Tom Riley and Lilly Aspell.

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The Big Twist in Netflix's Extinction Sets the Stage For An Intriguing Sequel