Netflix's Extinction's Shocking Twist, Explained

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

Netflix has been taking a deep-dive into the sci-fi genre recently with movies like Annihilation and The Cloverfield Paradox. What's interesting about them is that the films aren't just your typical sci-fi flicks; they have a more existential air to them. The streaming service's latest original offering, Extinction, follows this path as well, going even deeper.

Director Ben Young's film deals with an alien invasion of Earth which ends up being way more than meets the eye. What he paints isn't just a story about humans fighting off extraterrestrials, though -- it's a story of colonialism and classism, which takes a very dark turn midway through.

Young has to be given major credit for disguising his twist, as the story details the life of Peter (Michael Peña), a worker at an electronics factory living in a strained marriage. His wife Alice (Lizzy Caplan) and two daughters Hanna (Amelia Crouch) and Lucy (Erica Tremblay) grow distant from him as he suffers side-effects of recurring visions, which seem to be warning him of aliens invading.

All his premonitions highlight a mass genocide, leaving him scared to attend therapy. He keeps seeing his family dead, which is what drives his mental breakdown and social anxiety. Everyone's doubting him and Peter himself doesn't even know what's real anymore. His visions come to pass at a social gathering at their apartment when a mass invasion occurs. His neighbors are killed as aliens in spaceships and bio-mechanical suits start the extinction process, throwing nods to movies like Battle L.A., Skyline and, of course, War of the Worlds.

Eventually, Peter and his family make their way to a safe-house, after fighting off an alien assassin. Shockingly, Alice gets fatally injured and as she's on the verge of dying, the assassin shows back up, wanting the gun Peter stole from him. He beats the soldier down yet again but in the melee, his mask is cracked and he's revealed to be a human-looking individual. Peter, stunned, forces him to help his family reach the factory, where a resistance is banding together, and there, the 'alien' reveals he can save Alice's life.

Peter takes him to a secluded area to perform what he believes is surgery using advanced technology, but the big twist comes when the soldier's procedure reveals Alice is actually an android. Peter is in disbelief, but the soldier reveals he's a human named Miles and the invaders are humanity, coming back for the Earth after being forced to live on Mars. It turns out centuries before humans were upset at how droids were climbing the social ladder and they decided to purge them in the film's first extinction. Peter's visions are actually memories of him and his fellow robots being wiped out, and the rebellion they were forced to wage in order to survive.

And so they did, with Peter and Lizzy being at the forefront of things, finding the two young girls they'd adopt as their daughters. What makes things darker is the droids all had their memory banks wiped so they could restart together as families, and as a brand-new civilization, thinking they're actually humans.

From here, the movie's story shifts to issues such as human consciousness and artificial intelligence, topics that have been dealt with in films like A.I. and Ex Machina. This all leaves Peter in a tough spot, though, because he wants to believe all of mankind is as good as Miles (who hesitated to kill his kids and shows signs of genuine altruism). Sadly, Peter has to look after the interests of his people first, especially as they can't afford to make the same mistake of trusting mankind like last time.

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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Netflix's Extinction: The Dark, Genuinely Shocking Twist, Explained