Massive SPOILERS are ahead for the Chaos Walking ending. We recommend you go out and safely see it in theaters or standby for streaming availability before reading ahead.
It’s been a long time coming, waiting to see Daisy Ridley and Tom Holland in Doug Liman’s Chaos Walking, but it’s finally here! The science fiction concept definitely left us with a lot of information to process and questions coming out of the movie. Between “The Noise” and Todd Hewitt’s discovery about what drove women out of Prentisstown, it’s time to discuss what we just witnessed in the new release.
Chaos Walking follows the story of Todd Hewitt (Holland), the youngest person living in Prentisstown, a settlement on a New World that a group of humans have fled to from Earth. Todd has lived in Prentisstown his entire life, and with a force called “The Noise,” which is a disease that the town (filled with men) are infected with. Things change for Todd when Viola (Daisy Ridley) crash lands on the New World, the first woman Todd has ever met and the first person who he cannot hear the thoughts of. The pair end up going on the run from Prentisstown’s officials and learning more about the scope of the New World. Now, let’s get into how the story shook out:
What Happened At The End Of Chaos Walking
Chaos Walking’s two heroes are challenged by two villains, Mads Mikkelson’s Davis Prentiss and David Oyelowo’s Aaron, all whilst trying to send a signal to Viola’s base in space. Let's start off off with Oyelowo’s villainous preacher character, who is driven by a god complex and the belief that women are a sin. His violent noise has driven him to insanity. After pursuing Todd and Viola throughout the movie, his evilness is made apparent when he kills off Todd’s sweet doggo, Manchee, during a river chase sequence. Aaron taunts Todd and Viola, but it's Viola who ends up getting blood on her hands in defense of Aaron’s attack on the abandoned ship in the third act.
Now to the mayor. What we learn is that the women in Prentisstown were not killed off by the “Noise” but by the men, because they were found to be immune by the “Noise” like Viola is. Women knowing the men’s thoughts and the men not knowing theirs led to madness and the mass murder of every woman in the settlement. Throughout the film, Todd struggles with controlling his Noise, especially in front of the mayor who doesn’t think him to be a man because of it. But in the final confrontation with him, Todd is able to finally control his Noise enough to project an image of one of the women the mayor killed and catch him off guard enough to defeat him as Todd and Viola race to send a signal and communicate with her ship. Chaos Walking ends with Todd and Viola on her ship, looking out on more of the undiscovered New World from the skies.
What Does The Chaos Walking Ending Mean?
It’s an open-ended finale for our characters, but one that definitely hooks audiences with a potential to continue the story if Lionsgate chooses to do so following the release. As we learn in Chaos Walking, Prentisstown is not the only settlement in the New World as Todd imagined, and not every woman has been killed off. As the movie concludes, there are still tensions between the settlements on the New World, but Todd and Viola seemed to be safe and have successfully made contact with an outside source that could develop the dystopian world further.
One loose end is whether Mayor Prentiss is actually dead, because his “death” didn’t exactly seem final. Also, his son Davy (played by Nick Jonas) was only just introduced in Chaos Walking and has the potential to develop further past the first movie. Fans of the books know there’s a much larger storyline for these characters considering Patrick Ness’ books are a trilogy, and one that includes Mayor Prentiss as a larger villain and a major war.
Could There Be A Chaos Walking Sequel?
So the question comes to this… is Chaos Walking setting up a sequel that could actually happen? I’ll be honest here, it seems like it would be an uphill battle and miracle at this point in time. When CinemaBlend spoke to Patrick Ness, who wrote the Chaos Walking trilogy, along with the script for the movie, he did say he was interested in adapting his entire series with these words:
I’d love to, but as always with movies like this that cost this much, it’s always down to the audience. I’d love for audiences to come back on March 5, because I’d love to do more.
If Chaos Walking is a major commercial success, Lionsgate could most definitely decide to keep it going, but for the time being it’s all up to the audience. When Entertainment Weekly spoke to Daisy Ridley, she said that she thinks “there are possibilities" for the story to continue, but she wouldn’t return unless there was a truly “great idea” to continue Viola and Todd’s storylines. The original film faced a series of delays, following the film’s initial shoot back in 2017.
The movie was rumored to be deemed “unreleasable” by Lionsgate before Doug Liman and the cast returned for additional photography two years later. The long gap was due to Daisy Ridley and Tom Holland’s ties to Star Wars and Marvel, which we should also take into account here. Both actors are massive, massive stars are so much older than their characters to begin with, and even older now with big careers ahead of them. Them paired with Mads Mikkelsen, now portraying Fantastic Beasts big bad, Cynthia Erivo and Nick Jonas would be a tough cast to get back together. We’ll see! Obviously it would be great to see the story properly played out, but for now at least Todd and Viola made it to safety by the end of Chaos Walking.
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