The following contains spoilers for BugoniaBugonia‘s wild ending reveals whether or not Emma Stone’s pharmaceutical CEO is actually an alien, building to an even bigger twist in the film’s final moments. Directed by Yorgos Lanthimos, Bugonia follows two men who decide to kidnap Michelle Fuller out of the belief that she’s part of a secret alien force controlling humanity.

The film plays the premise for both dark comedy and tense horror, with the instability of Jesse Plemmons’ Teddy setting up a film where anything can happen. Even audiences who adjust to Bugonia‘s bigger swings may not see the final twist coming, however, and what it says about the state of humanity as a whole.

Michelle Really Is An Alien In Bugonia

Despite denying it all film long, the big final twist of Bugonia is the reveal that Michelle truly is an alien from the Andromeda galaxy. For much of Bugonia, the film presents Teddy and Don’s commitment to the idea as farcical and dangerous. Michelle repeatedly denies the accusation, only “admitting it” in a bid to appease the increasingly unstable Teddy.

Michelle’s constant attempts to trick Teddy and win over Don make all of her comments while she’s trapped by them suspect, including her eventual rant where she “admits” her alien origins. However, given later scenes in the film, it’s implied that these proclamations are true.

It’s only after Teddy gets accidentally killed that the audience learns he was right all along. Michelle is, in fact, the empress of the Andromeda aliens. Given what she says to Teddy and what she later converses about with her subjects, it turns out she was on Earth to develop a drug that can help suppress humanity’s darker nature.

It’s an absurdly comedic reveal, especially once audiences learn that she really does communicate with her species through her hair and does have a teleporter hidden within her office closet. However, it also takes on a far scarier and sadder tone when she agrees that humanity is a lost cause and personally extinguishes all human life on Earth.

Michelle being an alien retroactively justifies some of Teddy’s investigation, although the film notably never tries to argue that his actions (including murder) were justified. Instead, it plays into Michelle’s perspective on humanity’s faults and further reinforces her separation as an extremely wealthy woman from the “worker bees” that keep her company and society afloat.

Even beyond her extraterrestrial origins, Michelle is from a very different world than Teddy. His anger at her isn’t just born out of human pride but out of vengeance over her perceived crimes against him and people in his social class. Michelle actually being an alien reinforces the level of separation between her and people like Teddy.

Why Teddy Is Targeting Michelle

Teddy has an ulterior motive in targeting Michelle beyond his belief that she is an alien. Teddy’s mother was part of a drug trial run that Michelle’s company performed years prior to the events of the film. The drug had a bad reaction to the test subjects, however, killing many of them and leaving the others comatose, including Teddy’s mother.

This gives Teddy reason to hate Michelle, with Teddy gradually growing more furious with Michelle because of his lingering fury over her fate. Even though Michelle and her company offered some monetary compensation for his mother’s fate and provided for her continued medical care, Teddy’s fury gradually pushed him to take action against Michelle.

This gives Bugonia a clearer political element, as it underscores the medical and personal cost of the pharmaceutical industry. In an era where the UnitedHealthcare CEO’s murder can become a political flashpoint, Teddy’s view that only an inhuman alien could be responsible for his mother’s fate resonates with the confusion and fury of the average person.

It also factors into the audience’s understanding of Teddy and why he’s so willing to cross moral lines while interrogating Michelle. However, it also puts his dissection of other “aliens” into a harsher light, as he’s been willing to do the same kind of experimentation on living people that Emily’s company utilized against people like his mother.

Why Michelle Decides To Destroy Humanity (And How She Does It)

After her experience with Teddy and Don, Michelle decides that it’s time for humanity to come to an end. Despite having connections at her company and a clear fondness for human-made music, Michelle tearfully pops a recreation of the Earth’s atmosphere. This instantly kills every person on the planet, but notably spares other forms of animal life.

Michelle’s motivations for this seem to be crystallized by her interactions with Teddy, but they build on her earlier “confession” to the man. Michelle explains that various previous alien interventions on the planet (including the lost kingdom of Atlantis) have eventually led to a corruption of the human genome through evolution.

According to Michelle, human aggression was the result of natural evolution taking the species into darker directions. Despite the efforts of the aliens to find a drug or medicine that could suppress these elements, humanity is still brutal. Teddy seems to have been the final proof of this for Michelle, shattering her faith in salvaging humanity.

It’s notable that Michelle is crying when she destroys humanity, however. The final shots of the film underscore the sheer weight of this decision, showcasing countless people who have suddenly dropped dead in the middle of their regular lives. It’s a very somber moment, one that seems to genuinely pain Michelle to go through with.

The True Meaning Of Bugonia

For all of Michelle’s heartbreak, though, there’s an underlying message about society in Bugonia and the ways people can dehumanize one another for their personal goals and vendettas. On the film’s most obvious level, this is how Teddy is able to allow himself to torture Michelle and butcher others, all in pursuit of “freeing” humanity from their influence.

Michelle literally sees humans as beneath her. They are an annoying and resilient pest in her worldview, a far cry from the “comforting CEO” persona she tries to project. Even before the reveal, Michelle is repeatedly shown offering surface-level platitudes to her employees and the victims of her experiments, all with a lack of authentic humanity and empathy.

This is why Don’s fate makes Bugonia much sadder. Don is the only person in Bugonia that Teddy can confide in and trust, leading him to recruit his cousin for his scheme. However, Don doesn’t have the dogged determination to make the same moral compromises as Teddy. He believes in his cousin’s perspective, but tries to remain human to Michelle.

Torn between his guilt over their treatment of Michelle, his loyalty to Teddy, and his own sense of isolation, Don turns his gun on himself in front of Michelle. Don was perhaps the one person who could have found a way to settle things or at least keep Michelle and Teddy from crossing their most gruesome moral lines.

Once Don is gone, Michelle’s manipulations become deadlier while Teddy becomes more vicious. It’s almost as if humanity’s fate was sealed the moment Don gave into the internal darkness that Michelle claimed she wanted to fix. Bugonia has a harsh moral about modern society and how people lose their humanity in pursuit of their beliefs and goals.

Bugonia

8/10

Release Date

October 31, 2025

Runtime

118 minutes

Director

Yorgos Lanthimos

Writers

Will Tracy, Jang Joon-hwan