Of all the members of the ragtag crew in Flow, the secretarybird has the most puzzling ending.
Flow has become a breakout success in recent months following a stellar debut at the Cannes Film Festival in 2024, which has since led to a Producer's Guild of America nomination, a Golden Globe Award win, and an Academy Award nomination for Best Animated Feature.
Now that Flow has arrived for streaming on Max, many more viewers have become swept up in its dazzling animation and surreal story.
What Is The Secretarybird's Story in 'Flow'?
Flow tells the story of an unlikely group of animals surviving a catastrophic flood together. The movie is one of a few recent animated films (like The Wild Robot) to make use of a unique animation style to tell its story.
At the heart of the movie is a fearful black cat who comes across a capybara, labrador, lemur, and secretarybird on its travels through a flooded land.
The secretarybird arrives partway through the story. After initially hiding from the predator, the cat is saved from drowning by the bird who plucks it from the water and drops it back into its boat.
Later the group of animals arrive on-shore to find a flock of secretarybirds that are hostile towards them. The cat tries to flee but is cornered by the birds. However, the secretarybird that saved the cat appeals to the leader bird, pleading for the cat's life to be spared.
The two birds engage in a duel that results in the secretarybird's wing being broken and it is unable to fly and follow its flock. Abandoned, the bird joins the cat's crew.
The secretarybird becomes a protector of the crew and takes on the role of captain, steering the boat. It is hesitant about letting the labrador's friends onboard when they are trapped in the bell tower by the floodwaters, but it eventually allows it with the cat's permission.
During a storm, the secretarybird manages to fly and leave the boat. When the cat is washed ashore from the storm it follows the secretarybird to to the top of a stone pillar where they are both engulfed by a cosmic light that leaves them weightless.
While the cat returns to the ground, the secretarybird flies into the light and disappears.
What Does The Secretarybird's Ending Mean?
The secretarybird's cosmic ending is one of a few strange occurrences in the plot of Flow.
The most common interpretation of the secretarybird's end is that it is ascending to the afterlife. Having lost its ability to fly and being abandoned by its flock, the bird seems ready to embrace death, which is why it flies into the light. The cat, meanwhile, wanted to survive, so it returned to Earth.
Another theory about this scene is that it is all a dream. During the storm, the cat falls overboard, and then, directly after the ascension scene, it is shown in the water swimming to catch up with the boat.
It could be that the cat blacked out when it fell into the water during the storm and during this time it dreamed of what happened to the secretarybird. Given the bird's injured condition, the reality is that it likely drowned during the storm, and the ascension scene would be the cat's internal processing of the death of its friend.
A different interpretation yet again of this scene is that the bird sacrificed itself to appease the spirits. Earlier in Flow, the cat had a mysterious vision atop a pillar surrounded by elk, which seemed to have some relation to the flood.
Later, atop the pillar with the secretarybird, the weightless moment could be seen as the cosmos preparing to take the cat as a sacrifice, but then the secretarybird chooses to take its place, perhaps knowing that it wouldn't be satisfied living with a broken wing anyway. Shortly after this, the flood recedes, indicating that the bird's sacrifice worked.
Like with many of Flow's themes, the secterarybird's final scene is subjective and is ultimately up to the audience to take away their meaning from the character's ending.
Flow is now streaming on Max.
