The Assessment movie ending has left audiences slack-jawed as its main characters make some pretty consequential decisions, which director Fleur Fortuné has described as "very important." The 2024 sci-fi thriller stars Elizabeth Olsen (who fans may know as Marvel Studios' Scarlet Witch) and Himesh Patel (Station Eleven) as prospective parents Mia and Aaryan living in a near future where natural childbirth is no longer legal thanks to increasing overpopulation, environmental deterioration, and a lack of resources.
Instead of anyone being able to have kids whenever they want, society has implemented an assessment process that every couple must undergo. An assessor must come live with them to determine whether they are deemed worthy of becoming parents. In the case of Mia and Aaryan, they are assigned Virginia (played by former Tomb Raider actor Alicia Vikander). While Virginia's seven-day visit begins fairly innocuously, things quickly devolve into chaos, leading to The Assessment's gripping ending.
During her week's visit with Mia and Aarayan, Virginia causes complete and utter carnage in their house, driving a wedge between the couple, sleeping with Aaryan, and revealing that for the last five years, no one has passed an assessment thanks to a government mandate saying that no more babies should be born.
Virginia does all this under the pretense that the government is going to grant her a new baby after her own baby died long before the events of the movie.
The movie ends with all three main characters in very different places. Regretting her actions entirely, Virginia takes her own life despite being given her next assessment assignment.
Aaryan continues living in the family house with a simulated child he created in the wake of his and Mia's disastrous assessment. Mia abandons the New World entirely, going to live with her mother in the Old World—a society that has denounced the authoritarian rhetoric and policies of the New World.
The Assessment Director Explains the Movie's Ending and Its Characters' Big Decisions
Assessment director Fleur Fortuné has been quoted several times since her gripping dystopian thriller came to theaters, explaining the movie's mind-bending ending and the big decisions its characters make within it.
When asked about Elizabeth Olsen's Mia specifically, Fortuné told Showland News that she sees her character as "free" by the end of the movie and that her breath to end the film is "very important" as it mimics the breath of trauma that opens the film, turning "suffocating...into liberation:"
"I’m so glad you noticed. When I spoke to Elizabeth Olsen I said, “Your character has been through a lot and is finally free after feeling oppressed in a world that is still very contained. She needs to breathe. It was very important, as was the initial breathing: it also relates to trauma, loss and many other things, so for me it was important that throughout the film you could feel that breathing that from almost suffocating, at the beginning, turns into almost a liberation, at the end."
In a separate conversation with A Shot Magazine, the first-time filmmaker said this movie was very important to her, as it explored a world without choice. "I think the freedom of choice is very important for me," she posited, so it was "important to raise questions" about what would happen if that choice were taken away:
"I didn't want to have a judgment or a bias, although I struggled to have kids and I was doing IVF for many years. I thought I was never going to have kids, and I knew it was something important to me, I just wanted to care about someone else than myself. So, the film has nothing to do with, I think, what most people think they want to have kids for. I think the freedom of choice is very important for me, especially when you see how all over the world right now women are fighting for their rights to have an abortion, and everyone and every country wants to have a say and control when and how they should have kids, and even the implication of men into that.
It was important to raise questions, but I didn’t want to push any opinion about the characters or their endings. I don’t even feel like any of them have different endings. I never wanted to imply that a certain ending is better than another. I think it’s funny how some people try to argue about that."
Touching on Aaryan's ending, she joked that some people see it "as the bleakest" of the main characters, as he ultimately gets what he wants (a kid), but it is entirely artificial and now has to raise it completely alone:
See, it’s funny because some people think [Aaryan's ending is] the bleakest, and others think the exact opposite. I love those discussions because that’s how you start a real conversation.
As for where the movie leaves Virginia, Fortuné also has some thoughts. Fortuné told fans in a Reddit AMA that Virginia would rather die than continue living under the pressure of the world/role she finds herself in, and, in a way, ends the movie "free" (just like Elizabeth Olsen's Mia):
"(Spoiler) There's no book! It's an original script. We don't know I leave the ending open, by going there, it's a big risk of dying yes but she'd rather be free. And also we know that people survive, just not 150 years but that's fine. She takes out the mask because she can breathe again for the first time… the respiration is something important in the film."
And it is not just Fortuné who sees these characters' decisions this way. Star Elizabeth Olsen agrees with where the movie leaves her, Mia, as she abandons the society she knows and has grown up in to venture to the Old World to find her mother.
"She feels initially abandoned because her mother chose her beliefs over raising her children," Olsen told Variety about her Assessment character; however, her eventually seeking her mother is a case of her forgiving her and coming to admire her bravery to "live life and not feel like they have to do something just because society tells you to:"
"That’s how I feel about Mia with her mother. She feels initially abandoned because her mother chose her beliefs over raising her children. And I think you have a lot of anger and resentment, and there’s a point in your life, whether it’s through an experience or age or whatever life happens to you, that you forgive and you actually are able to admire someone’s courageous choices like that, to do the brave thing and live life and not feel like they have to do something just because society tells you to. We have one life and how do we choose to live it? And so I do feel like it was kind of the core of Mia’s decision that she makes ultimately in the film."
The Assessment is now streaming on Hulu.
