Arrival Ending Explained: Why Louise Still Chooses Hannah

Read Time:12 Minute, 15 Second The first words of Arrival are spoken over a hospital bed. A mother tells her daughter she used to think this was the beginning of her story. Then we watch a girl grow up in a handful of cuts, get sick, and die. The light is grey. The house is quiet. By the time Louise Banks walks into an empty lecture hall, we think we know who she is: a woman who lost a child and went back to work. We are wrong about almost all of it. That is not a trick. It is the whole film. If you came here for the Arrival ending explained, the short answer is this. The girl in the opening has not been born yet. Louise is not remembering her. She is seeing her. And once she knows exactly how that life ends, she chooses it anyway. The long answer is better, because the way Denis Villeneuve’s 2016 film gets you there is the most careful piece of structure in any science fiction film of its decade. What the Arrival ending actually means Twelve ships appear around the world.

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