By Samuel Spencer
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There are two types of people in the world right now: Those who find themselves drawn to pandemic and quarantine movies and those who are avoiding them at all costs. Netflix's new movie Only is very much catering to the former, as it tells a story of a couple (played by Freda Pinto and Leslie Odom Jr.) shielding at home to protect themselves from a type of ash that is covering the earth, which contains a deadly virus that kills women.
The whole film revolves around the idea of risk vs reward: Is it better to stay alive but live a dull, monotonous, and sheltered life, or to take the risk of death and get to live? Of these two choices, let's just say that Eva (Freida Pinto) and Will (Leslie Odom Jr.) take the only that is not recommended by the CDC.
What happened at the end of Only?
To understand what happens at the end of the film, we must look at what leads up to Eva's final decision to leave her house and head out into the world.
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After the world learns that this ash is only killing women, Will tries to keep Eva safe by keeping her quarantined in their home and taking every precaution to prevent her from breathing in the killer ash. He covers their entire house with plastic, which he keeps sealing and spraying with disinfectant.
This is an effort to protect her not only from the ash but the hordes of men desperate to capture women and force them to have their children as a way of continuing the human race. However, in protecting her from a world of toxic masculinity run rampant, he himself becomes a man trying to control a woman's choices and body.
Eva begins by accepting this as the price she must pay to stay alive, but eventually, her house starts to feel less like a home and more like a jail, with Will as her jailor. However, she is not quite alone: She has contact with other women in similar situations via an online group, whose members Eva puts pictures of on her walls. The membership of this group depletes throughout Only, however, leaving Eva and just a few women left.
The implication of this is clear: The women have decided to take their chances with the ash rather than spend their whole lives locked in their homes, and are dying off one by one.
As Will gets more and more paranoid, he starts to limit more and more of Eva's freedoms. When he prevents her from talking to her father, she snaps and rushes out of the house. We know this will kill her (we see her infection in one of the timelines of Only), but at least she can live her full life in the remaining time she has left. In the present, we see her and Will outside of their home, suggesting they were able to fix their relationship when the pressures of Will going too far to protect his partner are lifted.
Only is streaming now on Netflix.
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