‘Moonfall’ Ending Explained: Halle Berry and Patrick Wilson Fight the Moon

Warning: This article contains Moonfall spoilers. If you didn’t watch Moonfall the moment the movie was available on VOD, that’s on you.

When the title for Roland Emmerich‘s latest disaster movie dropped—Moonfall—I was psyched. This is the same mad genius who brought us Independence Day and The Day After Tomorrow, after all. And sure, more recently he’d delivered the lackluster Independence Day: Resurgence and Midway, but this promise of this brilliantly titled film kept me optimistic.

Moonfall! The moon was going to freakin’ fall, and it was going to be fantastic. I didn’t expect it to be good, but I did expect it to be cinematic. Surely this was going to be the Space Mountain of movies—pure thrills. I bought a ticket for an IMAX screening and strapped in. After all, how could a movie about the moon falling out of the sky not be a fun time?

As it turns out, Emmerich found a way. I’m sorry to report that Moonfall is almost no fun at all. Instead, this sci-fi disaster flick gets so entangled in its needlessly complicated, convoluted plot that it sucks the enjoyment out of what should have been a simple, albeit ridiculous, concept. You’ll spend so much time trying to follow the increasingly absurd threads of the story, that you’ll forget to cheer for the moon dropping out of the sky. By the end, you’ll have no idea what you just watched.

Now that Moonfall is available to buy for $19.99 on digital platforms like Amazon Prime, iTunes, and Vudu, it’s sure to confuse even more viewers. I promise I’m just as perplexed as you are, but here’s my attempt to break down the Moonfall plot summary and the Moonfall ending explained.

WHAT IS MOONFALL ABOUT? MOONFALL PLOT SUMMARY:

We start with a flashback to the year 2011, when astronauts Brian Harper (Patrick Wilson) and Jocinda Fowler (Halle Berry) are out on a skywalk to repair a satellite. While they joke and flirt, they are suddenly attacked by a mysterious black mass, killing the red shirt dude with them, Marcus. Back on Earth, Brian explains to NASA what he saw, but no one believes him. Jocinda fails to back him up, so the incident is officially designated as a human error accident, and Brian is fired.

Ten years later, the moon is falling. Kind of. According to a conspiracy theorist with a podcast named K.C. Houseman (John Bradley), the moon is actually an artificial “megastructure.” In order to prove it, he sneaks a look at a research telescope and discovers the moon is out of orbit. He shares his findings with Brian, but Brian doesn’t believe him—until the tides get so screwed up that there is massive flooding everywhere.

Meanwhile, Jo is promoted to the head of NASA, and sees footage from that mission ten years ago, which confirms what Brian said: They were attacked by black nano-bot things. Jo also meets a former NASA official named Holdenfield (Donald Sutherland) who claims he has been covering up the secrets of the moon since the 1969 moon landing, which supposedly discovered that the moon was hollow. A NASA team is sent on a mission to probe into the moon hole where the black mass came out, but everyone on the mission is killed by the nanobots.

Apparently, there was an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) device being built to kill the nanobots, but the project was abandoned due to budget reasons. With the moon getting closer and closer to the earth’s surface, Jo orders a new space mission: She, Brian, and—for some reason—conspiracy theorist K.C. will fly into the moon’s hollow interior and use the EMP device to destroy the nanobots. They are supposed to have a crew with them, but after a failed launch, most of the crew goes home—and then a giant tsunami caused by the changing tides launches their rocket into space, with just the three leads on board.

Meanwhile, the military on Earth has a new plan to blow up the moon with a nuke. The guy in charge of hitting the button to blow up the moon also happens to be Jo’s ex-husband. He decides not to blow up the moon, sacrificing his own life instead, in order to save his ex-wife. Phew! Also, Jo’s son and Brian’s son are on the run to a bunker, as the moon debris is collapsing around them. Brian’s ex-wife’s new husband—bear with me now—sacrifices his life to save his young daughter. (Don’t worry, none of this really matters.)

WHAT IS THE MOONFALL ENDING EXPLAINED?

Inside the moon, Jo, Brian, and K.C. discover a man-made structure powered by a white dwarf. They are attacked by the swarm inside the moon, but, while the ship is crashing, some mysterious force guides them to safety, an area behind closed doors with oxygen. When Jo and K.C. wake up from the crash, Brian is gone. Turns out, he is off communicating Contact-style with the moon, who comes to him in the form of his son. Brian learns that the megastructure moon was actually made by an ancient, advanced human race that freely traveled the stars. Unfortunately, the A.I. that these advanced humans invented turned on them, Matrix-style.

In the man-vs-machine wars that followed, the humans built “megastructure” moons as space ships, which they used to explore the galaxy to find new planets suitable for life. Earth is just one planet that the humans found, and the moon spaceship stayed to orbit it, in order to protect it from the A.I. nanobots. But having failed to do that, now it’s up to Brian, Jo, and K.C. to defeat these human-hating nanobots.

The moon helps out by giving Brian a super-powered boost, but the humans realize someone needs to stay behind to detonate the EMP, while the other two escape on the ship. Brian is prepared to sacrifice himself, but K.C., the only one who doesn’t have kids, steps up and closes the ship door before Brian can stop him. K.C. stays behind and blows up the swarm, while Brian and Jo go back to Earth. Plus, Brian needs to tell everyone about this mind-blowing revelation about humanity he just learned.

Back on Earth, Jo and Brian reunite with their families. But don’t cry for K.C. just yet. At the very end of the movie, K.C. reappears in the same room where the moon talked to Brian. This time, the moon appears to K.C. as his mother and his beloved cat. The moon tells K.C. that his consciousness has been uploaded to the moon and that he has a lot of work today. So… K.C. is the moon now, I guess! Sure! Why not?

Where to watch Moonfall