The Adam Project has been yet another hit for Ryan Reynolds on Netflix, with the third-biggest opening week figures behind Red Notice and Don't Look Up.
A lot of people have watched the time-travelling sci-fi adventure that delivers thrills and big emotion, before ending on an ambiguous note that'll leave you with a major question as the credits roll.
The Adam Project sees Reynolds play Adam who accidentally crashes in 2022 and reluctantly teams up with his younger self (Walker Scobell), as well as his late father Louis (Mark Ruffalo), to continue his mission to find his wife Laura (Zoe Saldaña) and save the future.
We're about to delve into the movie's ending and what director Shawn Levy has had to say about a potential sequel, so there will be major spoilers ahead if you haven't seen the movie yet.
The Adam Project ending explained
The movie kicks off with Adam in 2050 after he's stolen a time jet and before his pursuers can catch up with him, he goes through a wormhole and crash-lands in 2022. His intention was to get to 2018 and he's wounded, so he seeks refuge in his old home.
There, he meets his younger self and before you can ask about paradoxes and why he would never remember seeing his older self, Adam has the answer: "The prevailing wisdom is that when I go back to my fixed time, my memory, our memories, they reform, they reconcile. But not while I'm here."
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So when (or if) he gets back to 2050, he won't remember meeting his younger self if they do anything to change the future. It's essentially a new timeline from the moment they changed the future, and his memories will adapt to that timeline.
Adam was on a mission to 2018 to find Laura, who went missing after a jump to 2018 and while the official story was that her jet "broke up on re-entry", Adam doesn't believe it. Since he's injured though, his time jet (which is coded to his DNA) won't clear him to fly to allow him to go back to 2018.
Luckily, young Adam has his DNA and can trick the jet to let him in. Before he gets the chance though, Maya Sorian (Catherine Keener) – who created time travel along with Adam's father Louis – arrives in 2022 with a bunch of goons to take Adam back to his fixed time.
Laura surprisingly shows up in time to save Adam and the three of them escape. She tells Adam that she went back to 2018 to investigate "something strange" in the jump logs. A time jet supposedly returned from 2018, but there was no evidence a jet ever left for 2018 in the first place – meaning that somebody went back and altered the future.
It was Maya who did it as she went back to November 2018 to tell her younger self stock tips to amass a fortune. When she found out Laura was on to her, Maya planted an altitude bomb on Laura's jet, but she managed to eject in time.
Without a time jet, Laura was stranded in 2018 and she just had to wait four years for Adam to arrive. She urges him to go back to 2018 to stop time-travel ever being invented, which would mean Maya never went back either. (It's implied that in 2050, the world is in disrepair as a result of Maya's selfish actions, backing companies bad for the environment.)
If Adam does change the past, though, it would also mean he never met Laura, as they met in the future. Laura is convinced they'd find each other again: "Every moment we ever had will always have happened. Even if we correct the time stream, somewhere in us will be the echo of this one and we will find each other."
Adam reluctantly agrees and since he still can't operate his time jet, young Adam needs to come along for the ride. Laura can't go with them as the time jet won't fly with somebody else's DNA in it, so she stays behind to hold off Maya and her goons.
The two Adams manage to narrowly escape Maya again, but Maya ends up killing Laura before Maya also heads back to 2018 to stop the Adams.
Adam and young Adam reunite with their father Louis in 2018, but struggle to convince him to destroy the Adam Project. It only went live four weeks ago and was intended to create "utilitarian wormholes in space", but would go on to be the machine that made time-travel possible.
Louis doesn't think they should be messing with the future, so refuses to help his son. He doesn't even want them to tell him anything about what happens to him, which young Adam wants to do as Louis dies a couple of years later.
Adam heads to Sorian Technologies anyway to blow up the Adam Project, but Maya already has some goons waiting for him as she warned her younger self. Fortunately, Louis turns up just in time to save both Adams and tells him how to really stop time-travel from being invented.
Louis came up with ISPCA – Infinitely Shifting Plasma Containing Algorithm – which stabilises any wormholes, allowing time-travel to happen. If they just destroy the machine, Maya can build it again. However, if they take the algorithm (which is on a device inserted in the machine), which he's never written down, time travel can't be invented.
During an explosive confrontation, Louis manages to take the algorithm and Maya accidentally shoots her younger self, killing both versions of Maya. The core of the Adam Project is breached and the machine blows up, but both Adams and Louis manage to make it out alive.
Both Adams don't immediately go back to their own times as Adam surmises it "probably takes a while for 30 years of changed time to sort itself out". Louis reveals that from the moment he saw them, he knew he was dead in their time, but still doesn't want to know as "no one has the right to change the future".
(You might think this is hypocritical, but technically, all they really did was stop Maya from changing the future. So they've sort of reset that darker future, just without time-travel existing.)
The three of them manage to play one final game of catch at their house, and Adam tells his younger self to hug his mother if there's an "echo" of this moment in his memory. When young Adam returns to 2018, he remembers to do just that showing that Laura was right in her theory.
We then see Adam back in the future and he meets Laura again. The same meet-cute plays out that he described earlier in the movie as Laura ends up in the wrong classroom, but he offers to walk her to the right one.
The real question is whether Adam or Laura remembers their past life as a married couple in this altered future. One key bit of dialogue gives us hope that Adam does remember though as when Laura says she's lost, he replies: "Not any more, I found you."
We want to be positive and optimistic, so we think that additional "I found you" means that the echo Laura spoke about is there, and they'll live happily ever after.
Don't expect a sequel to come along to answer the question either, even though Netflix asked director Shawn Levy about a potential sequel after seeing an early cut.
"Ryan and I talked about it and we both said, 'You know what? This thing is exactly what we set out to make, and I think we're just going to leave this here'," Levy told IndieWire.
"There was never pressure to leave it more open ended, but I suppose, gun to my head, I could come up with sequel ideas for The Adam Project. I'm not currently inclined to pursue those, because this movie resolves itself with exactly the feeling that I wanted, which is that combination of warmth and tears, but also hope."
The Adam Project is out now on Netflix.
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Movies Editor, Digital Spy Ian has more than 10 years of movies journalism experience as a writer and editor. Starting out as an intern at trade bible Screen International, he was promoted to report and analyse UK box-office results, as well as carving his own niche with horror movies, attending genre festivals around the world. After moving to Digital Spy, initially as a TV writer, he was nominated for New Digital Talent of the Year at the PPA Digital Awards. He became Movies Editor in 2019, in which role he has interviewed 100s of stars, including Chris Hemsworth, Florence Pugh, Keanu Reeves, Idris Elba and Olivia Colman, become a human encyclopedia for Marvel and appeared as an expert guest on BBC News and on-stage at MCM Comic-Con. Where he can, he continues to push his horror agenda – whether his editor likes it or not.
