Flow Movie Ending Explained: An Emotional Story

Flow, or Straume, is a 2024 animated adventure film from Latvia that has been chosen as the country’s official entry for the Best International Feature Film category at this year’s Oscars.

The film uses unique animation and has no spoken words. It tells the story of a tame black cat in a post-apocalyptic world, where it must live alongside a few other animals to survive the natural dangers around it. The calm and hopeful mood of Flow stands out, and its decision not to make the animals behave like humans, unlike many other films of this type, makes it a refreshing and enjoyable experience.

Plot of the Flow

Set in an unclear location and time period, Flow features a unique main character: a small, clever domesticated black cat. Though the cat once lived with human owners who clearly cared for it, it now has to survive alone, as no humans remain.

As it searches for food one day, the cat sees a group of dogs catch fish from a nearby stream and somehow manages to steal a fish for itself without the dogs noticing. A wild chase follows through a semi-forest, with the cat running for its life and even losing the fish, which might have been the only food it had found in days.

The cat hides in the bushes, only to see the dogs run away from something that scares them, and a herd of deer rushes out of the forest. Though the cat avoids the dangerous hooves of the deer, it soon realizes there’s a much bigger threat ahead.

Indeed, water bursts from the forest in massive amounts, flooding the whole area and quickly drowning everything in its path. The cat has to find shelter from the rising water, and when even the highest spots are covered, it jumps onto a small sailboat that comes by.

However, there is already someone on the boat: a creature the cat has never seen before, which frightens it. The creature, a capybara, isn’t bothered at all, even as the boat sails into unknown waters. Soon, other animals, like a ring-tailed lemur and a secretarybird, join the cat and capybara on the boat.

With the water levels continuously rising and falling, the animals have no choice but to stay on the sailboat to stay safe. They have no idea where they’re going, and their main concern is survival. However, they are all fascinated, and a bit scared, as they pass through different places, like a flooded city.

A giant whale occasionally appears, and the cat takes a strong interest in it, especially after the whale saves it from drowning once. The plot in Flow doesn’t have many dramatic changes or surprises, focusing instead on the reality of the animals’ journey, leaving the audience with a story full of inspiration and hope.

Flow Movie Ending Explained

In Flow, there are several moments where the cat protagonist looks down at its reflection in a pool of water, starting from the very beginning. Another animal in the group, the lemur, looks at its reflection in a hand mirror. However, the fact that the film ends with all the animals looking at their reflections in the water is an important part of the message.

When the animals see their own reflections and recognize themselves, it shows self-awareness, though in a basic way. This understanding of themselves marks a shift from thinking individually to thinking as a group.

At the end of Flow, when the animals look at their reflections, right after they’ve saved the capybara and the cat, it is the first time they come together as a team, making a promise to each other, in their own way, to keep surviving the dangers together.

In this sense, the cat seems to have been smarter and more self-aware than the others from the start, as it was already used to looking at its own reflection.

Flow also has a post-credits scene where the whale is shown swimming after it was seen dying when the water level suddenly dropped. The earlier appearance of a herd of deer running out of the forest suggested that another flood was heading toward the cat, but the cat still stopped to reunite with its friends and help the whale.

It’s likely that the animals manage to survive and leave the area before it floods again, saving the whale in the process. This scene gives one last sign of hope, showing that life continues despite the challenges it faces.