Get in loser, we’re going to The Electric State, aka Netflix’s new big-budget, sci-fi adventure flick starring Millie Bobby Brown, which began streaming today.
Directed by Marvel alums Anthony and Joe Russo, and written by Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely—who adapted the screenplay from Simon Stålenhag’s graphic novel of the same name—The Electric State takes viewers to an alternate-history version of the ’90s, in which robot mascots staged an uprising against humanity. Brown stars as a young woman named Michelle, navigating a war-torn landscape in search of her brother, while Chris Pratt stars as her lone wolf, Han Solo-type companion. Along the way, Michelle realizes the human “war on bots” isn’t everything it seems.
Also starring Ke Huy Quan, Jason Alexander, Woody Harrelson, Anthony Mackie, Brian Cox, Jenny Slate, Giancarlo Esposito and Stanley Tucci, The Electric State will no doubt be a huge hit for Netflix. But it will also be the kind of movie that Netflix audiences half-watch while scrolling on their phone. If that was you, and you missed some stuff, don’t worry. Decider is here to help.
Read on for a breakdown of The Electric State plot summary and The Electric State ending explained, including whether Christopher is alive.
The Electric State plot summary:
We meet Michelle (Millie Bobby Brown) and her younger brother Christopher (Woody Norman) in the year 1990, “before the war.” Christopher is a young genius and his favorite TV show is about a fictional robot, Cosmo—despite the fact that tensions between robots and humans are growing. Apparently, the robots of the world, led by the revolutionary automaton Mr. Peanut, are demanding equal rights. Even though Christopher appears to be no older than 14, he’s heading off to college, because he’s just that smart. He’s reluctant to go, but Michelle encourages him to go change the world.
We montage over the next four years. There’s a violent robot uprising, that is eventually quashed thanks to a technological breakthrough, led by a tech CEO named Ethan Skate (Stanley Tucci). Skate’s company, Sentre Technologies, invented a non-sentient, entirely human-controlled robot called “the Neurocaster” which allowed humans to remotely control robot soldiers. After the war was won, civilians continued to use the Neuorcasters to send their robots to do boring things like work, school, and parenting, while staying at home and escaping into virtual realities.
Meanwhile, Michelle’s life has been upended. Not because of the war, but because she lost her parents and her brother in a deadly car accident. She now lives with a deadbeat foster dad (Jason Alexander) who spends all day escaping reality via his Neurocaster, and buying goods on the black market that are stolen from “the Exclusion Zone,” aka a desert facility where all the remaining sentient bots have been imprisoned.
One day Michelle is visited by a sentient robot, Cosmo (voiced by Alan Tudyk), aka the cartoon mascot from the TV show that Christopher loved. Though Cosmo can only communicate through his cartoon catchphrases, he manages to convey to Michelle that he’s being controlled by her brother, Christopher, who is trapped in the Exclusion Zone, with the doctor from the hospital who told Michelle her entire family was dead. But apparently, that doctor lied. Michelle realizes her brother is still alive, and will do whatever she has to get him back.
Michelle tracks down the seller of her father’s stolen goods, assuming the person who sells them must know a way into the Exclusion Zone. This is how she meets Keats (Chris Pratt), a former soldier who has teamed up with a bot, Herman (voiced by Anthony Mackie), and makes a living by selling stolen goods. Michelle and Cosmo sneak into the back of Keats’s truck. They get into the Exclusion Zone.
Meanwhile, we learn that Sentre CEO Ethan Skate is having problems with his Neurocaster tech. Apparently, it’s because “Christopher is gone.” (Hey, that’s Michelle’s brother’s name!) According to the Sentre researchers, though they still have Christopher’s physical body, “cerebrally, he’s not there.” How? Apparently, someone named Amherst deliberately designed a flaw in the system that allowed Christopher’s consciousness to “leak out” over time. So Skate recruits one of the war’s best robot-killers, Colonel Marshall Bradbury (Giancarlo Esposito) to track down Christopher’s escaped consciousness—which is in the Cosmo bot—and bring it back to Sentre.
After an attack from Bradbury leaves them stranded, Keats agrees to accompany Michelle to where Cosmo told her to go: Tabletop Mountain. When they get there, they discover a commune of robots living peacefully in an abandoned mall. Their community is led by Mr. Peanut (voiced by Woody Harrelson). Mr. Peanut wants Michelle and Keats to leave immediately, because humans in the Exclusion State is a violation of the peace treaty. But Michelle finds a friendly mail-bot, Penny Pal (voiced by Jenny Slate), who takes them to the doctor she is looking for.
That doctor’s name is Dr. Amherst (Ke Huy Quan). Amherst explains that after the car accident, Christopher was in a coma and going to die. But Sentre found a way to preserve his very special, very smart brain. They used that brain as the “processing power” needed to run the network for Sentre’s Neurocasters. But a year later, Christopher’s body started to wake up from his coma. Amherst alerted Sentre that the brain they were using to power their technology actually belonged to a living boy, and they should probably let him have his brain back. (And no, none of this makes sense from a biological perspective. Just go with it.)
Of course, Sentre didn’t want to give the brain back, and threatened to kill Amherst for what he knew. Amherst escaped, but before he left, he programmed a way for Christopher’s brain to escape into a bot, and told him about the robot commune in the mall, hoping he could find a way to live his life as a robot.
Colonel Bradbury attacks and destroys the bot safe haven at the mall. During the fight that ensue. Michelle gets cornered, and the soldiers steal Cosmo/Christopher. They take him back to Sentre, where Skate removes Christopher’s consciousness from the Cosmo-bot, and puts his mind back in Christopher’s comatose body.
Michelle and Keats come up with a plan to get Christopher back and shut Sentre down for good. All they have to do is fight their way into Sentre, and free Christopher. With Christopher’s brain offline, the Sentre bots will power off for good. So they do it!
During yet another prolonged fight sequence—and a cameo from Patti Harrison—Michelle sneaks into the Sentre building and finds her brother. The Cosmo bot is still connected to his comatose body. Even though Michelle had previously refused to use a Neurocaster, she uses one now to be able to talk to her brother inside his mind. (Because apparently, this is a function that the Neurocasters have? First I’m hearing of it!)
The Electric State ending explained:
Christopher tells Michelle that he thinks the entire situation, and all the bad things Sentre has done to people, is all his fault. He also forces Michelle to admit that his physical body is too far gone to possibly revive. He tells her that his connection to Sentre is “symbiotic,” meaning that, yes, without Christopher, Sentre will die. But at the same time, without Sentre, Christopher will die. He tells Michelle he would rather die and take down Sentre than remain imprisoned and used for evil.
Michelle suggests finding another robot for Christopher, but he tells her no, “They locked me in tight this time,” meaning he no longer has the program that Amherst gave him to “leak” out. So Michelle reluctantly agrees to pull the plug. She hits some buttons on the machines keeping the comatose Christopher alive. We see Christopher-in-his-mind close his eyes. Then the Neurocast bots power off. Presumably, this means Christopher’s brain has gone dead.
Another news montage tells us that Skate is arrested for experimenting on children and that the Exclusion Zone is opened to the public. Michelle delivers a televised speech to the world in which she argues that the Neurocasters were bad for humanity, because no one was forging real connections with anyone. Everyone should thank her for getting rid of them! (There is no mention of the ramifications of a bunch of bots, that were presumably running society, suddenly shutting down. Weren’t there, like, car crashes? Blackouts? Economic collapse?)
Is Christopher alive at the end of The Electric State movie?
In the very last scene of the movie, we see the now-defunct Cosmo bot being dumped in a scrapyard. As a stray dog drinks from a nearby puddle, the Cosmo bot appears in the reflection of the puddle. Cosmo turns his head toward the camera, and the 2002 song “Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots” by the Flaming Lips begins to play. With that, the movie ends.
What does it mean? Is Christopher alive, and still in the Cosmo bot? That’s certainly what this ending seems to imply. After all, when Michelle found Christopher in Sentre, he was still attached to the Cosmo bot. Maybe the transfer of consciousness had not yet been completed, and there was still a part of Christopher’s mind that lived on in the Cosmo bot. Or something.
So does this mean we’re going to get an Electric State 2 movie? We don’t know! That’s an article for a different click.
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