Ender's Game Ending Explained & How It Could Have Been Darker (2024)

Ender’s Game was released at the height of the Young Adult dystopian sci-fi craze, but it has a much darker ending than other YA sci-fi movies. Set in a future when humans are preparing for an attack from the alien race known as the Formics, the 2013 film focuses on gifted military academy student Andrew “Ender” Wiggins (Asa Butterfield) as he becomes a part of a larger intergalactic war. Ender's Game, which is based on the cult classic novel of the same name by Orson Scott Card, also serves as a coming-of-age story as it delves into Ender’s evolution from a gifted child to a potential savior of the planet.

Like the novel, Ender’s Game concludes with a shocking plot twist. But to get into the specifics of the ending, viewers must revisit the sci-fi lore that Ender’s Game establishes at the start. The Formics became Earth’s prime enemy after they invaded Earth, killing millions in the process. However, when Captain Mazer Rackham (Ben Kingsley) sacrificed himself by crashing his ship into the Formic home world, peace was restored on Earth. Yet even then, the humans prepared themselves for a counterattack, recruiting young space cadets like Ender.

How Does Ender Accidentally Destroy The Formics?

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Throughout Ender’s Game, Ender hardly gets to be involved in actual combat. Instead, he and his young peers are trained to fight the Formics through elaborate, ultra-realistic simulation programs. Even though he’s subjected to the same training exercises as the other academy students, Ender’s seniors find special potential in him right from the start, as can be seen from the special treatment he gets from Colonel Hyrum Graff (Harrison Ford). Graff and other fleet commanders supervise what Enders believes is his final test. This requires him to take over the Formic home world even though the Formics outnumber the troops under him.

Always the one to prioritize strategy over his emotions, Ender urges the members of his fleet to sacrifice themselves as long as the fleet’s MD (Molecular Detachment) Device can detonate on the Formic planet. At the end of Ender's Game, Ender eventually succeeds in his mission and manages to wipe out the Formic race only to discover that the commanders had manipulated him into thinking all of this was a simulation. The extermination of the Formics actually happened in real-time. The betrayal that a stunned Ender faces signals the loss of innocence in his adolescent life. No matter how idealistic Ender was, he never intended to be a planet-killer.

Related: 15 Young Adult Franchises That Tried And Failed To Be The Next Harry Potter

Can Ender Restart Formic Society?

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Ender’s Game ranks among Asa Butterfield’s best movies in part because of the emotional range he displays in the final scenes. Riddled with guilt, Ender makes his displeasure against his seniors quite evident. When he’s eventually brought down with tranquilizers, Ender manages to communicate with the Formic Queen through a hive-mind system. In fact, as the original novel suggests, the Formics invaded Earth only because they felt a planet without a hive-mind mentality wouldn’t have any sentient species. Even though Ender’s actions kill the Formics, their Queen manages to mentally communicate with Ender in her final moments. While she initially aims to kill him, Ender’s guilt changes her mind.

Instead, the queen guides Ender toward an abandoned Formic structure where lies an egg that she had been protecting. It’s from this moment on that Ender discovers his newfound responsibilities. Now that the war between the Formics and humans has ended, Ender gets promoted to admiral, granted a new ship, and is given full freedom to do as he pleases. Ender makes perfect use of his freedom to venture into deep space with the intention of starting a new Formic colony that will essentially kickstart the rebirth of the species. In this sense, the ending of Ender’s Game turns out to be ironic while also offering its protagonist some redemption.

Related: 10 Best Sci-Fi Book Adaptations to Film

How Does The Ender's Game Book End?

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The Ender’s Game movie differs from the book in many ways, including how the ending plays out. A major change is that Ender’s sister Valentine Wiggin (Abigail Breslin) is not as fleshed out as she is in the source material. The book finds Ender and Valentine exploring other worlds together with hopes to rehabilitate the unborn Formic egg. However, in the movie, Ender embarks on this journey alone. It is also worth noting how the ending of the Ender’s Game movie is more rushed in terms of exploring Ender’s disillusionment and anger about being responsible for the Formic genocide.

In the novel, the space colonists establish a colony, of which Ender is made governor. He accepts this position of power with disinterest, but it is in the colony where he gets guided by the Formic queen to get hold of the last remaining egg. When the queen communicates to him, more context is offered on how the Formics accidentally attacked Earth as they were not aware of any non-hive life before. With this newly acquired information, Ender writes an account called The Hive Queen under the pseudonym “Speaker of the Dead." His elder sibling Peter eventually deduces that the writer is indeed Ender.

Like Valentine, Peter is heavily cut out of the Ender's Game movie, and that’s why he doesn’t play a main role in its ending either. Otherwise, the novel features Peter as a bully of a brother who constantly belittles Ender. The final step that Ender takes in accidentally exterminating the Formics scares him further because it makes him feel like Peter. When Peter finds out who wrote The Hive Queen, he asks Ender to write a book on him, too. Ender does author a work dedicated to his brother aptly naming it The Hegemon. It is after this unresolved relationship between the brothers that Ender and Valentine abandon their colony.

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The Ender's Game Ending Could Have Been Even Darker

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Ender is a darker character in the Ender's Game novel through to its ending. The bullying that he faces from Peter and others along with his general attitude to win people over tests his temper to the extreme. By the time he turns 11, Ender has already killed the bullies Bonzo and Stilson. This shocking loss of innocence almost turns him into an antihero before the final battle brings about a change of heart. Portraying Ender as a compassionate character from the start, the Ender's Game movie minimizes the impact of the ending. He feels remorse, but it doesn’t contrast with his personality as was the case in the book.

The Real Meaning Of Ender's Game's Ending

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For those who've read the 1985 novel, the ending of the Ender’s Game movie might come off as toned-down and sanitized. Still, the conclusion is more emotionally charged and darker than other teen sci-fi movies of the era. The fact that Ender’s last mission was not a simulation might even shock the viewers who aren’t acquainted with the source material. Interestingly, this final plot twist is teased in the Ender’s Game poster, which features the text “This is not a game." This tagline perfectly sums up Ender’s arc in the movie, as he had been dabbling in simulated games only to face reality in an unexpected manner.

Ender's Game Ending Explained & How It Could Have Been Darker (2024)

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