Initial thoughts about Bugonia
“Well, I’m just trying to help.”
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I watched Bugonia (2025) a couple of days ago and I really enjoyed it. But almost immediately I was of two minds as to what the actual ending was and what it implied about the rest of the movie. I haven’t gone back to watch it a second time in depth, but the last 20 minutes or so I’ve analyzed a bit.
To me there are two basic ways to read the end, both of which are supported by the film- or at least not precluded.
First, taking the ending literally. Michelle was an alien all along. The Andromedans have been on earth since the dinosaurs and are manipulating every aspect of earth society.
Second, that the ending is Michelle’s dying hallucination. When Teddy explodes, his head flies out of the closet like a missile and hits Michelle right on the head. That was enough to kill her, and as she lies dying the last few minutes flash through her mind- a mix of all the weird conspiracy theories she heard from Teddy and learned from his journals, her own pride and arrogance, and a desire for survival all twisting together.
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Taking the second scenario first, since it requires a little more imagination. But only a little. The movie slows down and focuses very specifically on Teddy’s head and it striking Michelle. A human head is like 10lbs and it’s going… 100mph or more? That force and speed, plus the blast in general, would be more than enough to kill someone. I think this is actually the ending a lot of people would prefer, because it does not require a reinterpretation of Teddy. It can leave aside the alien idea as fully a delusion of a psychopathic serial killer.
The movie remains what it seemed to be- a battle of wills between two very smart, sociopathic people. And Michelle’s death gives it an interesting twist, because in the end the story was a Mutually Assured Destruction. Teddy didn’t win, but neither did Michelle. Her victory was foiled at literally the last second by Teddy’s bomb going off- was it an accident, did he realize she was setting him up and voluntarily explode it? Who knows.
But as happened throughout, Michelle’s assuredness and attempt to control the situation fell apart. There might be other examples of this pattern, but just off the top of my head:
1. Michelle begins the kidnapping experience trying to break Teddy by talking, assuring him that within 48 hours the police and FBI would be at his door to arrest him. That doesn’t happen. In fact, until Teddy and Michelle march back into her company’s office at the end, Teddy doesn’t seem to be in any danger of being caught.
2. When Michelle tries to turn Don, that literally blows up in her face. Just after that, she attempts to take control of the situation and manipulates Teddy into believing she has a cure for his mother. But Teddy, even in the midst of an emotional breakdown, evens things by kneecapping Michelle so she can’t actively try to escape, and then further foils her plans/expectations by not getting caught at his mother’s hospital. Which Michelle assumed he would (once again underestimating Teddy). In the end, all she accomplished was manipulating a mentally ill man into murdering his mother.
3. She is also foiled in her final gambit, if we hypothesize that she dies at the end. She seems to fully take control of the situation by confirming all Teddy’s conspiracy theories to him and cowing him into obedience, then she gets him onto her home turf, and ends up locking him in a closet to be contained by her security, police, etc. But this plan ended up, in this version, also literally blowing up in her face and resulted in her death.
I still find that to be a very interesting movie and a satisfying ending: neither of these two fascinating characters are victorious.
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Now, moving to the first scenario, which takes the film literally. Though this requires less imagination and invention on the part of the audience, it does requires a complete reconsideration of the rest of the film, of all the interactions between Teddy and Michelle, and of all their motivations and lines. This is in some ways a tougher request by the filmmakers, because it’s often hard for a viewer to rewrite their initial emotional reaction to a film. For the most part, viewers spent the entire movie thinking Teddy was a sad sack with delusions of grandeur, and then a delusional psychopath. Seeing the ending, understanding intellectually what it implies, doesn’t automatically change our initial readings of Michelle and Teddy. Where Teddy is just a crazy conspiracy theorist and Michelle is just an amoral CEO.
I haven’t done a complete rewatch and a complete reconsideration myself, but a few things were immediately worth considering. Most broadly, we have to admit that Teddy was right about everything. That aliens truly were colonizing Earth and controlling humans, and that Michelle was really an alien- a potentially evil one. Even the revelation that Teddy has kidnapped, tortured, and killed multiple people is softened in this version: in a fight literally for the fate of the human race, against alien overlords occupying the planet, maybe a few people have to die. Considering that Michelle then goes on to kill literally everyone on earth, Teddy’s body count seems paltry.
Teddy being right needs to be reiterated again. Though he is still an emotionally unstable serial killer with a traumatic past, he was right. He was the only person on the planet earth (so far as we know) to intuit and confirm what was actually going on. He figured out how to ID the aliens, he identified the most dangerous one on earth, and he successfully captured her. Acknowledging this level of competency and willpower and insight and flat out brilliance in Teddy requires the viewer to look at his interactions with Michelle very differently. And recognizing Michelle as an alien (the Emperor even!) requires us to consider her interactions with Teddy (and her impression and opinion of him) very differently.
Much of their basic characterizations can remain the same, though with a slightly different tenor: Teddy is still unstable, Michelle is still trying to take control. But especially starting with Michelle’s third gambit, once she finds Teddy’s secret serial killer room, things have to be read different. Whereas in the “they’re both humans” scenario, this scene can be seen as Michelle’s last saving throw, now that she is aware of just how dangerous Teddy is. In this version of the film, it is now possible to read it as Michelle talking with Teddy truthfully for the first time. Maybe up to this point she genuinely thought that he was only a traumatized human who was angry at her because of his mother, who had just invented the alien thing as a coping mechanism, she has now seen just how focused and dedicated he is to learning the truth of the Andromedan conspiracy.
“But I have the information you need to save earth, and you know I do. This is our destiny, Teddy Gatz. Yours and Mine.”
The ending taken literally is meaningless unless we accept that Teddy was right, and to consider the possibility that Michelle came to respect him in a way, and that she was genuinely going to give him the opportunity to try to save humanity. She may have disliked him still, she may have felt superior to him due to a natural royal imperiousness, but she saw his determination and his ability to see the truth of things as something worth showing to the other Andomedans. She was genuinely going to take him to the ship and let him make a case for saving humanity.
Going along with this, the run through Michelle’s corporate office has a totally different feel if we accept that she was actually going to try to send Teddy up to the ship. This is actually the sequence that, for me, is the best evidence that the alien ending is real. Otherwise Michelle’s behavior at her office makes no sense. Surely there is some sort of signal she could give at some point that would indicate that she wants to be rescued from Teddy. There were multiple times that she could have escaped Teddy by hiding, running, letting her security take him out, or even just taking him out herself with her martial arts training. Teddy, so far as she knows, has one weapon (a shotgun) that is difficult for him to access (stuffed down his pants). She could easily take him out herself, let alone use her knowledge of the office to escape him.
Instead it is the opposite. Instead she does everything in her power to keep her employees from rushing them and “saving” her. She takes her imperious tone, talks over everyone, and creates a bubble for her and Teddy to work together. She was protecting him. Teddy had convinced Michelle, the Emperor, to at least be taken to the ship and plead his case. It was only the chance malfunction of an explosive device that ended his bid to save the human race.
Again, I don’t think the alien ending can make sense without accepting that Michelle and Teddy were, in their last scene, working together to get off Earth. The impression before the reveal that she is an alien, that Michelle has completely taken control of the situation, has befuddled Teddy to such a degree that she can basically lead him around by the nose like a puppy, is so strong that it’s hard to reverse that impression after the reveal. She wasn’t just making up insanely obvious lies about teleporting to the spaceship with a calculator in a closet… that was the truth. She was telling Teddy the truth about multiple aspects of interstellar travel in that final scene in her office. And if she was telling the truth to Teddy, it’s no great stretch to suppose that she was telling the truth about Teddy too.
“You should know that I’ve prepared for all eventualities.” “OK. Prepared how? [Teddy reveals bomb.] Oh, shit, Teddy.” “I can’t take the chance of you just killing me straight way.” “No. That was smart. That was very smart, and the emperor will admire your intelligence. You’re a credit to your species, Teddy. Truly.”
