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Everything Everywhere All at Once is suffused with references to other films. Various scenes mimic, parody, or reimagine iconic scenes from such movies as The Matrix, 2001: A Space Odyssey, In the Mood for Love, Kill Bill, and the movie even features real red-carpet footage of lead actress Michelle Yeoh in the universe in which Evelyn is a movie star. At one point in the film, Waymond quotes the 2000 Nine Days song “Absolutely (Story of a Girl),” asking Evelyn if she’s noticed that “your clothes never wear as well the next day and your hair never falls quite the same way”—a nod to the instability of reality caused by Jobu’s multiverse-warping Everything Bagel. The song itself reappears in various styles throughout the film, echoing its shifting emotional tones. This dizzying number of references and “alternative” versions of familiar media, such as “Racacoonie,” a play on the movie Ratatouille, is appropriate to the film, which explores the countless number of parallel worlds, some familiar and some surreal, that make up the vast “multiverse.”  

Though the “multiverse” is a concept with an ancient history, it has become a prominent force in contemporary media, especially in science fiction. Several recent films and television shows have explored “multiverses,” from Marvel’s Avengers films to DC’s The Flash and the animated show Rick and Morty. The 2018 animated film Spider-Man: Into the Spiderverse, was a particular source of anxiety for the directors of Everything Everywhere All at Once, who worried that the premise of their film, involving a character who travels between parallel universes, would seem overly familiar to audiences from these other films and TV shows. The Daniels even turned down an invitation by Disney to discuss the possibility of directing the first season of the show Loki, which features a bureaucratic organization tasked with “policing” a multiverse and preventing “contradictions.”  

The more recent blockbuster Deadpool & Wolverine similarly features a wide variety of alternative worlds and different versions of its principal characters, reimagined in countless permutations. Some media scholars and critics believe that this focus on multiverses and alternative realities reflects a contemporary crisis in meaning in this “postmodern” era, as we now have access to what seems like an infinite amount of information and media on our phones, televisions, and laptops, which we sometimes use simultaneously. When Evelyn verse-jumps through the multiverse, she experiences constant, quick shifts in genre, style, and setting, much like a person flipping through television channels quickly or scrolling through short-form video content on their phones.  

The Daniels’ interest in the concept of a multiverse, a hypothetical set of all universes, was sparked by another film, a 1986 documentary titled Sherman’s March, which references the concept of modal realism, or the philosophical view, first articulated by philosopher David Lewis, that all possible worlds are just as real as the world in which we live. In Everything Everywhere All at Once, a universe “branches” or splits into two different directions when a person makes a decision. Evelyn sees, for example, that the path of her life “forked” when she decided to marry Waymond against her father’s orders. While one path leads to her life in California with Waymond and Joy, the other leads Evelyn to become a famous actress in martial arts films. Evelyn, then, sees the various paths her life might have taken and is almost overcome with regret. While most people wonder what their lives would be like if they’d made other choices, Evelyn sees these alternatives with painful clarity.  

While verse-jumping, she discovers universes where she works as a sign-twirler, a Chinese opera singer, and a maid at the very IRS office where Evelyn meets with Deirdre. Other universes, however, are even further removed from Evelyn’s own. In one absurd universe, for example, human beings have evolved to have long, hot-dog-like fingers. Stranger yet, she and Jobu Tupaki visit a universe where biological life never developed, and Jobu somberly notes that most universes are similarly devoid of humans. Jobu Tupaki’s experiences traveling through this endless variety of universes convince her that there is no value or purpose in human life. She also rejects the notion of objective truth, as what is true in one universe might be false in another. Categories such as “true” or “false” become meaningless for Jobu, replaced by an endless variety of worlds and lives that are, for her, merely boring or entertaining. She adopts, then, a nihilistic attitude and regards her own life, and the lives of others, as meaningless. Evelyn struggles to counter Jobu’s nihilistic attitude and, for a while, even embraces it. When she travels across universes, she deliberately spreads chaos, threatening to ruin the lives of her alternative selves just for the sake of doing so. Evelyn risks becoming, as Alpha Gong Gong feared, a second Jobu, just as willing to destroy the multiverse for her own amusement.  

The film’s conclusion ultimately rejects Jobu’s nihilism in favor of a more hopeful outlook. What initially feels like freedom—acting without consequence or attachment—soon reveals itself to be empty, and Jobu constructs the Everything Bagel as a means of ending a life she no longer finds meaningful. In contrast, it is Waymond who offers a quiet, enduring alternative to despair. He acknowledges that life can feel chaotic and aimless, but insists that kindness is the only response that makes existence bearable. His playful spirit and spontaneous acts of care—like the googly eyes he sticks on surfaces throughout the Wangs’ home and laundromat—become symbols of how even small, fleeting joys can hold real power. While Everything Everywhere All at Once is, in many ways, a deeply intimate story about a fractured family, it also serves as a larger meditation on meaning, connection, and the fragile beauty of everyday life. 

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