The ending of Descendent dealt with how Sean was supposedly returned to Earth by the aliens who abducted him and then picked up by an unknown person, who supposedly tracks these re-entry cases and brings them to their homes. When Sean reunited with his wife, it seemed as if he had imagined all the events that had unfolded throughout the film. But the final frame plunged Sean's fate into the deepest ambiguity. How did things get to this point? Sean worked as a security guard at a school, while Andrea worked at an investment firm. Andrea was seven months pregnant, and naturally, the couple was nervous about how the delivery would go.
They were both doing the best they could, but due to the nature of their jobs, they weren't getting enough rest. Upon returning from a party at a friend's house, he received a call from his boss, Kakkar, asking him to check on the school's faulty security system. He could have done that and called it a night, but he decided to go up to the roof of the school's entrance to fix a faulty light fixture. That's when he fell, or was abducted by aliens.
Director: Peter Cilella
Writer: Peter Cilella
Stars: Sarah Bolger, Ross Marquand, Charlene Amoia
After regaining consciousness, Sean began experiencing vivid visions, dreams, and hallucinations that led him to believe his life had been abducted by aliens and that he was being forced to give birth to the baby in his wife's womb, who was likely also an alien. What did that mean? Did an alien abduction really happen, or was Sean simply suffering a prolonged mental breakdown? There are three possibilities. Let me analyze them one by one and see if the truth lies somewhere in between.
If we take the ending of Descendent at face value, the conclusion we must reach is that Sean was abducted by aliens. They placed him in a bed, covered him with a web-like mesh that impeded his fine motor skills, and then connected him to a kind of virtual reality where Sean saw what would happen if he didn't overcome the anxiety of being a new father. In a highly metaphorical way, these aliens were presented as an extension of Sean's fears about pregnancy, stemming from his mother's death during childbirth and his father's suicide. Like the deer Sean had saved as a child, in this scenario, he was the deer trapped in the fence (as indicated by the frequent flashes of his eyes), and the aliens were the savior.
The death of a deer in a movie is usually an indicator of impending doom, but Sean saving a deer likely foreshadowed that the aliens would save him from his own doom. These extraterrestrial organisms gave Sean two choices: come to terms with his past or watch his wife and baby die during childbirth. He struggled with this process and nearly lost himself. At one point, he began blaming the women in his life for his situation, which exacerbated his misogynistic tendencies. But when his therapist told him to focus on his sketches, which were basically fragments of his childhood, he managed to construct an imaginary conversation with his late father just before he committed suicide. Why only with his father? Well, he didn't know anything about his mother, but he had known his father for seven years and never got to say goodbye. That lack of closure turned into hatred, as he felt his father had abandoned him and forced him to grow up in his best friend's family.
That said, by the time Sean reunited with his father in the aliens' virtual reality program, he had an idea of what he must have gone through before he pulled the trigger. He probably missed his wife and probably thought he wasn't doing a good job raising Sean. Of course, Sean's fictional encounter with his father didn't change the course of his suicidal thoughts, as he had to understand that the reward for their reconciliation wasn't erasing the truth. He had to forgive his father, after hating him for decades, and thank him for what he had done despite knowing he wouldn't come back.
Once Sean accomplished that arduous task, the aliens shut down his virtual reality program and dropped him off right where they picked him up—at the school's main entrance. When Sean returned home and realized he'd only been unconscious overnight instead of for months, he breathed a sigh of relief and hugged Andrea. Judging by all the men still trapped on the alien spaceship and the guy controlling all the men being beamed back down to Earth, it seems this is a common occurrence.
The aliens run a kind of therapy program where they abduct confused new fathers, forcing them to confront their worst fears, and then return them once they're confident their wife and child will be properly cared for. The scar on these parents' heads will undoubtedly be an indelible reminder that they were, indeed, abducted. But in Sean's case, just in case, I'm guessing they hung the sketches his mind conceived during the therapy session on the wall. That way, even after the physical scars have healed, he can gaze at the artistic representation of his worst fears and remind himself never to let his mind wander, for the sake of his wife, his child, and himself.
The second possibility I want to consider is that there wasn't an actual alien abduction. Sean had some kind of health complication before he fell off the roof. When he saw the alien spacecraft in the night sky, right after an intense training session, I think it was his body telling him he needed a brain scan. Maybe it was nothing. Maybe it was just stress because he wasn't getting that promotion, he was afraid of how the birth was going to go, and his mind was racing. He overexerted himself climbing onto the roof; he probably had a stroke (hence the bright lights and hallucinations), and then he fell. I'm guessing he went home and stayed with his wife for a while.
But after one episode, which probably frightened Andrea, I think he entered psychiatric care or a residential home where he was placed under the care of Dr. Sturgill. After that moment, it's hard to say which moments happened in real life and which didn't. I think all the scenes where Sean has an out-of-body experience, where he sees himself talking to Sturgill, are real, and the rest are dreams conjured by his fractured mind. I think the combination of his deteriorating physical health, the stress, and the accident wiped out any chance of a full physical recovery. It's possible that when we see him reunited with Andrea, he's actually taking his last breath. I know that takes the happiness out of that happy ending, but I think that's the point of this interpretation. There are several factors that need to be considered before deciding to become parents.
First, there's generational trauma; if your mind is haunted by what happened to your parents, you need to take a break. You need to go to therapy and you need to resolve it partially or completely before you make the mistake of passing it on to your child. If you don't, it will lead to an untimely death and force your loved ones to fend for themselves. Sure, from an objective perspective, you could say that with Sean's death, perhaps Andrea can focus on her son and herself instead of constantly worrying about what Sean is doing. However, in doing so, you would be unfairly ignoring Andrea's love for Sean, something he himself paid dearly for. Sean was fighting for a future he couldn't live up to when he should have been ignoring his nagging boss, taking care of his wife, and then focusing on his mental and physical health.
Well, at least his mind allowed him to see the most peaceful version of his wife and convinced him he was momentarily abducted by aliens before ending her suffering. Beyond all that, the reason I find this interpretation particularly tragic is because it means Sean spent countless days watching his mind deteriorate as he struggled to explain what he was feeling. He wasn't stupid enough to treat that accident as a mere accident. It was the culmination of his feelings for his father, his fear for his wife's health, and the damage all of it was doing to his body and mind. However, he couldn't convey all of that to Sturgill, and even if he could, there was no way to fix it. OK, if you want to look at it from an optimistic perspective, I'd say that maybe that ending meant Sean's relatively peaceful state of mind was a sign that he was on the verge of a full recovery.
My final theory is that Sean wasn't abducted by aliens. He didn't fall off a roof. He has some physical and mental complications, but none are life-threatening. He wasn't dropped off at home by a stranger who ran a taxi service for alien abduction victims. He imagined all the events in the movie. But what triggered it? Well, at this point, it's pretty obvious that Sean was under a lot of stress. Professionally, his life wasn't going anywhere. He supported his wife, but judging by his need to buy a gun to feel manly and his "offhand comment" about wanting a job that would negate Andrea's need to work, it seemed he felt insecure about his masculinity, which manifested itself in misogyny. He hated his father because he had committed suicide, but the lack of a father figure during the most formative stages of his life likely distorted his idea of what it meant to be a man. He also lacked a proper mother figure. As far as I can tell, Robin was the worst, as she kept reminding Sean that he had all his father's flaws. It was definitely wearing on his body and mind. When he added the alcohol and spoiled food (from Christian's party)—two things Andrea didn't have because she was pregnant and busy avoiding Robin—his body created a mixture his mind couldn't grasp, and he passed out; it was that simple.
While he was passed out, he saw his entire life flash before his eyes. He saw all the mistakes he would make if he didn't deal with his feelings for his father. His vomit was a metaphor for the culmination of Sean's process of addressing his daddy issues. The boy who brought him back home, the scars on his head, and the sketches on his bedroom wall during the final moments of "Descendent" were likely imaginary. The only real things there were his pregnant wife and his love for her. Of course, no mental health expert will recommend this process to deal with the trauma he, as a descendant of his ancestors, inherited.
There's no way to claim this process has repaired what was broken for Sean. It's likely just the first step he's taken toward recovery. It will be a long and arduous journey, and he'll have to undertake it while caring for his son and wife. However, he must undertake this mission to ensure his descendants can live happy, peaceful lives without the fear of childbirth, pregnancy, and parenthood. Anyway, these are just my thoughts on Descendent. If you have any thoughts on it, please feel free to share them in the comments section.
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