‘Bugonia’ Ending Explained: The Meaning Behind the Emma Stone Movie

Good news: One of the best movies of 2025, Bugonia, is now streaming on Peacock, free to anyone with a Peacock subscription.

Bugonia is the fourth feature film collaboration between director Yorgos Lanthimos and star Emma Stone, who first worked together on The Favourite in 2018, and then teamed up again for 2023’s Poor Things and 2024’s Kinds of Kindness. These two simply don’t rest! Directed by Lanthimos, with a screenplay written by Will Tracy, Bugonia is a remake of the 2003 South Korean sci-fi comedy, Save the Green Planet! from director Jang Joon-hwan. Stone stars as a high-powered pharma CEO named Michelle, who is abducted by a crazy conspiracy theorist named Teddy (Jesse Plemons) and his neurodivergent cousin Don (Adian Delbis). The two cousins are convinced Michelle is a secret alien. And honestly? They might be right.

Bugonia is an entertaining watch full of twists and turns. There’s a lot going on, so if you found yourself lost or confused, don’t worry, because Decider is here to help. Read on for a breakdown of the Bugonia movie explained, including the Bugonia plot summary, the Bugonia ending explained, and the Bugonia movie meaning.

Peacock currently offers two subscription types: Premium with ads and Premium Plus ad-free. Peacock Premium costs $10.99/month, while Premium Plus costs $16.99/month.

You can save a bit by subscribing to one of Peacock’s annual plans, which give you 12 months for the price of 10. These cost either $109.99 with ads or $169.99 without ads.

Peacock Premium Plus is also available to subscribe to via Prime Video with a seven-day free trial that you can’t get by subscribing directly on Peacock.

What does the word “bugonia” mean?

“Bugonia” refers to the ancient Greek belief that bees could spawn spontaneously from dead cow carcasses, and that cow dung was beneficial to the hive. It’s a myth, of course, but that didn’t stop beekeepers from trying out this trick!

Bugonia movie plot summary:

A conspiracy theorist named Teddy (Jesse Plemons) lives in poverty, caring for his neurodivergent cousin Don (Adian Delbis). Teddy is convinced that an alien race has infiltrated the world, which is why life has gotten so bad. It’s also the aliens who are killing the bees. (Teddy is an avid beekeeper, and has hives in his backyard.) He’s also convinced that he’s sussed out one of the aliens-pretending-to-be-human: the high-powered CEO of the nearby pharmaceutical conglomerate Auxolith, Michelle Fuller (Emma Stone).

Teddy ropes his cousin into an elaborate plan to kidnap Michelle, and, amazingly, they manage to pull it off. They drug Michelle and tie her up in their basement. Teddy shaves her head, claiming that her hair is how she communicates with alien race, the Andromedans. He also covers her in lotion, to further prevent her from being able to contact her alien friends. It’s all seeming very serial killer-esque!

When Michelle comes to, she keeps her cool, but insists that she is not, in fact, an alien. Teddy doesn’t believe her. He tells her she has four days to set up a meeting between her Andromedan emperor and himself, on the upcoming lunar eclipse.

Teddy tortures Michelle with electro shocks. Michelle tries to “admit” she is an alien, to end the torture, but it’s clear Teddy doesn’t believe her. After more torture, Teddy decides that Michelle’s high pain tolerance must mean that she herself is the Andromedan queen. He invites her upstairs for a nice meal, though still keeps her chained to the chair.

Michelle, wisely, plays along. During the tense dinner, Michelle realizes that Teddy has a personal vendetta against her company, Auxolith. First, Auxolith is responsible for creating a chemical that some believe are harming the honey bee population. But more than that, Teddy’s mother—currently in a coma—was a test subject for an an experimental Auxolith drug for opioid addicts. So, not only did big pharma contribute to Teddy’s mother’s addiction, but they went on to claim to have a cure—only to put her in a coma. Michelle promises Teddy she will pay him reparations, and cure his mother, if he lets her go.

Teddy flies into a rage, and attacks Michelle. The fight is cut short when Teddy’s former babysitter, and current town cop, Casey (Stavros Halkias) knocks on the front door. Teddy takes Casey out to look at his bees, and murders him. (It’s also revealed Casey sexually abused Teddy as a child, so we don’t feel too bad about his death.) Meanwhile, Don guards Michelle in the basement.

Michelle, sensing that Don doesn’t really buy into his cousin’s conspiracy, tries to convince him to let her go. She tells him that it’s inevitable that they will get caught, but promises she will keep Don out of jail. Don insists that Teddy is all he has, but seems to sense the truth in Michelle’s words—that Teddy is going to jail. He asks Michelle—provided that she is an alien—to promise to take him and Teddy to her world, where life can be better. He then turns the shot gun on himself, and takes his own life.

When Teddy returns to find his cousin’s dead body, Michelle tells him there is a way to save his mother. She tells him that the bottle of antifreeze that she keeps in her car is actually the cure to the Andromedan experiment being performed on his mother. Teddy believes her, and races off to the hospital to feed his sick mother antifreeze. With Teddy gone, Michelle steals the keys from Don’s dead body, and frees herself. However, the basement door is still locked.

While looking for another way out of the basement, Michelle discovers a back room filled with dead bodies and evidence that Teddy is a serial killer who has done this exact thing to many other people. Meanwhile, at the hospital, Teddy kills his mother with the antifreeze, and flees back home before he is caught by the authorities. When he returns the basement, Michelle’s entire demeanor changes. She coolly informs him that yes, she is an Andromedan alien, and that her kind has infiltrated the Earth. But the aliens aren’t there to kill the humans—they are there to save the humans from themselves.

The Andromedans discovered the earth in the time of dinosaurs, she says, and accidentally spread a deadly virus, causing them to go extinct. So, as an apology, the Andromedans created a new species for Earth, modeled after themselves: humans. These first humans were good, intelligent people. But some of the humans went rogue, and created a bad human mutation, prone to war and violence. From these bad humans, came the apes, which is what most current humans on Earth are descended from. Andromedans like Michelle have infiltrated Earth to perform experiments on people like Teddy’s mom, in an attempt to save the planet from the damage the bad humans have done.

Bugonia movie ending explained:

Michelle drives Teddy over to her office, where she claims she will use a calculator to type in a code to contact the Andromedans. She tells Teddy to enter her office’s closet, where he will be beamed up to her planet. Teddy reveals he strapped a homemade bomb to himself, just in case Michelle was planning to kill him.

Teddy enters the closet, and closes the door. Michelle backs away toward her barricaded office door, where her concerned coworkers are gathered on the other side of the door. Michelle counts down, and when she reaches one, there’s an explosion in the closet. Teddy’s head comes flying off his body, knocking out Michelle.

Michelle is rushed to an ambulance. The EMTs explain that Teddy’s unstable, homemade bomb was accidentally triggered by his body heat, killing him. Michelle jumps out of the ambulance, and hobbles back to her office, as the lunar eclipse approaches. She grabs her calculator, types in the code, and locks herself in the closet. And lo and behold, it is a transporter.

Michelle is back with her fellow Andromedans. It’s revealed that Teddy was right about pretty much everything, from the design of the spaceship to the fact that they use their hair to communicate.

Michelle, the Andromedan leader, tells her colleagues that the experiment has failed. Humanity cannot be saved. She pops a clear bubble over a flat model of Earth, thus killing all humans for good. We see, back on earth, that all the humans are gone, to the tune of the Pete Seeger folk song, “Where have all the flowers gone?” Thought the humans are dead, the animals are still alive. In the final shot of the film, we see bees pollinating the flowers.

Bugonia movie meaning explained:

So what does it all mean? Basically, Teddy was right about a lot of things. He was right that aliens had invaded Earth, and he was also right that something had gone terribly wrong with humanity. But he was wrong to blame the aliens for his problems. Though he was desperate to blame his misery on an otherworldly being, at the end of the day, Teddy—and his sick, ape ancestors like him—is the one to blame for his problems.

The aliens were only trying to help. Teddy imagined himself the savior of the human race, but at the end of the day, he is responsible for their ultimate demise.

As for the final shot of the bees, I take that to mean that Earth—now free from the miserable humans destroying it—will start to bounce back. The bees are coming back. But hey, that’s just my interpretation of the movie. If you have a different take, let me know in the comments.