The Mill Movie Ending Explained- What Was Real And Maybe The Zoomers Have It Right

Hulu’s workplace horror The Mill, starring Lil Rel Howery, is a skewering look inside a capitalist society. Films like this resonate because we all are in a mill without realizing it. We live in a rat race. The harder we work, the more we have, and the more we must work to maintain it. In addition to being our own worst enemies, the companies that employ us pit us against each other and constantly demand more, all while benevolently acting as if they are our saviors instead of our jailers. There is a reason Gen Z has been quietly quitting since they entered the workforce.

In the Mill, Joe works for a large corporation called Mallard, and he has been a model employee, exceeding all his targets and delivering incredible results. When his wife became pregnant, he missed some time for doctor’s visits, which should have been fine as they offer unlimited time off as a perk of working there. Unfortunately, they neglect to tell you that if you don’t continue to produce herculean results, you will be punished. That punishment comes in the form of a terrible place where employees work like dogs at the grist mill day after day, pushing themselves to the breaking point.

Locked in open-air cells with nothing but what Mallard provides, far from their families, they are cut off and systemically broken. It’s not enough to make a quota. You have to beat the other prisoners or be at risk of being killed. However, all of this must be constantly weighed because if you work too hard, you are punished by now being expected to work even harder. There are few rewards for working hard, only punishments and more work.

Joe hears screams and cries all day, and one lone voice, a fellow prisoner, provides him with the keys to survival. A computerized voice details his tasks, punishments, and “incentives” for working hard. When Joe gets caught digging a hole through the wall of his cell, he is knocked out and wakes up to find his friend, Alex, being injured for Joe’s indiscretion. He tells Joe he created an algorithm, and an AI has been expanding on it until it gained control of the entire company and all its employees. Armed with this information, Joe decides to exploit the inherent flaw. There is no way to win, so they should all refuse to play. If no one pushes the wheel, everyone will be at zero, and no one will lose.

Fear is a powerful motivator, however. It is almost always stronger than hope and faith. However, one of two things happens when people are pushed too far. They break and are useless to you, or they eventually rise against you. It’s why cults collapse and dictatorships crumble. This universal truth comes into play later in The Mill.

After Joe tries and fails to start a coop, he learns Alex is the prisoner he thought escaped. When the other prisoners begin working again, and he realizes there is no way out, he snaps. Believing he had been imprisoned for months and would never see his child or wife again, he refused to work. Twelve witnesses from Human Resources show up to witness his termination when he gives up. After what felt like months inside, Joe raged against Mallard. When an executioner came to kill him, he snapped and bashed in the face of his taunter.

The Ending of The Mill Explained

He stops before beating him to death and tells Mallard he is not a monster. They are. He then wakes up in a sterile lab hooked up to a job training simulation. Everything he had experienced was part of a simulation designed to somehow improve his outlook on Mallard. He willingly signed up for a lunchtime performance enhancement seminar. Only sixty minutes had passed, not months. Mallard was so impressed with his progress in the simulation that they offered him a promotion. Joe is the type of employee Mallard needs. He is a clever thinker, not homicidal, and easily broken. Or so they think.

Joe’s HR representative tells him the AI wasn’t just in the simulation. It was in his head, making it entirely possible there never was any Alex, and all of that was designed to push Joe to be the kind of employee they wanted him to be. They needed to know if Joe could bounce back from his parenting and spousal concerns and return to prioritizing Mallard over everything.

However, they don’t realize that Joe has finally realized that the system was rigged. Everything from the cost of healthcare to the benefits of working for Mallard is designed to keep employees from ever succeeding beyond what is suitable for the company. Every dollar earned is already earmarked for necessities like food and housing while constantly pushing junk we don’t need. Like a drug dealer giving out samples to create more addicts, Mallard pumps in commercials even in its prison space.

The Mill is like a cross between Amazon’s Upoad and The Platform with its perverse use of dumbed-down and tone-deaf advertising and capitalism. Unfortunately, the real world looks a lot like the one in The Mill. Boomers and Gen Xs grew up in an era where loyalty to a company supersedes happiness. People work themselves nearly to death in pursuit of career success and wealth. Family time is relegated to a distant second. That kind of blind devotion made lemmings of us all, creating an environment where corporations hold all the power. The ominous phrase, “Mallard is your company, for life.” It is intended to engender goodwill, but really, it is a promise of servitude. Like Apple TV+’s Severance, there is no individual, only the company, and your utter dedication is required.

In the closing moments of The Mill, Joe sits alone in his new office, having been given a promotion, and calls his wife. He asks to hear his unborn baby’s heartbeat and then vows to burn Mallard down. He told his wife he would be working late again, but this time would be different. That is because he has no intention of being a perfect employee. He is going to destroy Mallard and free anyone he can from the constraints of their jailers.

Mallard may think that showing him how bad things could be would return him to the employee they wanted. People don’t like being manipulated, though, and things only have the value we give them. Workers may finally have the upper hand when people prioritize their happiness, families, and health universally. On the other hand, Christmas decorations have already started going up in stores, so the consumer mill appears alive and strong.

The Mill is currently streaming on Hulu.