100 Things to Think About During Your Second Viewing of ‘Us’

If you’ve seen Us, the sophomore directorial effort from Jordan Peele, you know that you haven’t really seen Us until you’ve seen it more than once.

Unlike the complex-yet-accessible themes of Get Out, Peele’s thrilling and thought-provoking directorial debut, Us is not interested in providing its audience with straightforward answers, taking a more psychoanalytical approach of answering all our questions with questions. Dig into the film’s layers, and you’ll only find more layers. This is a film about introspection, and about — quite literally — looking into your own eyes and facing down the worst aspects of yourself.  

Rewatch the trailer; notice how every word of text is set against a backdrop of blossoming inkblots? Us has been clear about what it is from the get-go: it’s a Rorschach test. What we get out of it largely depends on what we bring into it.

If you’re reading this, you’ve already seen Us at least once (and if you haven’t, I urge you to stop reading now), and are likely already planning to see it again. Even if you paid close attention the first time, you may be wondering what you missed, and what to look for during your second trip to the theater.

So to help you out, I’ve come up with a list of one hundred things to think about, ask yourself, and keep an eye out for during your second (or third, or fourth, or hundredth) viewing of Us. You may agree with me; you may not; you may find things in the film I totally missed. All of that’s totally fine. Mine is not the definitive guide to watching Us; it’s just one person’s thoughts about a movie that lends itself to infinite interpretations.

The vast majority of the items below are my own personal observations gleaned over two viewings (and extensive discussion) of Us. Most of the discussions I’ve had with others about the film have been in groups and through private channels, which makes attribution difficult, so if you read something below that you sincerely believe was your original theory, feel free to note it in the comments, and if I believe you’re right, I will edit the post to credit you.

For clarity, I will be referring to the character who spends most of her life among the Tethered, and most of the film wearing a red jumpsuit, as Red. The character who spends most of her life above ground and spends most of the film wearing white, I will refer to as Adelaide.

Here we go.

  1. The commercial at the beginning of the film is for “Hands Across America,” a 1986 celebrity-backed fundraising effort that set out to raise $50-100 million for the hungry and homeless in America by forming a human chain that stretched all the way across the country. Ultimately “Hands Across America” wound up raising far less than its stated goal, most of which went to overhead. Only about $15 million wound up going to charity, and the campaign has come to be considered symbolic of the American tendency to participate in grand gestures that ultimately have very little real-world impact.
  2. A VHS tape of The Man With Two Brains sits beside the TV, foreshadowing the eventual arrival of the Tethered, who share the faces of the above-ground characters, but not their thoughts.
  3. C.H.U.D. and The Goonies are also on the shelf, both of which are stories about people that live underground.
  4. The last commercial VHS tape on the shelf is The Right Stuff, a film chronicling the first 15 years of the American space program. While this film’s connection to the events of Us may be less obvious, consider that The Right Stuff is, at its core, a story of a group of people working together to break free of the tethers that bind them in one place so that they can ascend to a new world of discovery and opportunity, up above. Additionally, The Right Stuff came as a dual VHS set, meaning it required two identical-looking tapes to tell a single story.
  5. The last VHS tape on the shelf has a handwritten label that reads “Thursday Nites,” which made me think it was likely used to record prime time Thursday night network television. Back in the ‘80s, the only way to see your favorite shows if you couldn’t watch them when they aired was to set your VCR to record them in your absence. Every family had a few blank VHS tapes designated for exactly this purpose, which looked just like this one. Shows that aired on Thursday nights during the 1985-86 season and could’ve been included on that tape include: Shadow Chasers, Simon & Simon, Ripley’s Believe It Or Not, and The Cosby Show. While the first three shows feel like they could be vaguely relevant — the first two because of their names, and the third because of its focus on strange occurrences — the last one feels the most pointed. The Cosby Show was a popular sitcom about a successful Black American family, centered around Bill Cosby, the parental figure that everyone adored — until it was revealed decades later that he’d been monstrous all along.
  6. While it couldn’t have been on the “Thursday Nites” tape due to when in 1986 it aired (“Hands Across America” took place in May of 1986, which means that the beginning of the film likely takes place sometime in the spring of 1986), The Twilight Zone also aired briefly on Thursday nights in 1986. Jordan Peele will be directing the upcoming remake of The Twilight Zone.
  7. After the “Hands Across America” commercial concludes, there is a brief commercial for the Santa Cruz Boardwalk, the last place that Red — the real Adelaide — will ever be free.
  8. At the Boardwalk, Red picks “number 11” — the ‘Thriller’ shirt — as her prize. The number 11 will become a recurring motif in Us, most notably with the Bible verse Jeremiah 11:11. Note how 11 visually resembles two identical lines running in parallel. 

    Us (2019). Photo credit: Universal Pictures

  9. Stripes and checks are also a recurring visual pattern in the film. Nearly every shot has either stripes or checks (or both) in it. Stripes are identical lines running in parallel — the Tethered underground, perfectly mirroring their above-ground counterparts — while checks show those parallel lines finally intersecting.
  10. Red’s mother is irritated with her father for allowing her to get the ‘Thriller’ shirt as her prize, saying she was terrified of the ‘Thriller’ music video and that it gave her nightmares. In the ‘Thriller’ video, Michael Jackson wears a red outfit and a single glove, which is later what the Tethered wear during their attack. It seems when Red was trying to come up with a way to terrorize the above-ground people, she drew inspiration from the scariest image she could remember from her childhood.
  11. Michael Jackson also wrote the song “We Are the World,” which was sung by the people linking hands during “Hands Across America.”As with Bill Cosby, Michael Jackson is another figure who was widely adored in the ‘80s, but whose character was later called into serious question due to rumors of pedophelia, particularly with the recent release of the documentary Leaving Neverland. Jordan Peele has said that the Michael Jackson references, and particularly ‘Thriller,’ are intentional nods to the film’s dark themes of duality.
  12. Red’s mother mentions that there’s a movie crew “filming something by the carousel.” This might be a reference to The Lost Boys, a 1987 film which opens with a scene on the carousel. The film is about a group of boys who appear to be human but turn out to be monstrous, and wind up killing a bunch of people on the beach, mirroring the events of Us.
  13. Both of Red’s parents are filmed mostly from behind throughout the film. Their willingness to turn their backs on their daughter may be a nod to Adelaide’s later willingness to turn her back on the Tethered.
  14. Red’s father gets distracted playing Whack-a-Mole, a game where the goal is to stop creatures from rising up from beneath the surface.
  15. The couple Red passes when she wanders off are playing rock-paper-scissors, but are frustrated because they both keep choosing scissors.
  16. The sign the man on the corner is holding says “Jeremiah 11:11.” This is a verse from the Bible, which reads, “Therefore thus saith the Lord, Behold, I will bring evil upon them, which they shall not be able to escape; and though they shall cry unto me, I will not hearken unto them.”

    Us (2019). Photo credit: Universal Pictures

  17. Red looks out over the beach before she enters the “Vision Quest” attraction, and sees a stunning display of lightning, an act of God. As an adult, Red will often refer to the will of God when discussing her path through life.
  18. Red drops her candy apple on the beach without taking a bite. In the Bible, the Fall of Man occurs when Eve acts against the will of God, and takes a bite of the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, often artistically represented as an apple tree. That Red doesn’t bite the apple may possibly symbolize her later insistence that she has been chosen by God to deliver her people.
  19. Red enters the “Shaman’s Vision Quest” attraction, whose doorway beckons with a banner that reads, “Find Yourself.” Red will literally “find herself” inside, coming face to face with her Tethered doppelganger.
  20. Even on second viewing, I couldn’t make out exactly which folktale is being piped through the speakers of the “Vision Quest” attraction as Red wanders through it, but I did catch that it mentioned a character being instructed to “create life of all kinds and set it in motion.” Red does not create the Tethered, but she definitely sets them in motion.
  21. Red whistles ‘The Itsy Bitsy Spider’ several times throughout the film: once in the “Vision Quest” before encountering the double who will take her identity; once when walking around the outside of the Wilson home before coming inside, and a last time as she is dying. The lyrics of the song symbolize Red’s journey: she enters the “Vision Quest” because it is raining, which is how she is taken underground (down came the rain and washed the spider out); then later, when the timing is right, she is able to climb back to the surface (and the itsy bitsy spider climbed up the spout again). Only the original Adelaide ever whistles this tune; the Adelaide who assumes her identity tries to echo it, but can only produce a poor approximation.
  22. The song playing over the opening credits is “Anthem,” by Michael Abels. Although the combination of the children’s choir and the almost Latin-sounding lyrics make the piece feel vaguely liturgical, the lyrics are actually gibberish, representing the non-verbal nature of the Tethered and the unsettling sense of spirituality Red brings to her quest. Abels has said he wanted the piece to “conjure up the feeling of an organized movement of people preparing for battle.”
  23. The long, slow shot of the rabbits in their cages during the credits pulls back to reveal layers on top of layers of nearly identical creatures, symbolizing the Tethered living right beneath the above-ground humans, and possibly also the multiple layers of the film itself. Rabbits are a recurring motif in Us, and may symbolize a number of things, including good and bad luck; the practice of treating living creatures as though they are disposable for the purposes of scientific experimentation; a reference to Alice in Wonderland as Red literally goes through a looking glass into another world; and the journey of the Tethered from their cages to perceived freedom.
  24. The credits shot also shows that the rabbits are in an abandoned classroom. The idea that someone once attempted to educate the Tethered, only to eventually abandon this task, may be a subtle commentary on the American education system, and on its tendency to leave disadvantaged students behind. That the Tethered wind up all wearing jumpsuits that resemble prison uniforms may also be meant to symbolize the school-to-prison pipeline.

    Us (2019). Photo credit: Universal Pictures

  25. The first time we see the grown-up Adelaide, Janelle Monae’s ‘I Like That’ is playing, specifically the lyrics “walking contradiction/guess I’m factual and fiction,” hinting that Adelaide is not all she seems.
  26. Zora’s shirt has a rabbit on it. Later, she changes into a shirt that has the word ‘Thỏ’ on it, which means ‘rabbit’ in Vietnamese.
  27. Jason is wearing a Jaws shirt. Jaws is a film about people dying at a beach, and a monstrous threat lurking below a seemingly idyllic surface.
  28. Adelaide tells Zora “you can do anything you set your mind to” as she munches on strawberries for lunch, as opposed to the fast food sandwiches the rest of her family is eating. Not only are strawberries red, hinting at Adelaide’s true identity, but may also indicate that Adelaide no longer eats meat at all, after spending the early years of her life forced to eat raw rabbit. Adelaide’s line to Zora holds a deeper meaning, as Adelaide set her mind to escaping the Tethered, and accomplished it.
  29. Jason tells his father, “When you point a finger at someone else, you have three pointing back at you,” a nod to the film’s themes of how the true enemies are “us.”
  30. The first time we see Adelaide as a child in her therapist’s office, she is positioning plastic animals in a line in a sandbox, foreshadowing Red’s plan to have the Tethered form a line, which begins with a man standing in the sand of the beach. Adelaide places an animal into the line; it is a rabbit.
  31. The therapist’s role in helping Adelaide gain the ability to communicate, and in opening the door to her taking dance lessons, may be both a commentary on the importance of mental health care, and on the access to mental health resources being a benefit of privilege. Adelaide was able to shed the “madness” of the Tethered and elevate her own circumstances largely due to her access to mental health resources.
  32. Adelaide’s mother tells their therapist “I just want my little girl back,” a sign that the little girl in the office is not “her” little girl.
  33. Adelaide watches a spider crawl across her coffee table, beside a decorative sculpture of a spider. In addition to a call back to Red’s earlier whistling of ‘The Itsy Bitsy Spider,’ the repeated spider imagery may be a nod to Anansi, an Akan folktale character. Anansi is a trickster who often takes the form of a spider. Adelaide herself is a form of trickster, and sees the spider right before lying to Gabe about why she doesn’t want to go to the beach.
  34. Zora contemplates her image in the mirror while Adelaide smiles at a stuffed bunny and recalls a memory of herself practicing dance in front of a mirror, hinting at the dual nature of what we’re seeing.
  35. The ambulance toy that Jason uses to prop open the door of the game closet to keep himself from getting trapped inside foreshadows the ambulance the family will escape in at the end of the film.
  36. Gabe brags about the presence of a life preserver on his boat right before the engine dies. When it starts back up, he nearly falls off the boat. Later, when Gabe is on the boat with Abraham, Abraham will get caught in the life preserver, then the engine will start up, and Gabe will fall off the boat.

    Us (2019). Photo credit: Universal Pictures

  37. Zora tells the family that the government wants to “control their minds” through flouride in their water, then follows this comment up with dryly observing that “no one cares about the end of the world.” Later in the film, Red will speculate that the government created the Tethered to control the people above-ground, and the Tethered will try to bring about the end of the world for the humans on the surface.
  38. “We don’t always have to be talking,” Gabe tells his family, foreshadowing that there will soon be a family who looks just like them but does not talk.
  39. Adelaide tells Jason to “get in rhythm,” but then her own snapping is oddly off-beat, particularly given her dance background. An early sign that Adelaide is “not herself.”
  40. The dead man they pass being loaded into the ambulance is the same man who was holding the “Jeremiah 11:11” sign at the beginning of the film. His chest is covered in blood, indicating that he was stabbed to death, likely with the scissors that serve as the Tethered’s weapon of choice. Later, the man that Jason sees standing on the beach is this man’s Tethered counterpart, beginning the line of Tethered.
  41. The “Shaman’s Vision Quest” attraction is now “Merlin’s Forest,” although its promise to “Find Yourself” still remains. This is perhaps a jab at the American tendency to superficially gloss over past atrocities in the name of present-day comfort, such as how modern school curriculums tend to significantly downplay the genocide of the Indigenous Peoples of North America by the European colonizers.
  42. “I knew you’d forget the flare gun,” Josh Tyler teases Gabe. Later in the film, Gabe will attempt to kill Josh’s doppelganger with a flare gun, which proves woefully ineffective.
  43. When Kitty asks Adelaide if she’s okay, Adelaide responds, “I have a hard time just talking.” While this line is easy to interpret as meaning that Adelaide simply doesn’t enjoy small talk, it may actually be literal, as Adelaide grew up Tethered, and the Tethered do not speak.  

    Us (2019). Photo credit: Universal Pictures

  44. On the beach, after an exchange with Josh, Kitty tells Adelaide, “I think about murdering him sometimes,” before going on to talk about the recent plastic surgery she’s received on her face. Later in the film, Kitty’s doppelganger will feign being horrified as Josh’s doppelganger is killed, only to then burst into laughter, and will cut her own face with scissors.
  45. Jason tells the Tyler twins he is digging a tunnel, perhaps hinting at the deeper connection between Jason and his own doppelganger, below the ground.
  46. The existence of the Tyler twins themselves foreshadows the eventual arrival of the doppelgangers.
  47. The twins play a version of jinx when they say the same thing at the same time, simultaneously yelling, “jinx, double jinx, triple jinx, blackout!” A common way to play jinx is that the person who is jinxed is not allowed to speak until the one who does the jinxing releases them from their penalty, so this is possibly a nod to the Tethered not speaking. Additionally, being ‘jinxed’ can be interpreted as having bad luck, which proves true when the entire Tyler family is later murdered, beginning with the twins.
  48. Adelaide reacts nervously to seeing someone at the beach being carried toward the water by another person, and at a man rising up after being buried in the sand. These images call back to what she did to Red as a child; she dragged her down to the Tethered, and then she herself rose up out of the ground to take her place.
  49. Adelaide is shown being uneasy at a red frisbee perfectly covering a blue circle on the beach blanket. Not only can this symbolize the idea of layers, of one nearly identical thing lurking just below another, but it also evokes the idea of patriotism: the frisbee is red with a white star, and the circle is blue, echoing the design of the American flag.
  50. When Adelaide runs to hug Jason after she fears he has gone missing, instead of hugging her back, he holds his hands up, almost in a defensive position. It calls to mind the “Hands up, don’t shoot!” slogan of the Black Lives Matter movement, and subtly foreshadows the idea that Jason may not entirely trust the person who is supposed to keep him safe. He does this same thing at the end of the film when Adelaide hugs him.
  51. There is a picture of a line of children holding hands hanging in Jason’s room.
  52. In their bedroom, Adelaide tells Gabe, “I don’t feel like myself.” He responds, “I think you look like yourself,” foreshadowing that she is not the true Adelaide, but that they look identical.
  53. The story Adelaide tells Gabe about what happened to her as a child is very carefully worded to allow the audience to assume she was the little girl we saw in the opening scene, but for the most part, she doesn’t actually lie to him. Everything she says that happened to her is true; it’s just not the whole truth.
  54. “You know how sometimes things line up?” Adelaide asks Gabe, speaking about coincidences. Later, the Tethered will literally line up.
  55. Gabe tries to reassure Adelaide that she doesn’t need to fear her doppelganger by telling her that, “I’m pretty sure I could kick your ass.” Not only does this not go over well in the moment, but Gabe never actually fights Red. Each of the Wilsons only ever confronts their own doppelganger.
  56. The Tethered Wilsons first appear in the driveway holding hands, setting up the idea that the Tethered will ultimately be forming a human chain.

    Us (2019). Photo credit: Universal Pictures

  57. Adelaide’s first reaction to seeing the Tethered is to grunt nonverbally, reverting to her Tethered roots.
  58. The second time Gabe walks out into the driveway with the baseball bat to confront the Tethered, he code-switches to make himself appear more intimidating. Code-switching has been a prevalent theme in a number of recent movies about racial issues in America, such as Sorry to Bother You and The Hate U Give, and essentially boils down to switching personas based on your social environment. This is yet another nod to the theme of duality in Us.
  59. Red’s use of the hide-a-key is a hint that she is the original Adelaide, since even Gabe doesn’t appear to know about it: “What kind of white shit…” he begins to say when Adelaide tells him there’s a hide-a-key.
  60. Red’s slow, intimidating perusal of the house decorations may simply be curiosity; she hasn’t been to this house since she was a child, and may just want to know what’s changed.
  61. The painting over the fireplace is of a woman in red and white surrounded by shadows, symbolizing Red and Adelaide (who spends the movie in white).  
  62. Red tells her haunting story like a fairy tale, which is probably the only type of story she’d ever heard, considering the age when she was taken underground.
  63. Red’s hoarse voice may be a combination of damaged vocal chords due to Adelaide choking her as a child, and years of disuse.

    Us (2019). Photo credit: Universal Pictures

  64. Red says that Umbrae was “born laughing” and Pluto was “born to the fire.” This is also how both Tethered children ultimately die: Umbrae laughing in a tree, Pluto in a fire.
  65. Zora tells Gabe that “Nobody wants the boat,” but later, Abraham takes the boat, further illustrating that the Tethered’s resemblance to their above-ground counterparts doesn’t stop at physical appearance.
  66. Jason’s doppelganger is named Pluto. In Roman mythology, Pluto was the god of the Underworld, while the Tethered come from underground.
  67. Zora’s doppelganger is named Umbrae, which means “shadow” or “the invariable or characteristic accompaniment or companion of a person or thing.”
  68. Gabe’s doppelganger is named Abraham. In the Bible, Abraham was the father of two sons: Isaac and Ishmael. One son was conceived naturally, the other with supernatural assistance. One son was blessed by God and told he would inherit everything; the other was sent away and told he would inherit nothing.
  69. “You want me, right?” Adelaide asks Red. This line works okay on first viewing, as it’s easy enough to assume that Adelaide is resentful of the pleasant life Adelaide lived while Red suffered down below, but makes much more sense when your realize Adelaide assumes Red is seeking revenge for what Adelaide did to her as a child.
  70. Abraham takes Gabe’s glasses from his face, seeing clearly for perhaps the first time in his whole life, but removes them when it’s time for him to actually kill Gabe, implying that he doesn’t actually want to see what he’s about to do. Then, instead of killing Gabe with scissors, he puts him in a bag and takes him out on the water, intending to throw him overboard. This whole sequence seems to hint that Abraham does not actually enjoy the violence he’s perpetuating, and would prefer not to get his hands dirty. This is yet another hint that the Tethered may indeed share some deeper personality traits with their doppelgangers.
  71. When Jason sits with Pluto in the closet, the games right beside him are ‘Guess Who?’ and ‘Candyland.’ ‘Guess Who?’ is on the bottom, symbolizing the mysterious Tethered underneath the ground, with ‘Candyland’ sitting on top of it, possibly signifying the bright, cheery Boardwalk constructed right above the Tethered.

    Us (2019). Photo credit: Universal Pictures

  72. Umbrae tricks Zora into getting down on the ground while she herself climbs up above her, mirroring the actions of their mothers in 1986.
  73. When Adelaide asks what the Tethered want, Red answers, “We want to take our time.” Adelaide literally took time from Red by locking her underground and assuming her life.
  74. There’s a recurring theme of “heading left” in the film: Gabe’s boat veers to the left, the family turns left to find their car on fire, Adelaide turns a corner to the left to find the Tethered rooms underground. In the Bible, Jesus talks about God dividing the nations of the world into two groups, and putting one on his right and the other on his left. The group on the right will be blessed and inherit the Kingdom, while the group on the left will be cursed to eternal fire. This seems to tie into the same idea of Jeremiah 11:11, of a group of people falling out of favor with God and being unable to escape evil and torment.
  75. Every member of the Wilson family eventually kills their own doppelganger with the thing they wanted most at the beginning of the movie. Gabe has been bragging about the boat, and kills Abraham with the boat. Zora has been asking to drive, and kills Umbrae with the car. Jason has been trying to get his fireball trick to work, and kills Pluto with fire. And Adelaide wanted to escape her life underground, and kills Red with the handcuffs she used to gain her freedom.
  76. The Tylers’ digital assistant is named “Ophelia.” In Shakespeare’s Hamlet, the character Ophelia famously killed herself. In Us, characters are killed by “themselves.”
  77. When Adelaide calls 911 when the Tethered Wilsons show up in their driveway, she says the police will arrive in 14 minutes. 30 minutes later, when the police still haven’t arrived, Ophelia plays ‘Fuck tha Police.’

    Us (2019). Photo credit: Universal Pictures

  78. Jason picks up a geode to use as a weapon. A geode looks plain from the outside, but hides something remarkable and unexpected underneath.
  79. Kitty’s Tethered doppelganger acts as though she wants to kill Adelaide but doesn’t, but exhibits no such restraint when it comes to attempting to kill Zora, hinting that the Tethered are under orders to leave Adelaide for Red.
  80. When the family sees the news report about the Tethered on the Santa Cruz boardwalk, Adelaide says they must go to Mexico. The card at the beginning of the film told of underground tunnels spanning the entire United States. Adelaide’s assumption that they need to flee the country indicates that this Tethered uprising likely spans the entire nation.
  81. When Gabe doesn’t want to go along with her plan, Adelaide yells, “You don’t get to make the decisions anymore!” This has a double meaning, since Adelaide was once Tethered, but managed to break free so that no one else got to make her decisions for her anymore. Gabe, on the other hand, has lived his whole life above-ground, meaning he has always been making the decisions for someone else.
  82. Once the Tylers and their doppelgangers are all dead, the Wilsons proceed to just move around them as though they are invisible, and even make flippant jokes about getting their car. The jarring disposability of the white family may have been intended to flip the script on an audience who is not used to seeing privileged white people being treated that way, challenging us on the sorts of people and bodies that we as a society tend to view as disposable, who gets ignored and who gets noticed.
  83. When Adelaide commits her first kill, it is with the scissors, the chosen weapon of the Tethered.
  84. When comparing kill counts, Gabe brags, “I killed myself and Josh.” While the line is delivered flippantly, the film’s later twists beg the question, is it actually possible to kill another human being without losing a piece of yourself? When they kill “themselves,” does something inside them die a little? In killing Abraham, did Gabe actually kill an important part of himself?
  85. When Pluto appears in front of the Wilsons’ car, he is snapping, like Adelaide taught Jason to do earlier.

    Us (2019). Photo credit: Universal Pictures

  86. Just as Red did before entering the “Vision Quest” as a child, Adelaide looks out over the beach before entering “Merlin’s Forest.” Where Red saw an oncoming storm, Adelaide sees a line of Tethered.
  87. Adelaide passes a white rabbit as she enters the door that will take her down to the Tethered, likely a nod to Alice in Wonderland. Later, Red will tell her that the Tethered went mad underground, possibly a reference to the Cheshire Cat’s line, “We’re all mad here.”
  88. Gabe wonders out loud if the line of Tethered is “some kind of fucked-up performance art.” It turns out that he may be pretty close; Red is copying the imagery of a campaign she saw as a child that promised to help the underprivileged and change the world for the better, in the hopes that echoing that campaign will do the same for the Tethered. She doesn’t realize that “Hands Across America” turned out to be little more than performative slacktivism, and that her whole plan may, in fact, be meaningless.  

    Us (2019). Photo credit: Universal Pictures

  89. “We’re human too, you know,” Red tells Adelaide, “Exactly like you.” This line carries new meaning when you discover the true origins of both women, and that apparently being born Tethered actually has nothing to do with innate potential or capability.
  90. Red begins her story about the origins of the Tethered with the words, “I believe,” indicating that this is only a theory and not meant to be taken at face value. As a young girl, armed with only a lower-elementary school education and a child’s knowledge of how the world works, Red likely did her best to explain to herself what had happened to her based on what she understood of humanity, the government, and God, filling in the gaps as she got older. While there is likely some truth to Red’s version of events, there’s no way to know exactly how much.  
  91. Red tells Adelaide, “I never stopped thinking about you, how you could have taken me with you.” Adelaide was willing to turn her back on everything she knew of the Tethered and Red in the name of her own comfort, which speaks to the complacency of the privileged, who are content to climb and leave the less fortunate behind without a backward glance.
  92. Red says, “It’s our time now, our time up there,” which is possibly a reference to The Goonies, in which Mikey says, “Our parents, they want the bestest stuff for us. But right now they gotta do what’s right for them, ’cause it’s their time. Their time, up there. Down here it’s our time. It’s our time down here.”
  93. Red tells Adelaide, “If it wasn’t for you, I never would have danced at all,” which is possibly a commentary both on the importance of the arts, and the role privilege plays in who gets to participate in them.
  94. Red tells Adelaide that her plan took years to coordinate, and it’s clear in both her words and motions that everything she does has been extensively rehearsed. Her speeches carry a sense of being overly scripted — understandable for a woman who’s spent the past few decades planning exactly what she wanted to say, and has had no one to talk to during that time —  and her movements are all precise and heavily practiced.

    Us (2019). Photo credit: Universal Pictures

  95. Red has Adelaide in a vulnerable position at several points during their fight, but refrains from killing her, calling back to her earlier line that she wants to take her time.
  96. Red was already dying from the stab wound with the fire poker; Adelaide seems to strangle her solely to stop her from whistling, possibly because it is a reminder of the girl Red used to be, the one Adelaide trapped into a lifetime of torture. Her need to silence Red rather than be reminded of what she did is another jab at the lengths we will go to in order to preserve our own comfort.
  97. In Adelaide’s flashback, she appears to be walking with determination, as opposed to Red, on the surface, who seems to simply be wandering. Then, once Red enters the “Vision Quest,” Adelaide is shown waiting for her and smiling. This seems to suggest that it was Adelaide that lured Red away from her parents and not vice versa, controlling her from under the ground, suggesting that the mirroring doesn’t have to go only one way.
  98. One of the dominant themes of Us is the dehumanization of the lower class, and nowhere does the film drive that point home more than at the very end. By revealing that Adelaide, the film’s protagonist, is Tethered, Us is confronting us with the idea that, despite what we were led to believe, there is actually nothing inherently less human about the Tethered. The Tethered are capable of the same things we are — speech, emotion, bravery, skill, love — if given the same opportunity and privilege, but are limited by their circumstances. By waiting until the end to inform us that the person we’ve been rooting for throughout the whole movie was born Tethered, we’re forced to acknowledge that all of the Tethered who were killed throughout the film, and whose deaths we cheered and even laughed at, had the potential to be actual people, just like any of us. And if they had the potential to be people, then that means that really, they already were people, because humanity is something you are born with, not something you earn through communication or intelligence or skill. It plays as an indictment on us, the audience, and challenges us to examine why it took revealing that someone we cared about was Tethered to acknowledge the humanity of the Tethered at all.
  99. Jason pulls his mask down over his face at the end, but is holding one of the rabbits from underground. If the rabbits represent the Tethered, then Jason’s choosing to bring one home with him likely represents his willingness to accept his mother, even knowing the truth. He also holds the geode, with represents the film’s theme of duality, but is also the weapon Jason used to make his first kill. All of this together may hint that while Jason is willing to play along with his mother’s secret — to pull the wool over his own eyes, as it were — he is also willing to take drastic action, if necessary.
  100. As the camera pulls back to show the line of Tethered stretching over the mountains, the chorus of ‘Les Fleurs’ by Minnie Riperton surges with the lyrics, “Ring all the bells sing and tell the people that be everywhere that the flower has come/ Light up the sky with your prayers of gladness and rejoice for the darkness is gone/ Throw off your fears let your heart beat freely at the sign that a new time is born.” Optimistic, joyful lyrics, indicating that the Tethered have achieved their goal, bookending ‘Anthem’ at the beginning, which was also from the perspective of the Tethered. But this song also has a bite; the Tethered are rejoicing at their victory, but they have no plan beyond their linked hands, and may find, as with “Hands Across America,” that their grand gesture doesn’t amount to much in the grand scheme of things.

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