‘Awake’ Ending Explained: What Happens in Gina Rodriguez’s Netflix Movie? (2024)

Those who struggle with insomnia may want to think twice before watching Awake on Netflix, a new Gina Rodriguez thriller that will dial any sleep-related anxiety you may have up to 11.

The premise of Awake is pretty simple: Thanks to a mysterious global event, no one on earth can sleep anymore. Well, almost no one. As it turns out, Gina Rodriguez’s on-screen daughter—played by Ariana Greenblatt—can sleep. Now it’s a race against time to find out why, as everyone quickly devolves into sleep-deprived madness.

That said, just because the set-up is straightforward doesn’t mean the Awake ending is simple. Writers Joseph and Mark Raso—the latter of whom also directed—throw out several different ideas throughout the course of Awake, and not everything comes together in a neat package. If you found yourself confused, don’t worry—we’re here to help. Read on for Decider’s breakdown of the Awake plot and the Awake ending explained.

What is Awake on Netflix about? What is the Awake plot?

Jill Adams (Gina Rodriguez) is an ex-soldier, ex-drug addict, and current single mother struggling to make ends meet. For one reason or another (presumably due to her history with drug abuse), Jill’s two children—her teenage son Noah (Lucius Hoyos) and her younger daughter Matilda (Ariana Greenblatt)—do not live with her, but with their grandmother. But none of that matters after a mysterious global event causes technology to stop working, and people to stop sleeping. Jill and her kids are driving when it happens, crash their car into a lake, but manage to survive.

It quickly becomes clear that Jill’s daughter Matilda is one of the few people left in the world who can sleep. A psychologist (Finn Jones) wants Jill to take Matilda to the “hub” where they will study her, in an attempt to find a cure. Apparently, there is another woman at the hub already, who is also able to sleep. But the clock is ticking—humans can only go so long without sleeping, and everyone is rapidly losing their minds.

For reasons that are not explained, there are still a few cars that do work. (It has something to do with “boosting their batteries.”) Jill steals a car for her family, and she concocts a plan to break into the hub, free the other woman who can’t sleep, and ask her to raise Matilda for her. Jill believes everyone—except her daughter and this other woman—is going to die. She also doesn’t trust that the doctor in charge at the hub to research her daughter without harming her. Jill knows that doctor—Dr. Murphy (Jennifer Jason Leigh)—from her days in the army, and indeed helped her use sleep deprivation as a form of torture to interrogate enemies. Neat!

How does Awake end?

As it turns out, Jill was right not to trust Dr. Murphy. As soon as the psychologist finds out about Matlida, she is prepared to cut the little girl’s head open. But despite the sleep deprivation, Jill manages to rescue her daughter just as chaos is descending on the hub. Everyone is hallucinating and losing their minds, which is not a great situation for a military base full of automatic rifles.

Then Jill’s son Noah, in a sleep-deprived haze, electrocutes himself. Jill and Matilda rush to revive him with a defibrillator, but it doesn’t seem to work. The night passes in total bloodshed. Almost everyone at the hub is dead, but Jill—clinging to Noah’s dead body—is still alive. Then, suddenly, Noah wakes up. He’s alive! Either the defibrillator revived him on a delay, or it revived him instantly, but he was so tired that he immediately fell asleep.

Matilda discovers a sheriff’s badge lying on the ground and remembers how she nearly drowned at the beginning of the movie in that car crash, but that a police officer brought her back to life using CPR. She realizes that both she and Noah really did die, and were brought back to life. Dying-and-coming-back-to-life must be the cure for this whole “no sleeping” thing. Presumably, the old lady who could sleep also died but was revived.

Matilda and Noah drag their mother, who is nearly catatonic, to the lake and drown her. Really! They pull her out after she stops breathing, and we see Noah performing CPR on his mother. The screen goes black before she wakes up. But over black, we hear Rodriguez take a gasping breath, indicating that Noah is able to revive her in the end.

What is the Awake ending explained?

I’m not saying the Awake ending makes much sense within the context of the movie, but it’s clear it’s a biblical allegory. If you’ll recall, earlier in the film the local priest relays a story to young Matilda about that time he overdosed and was dead for a full minute before he was brought back to life—just like Jesus! And the final image of Gina Rodriguez being drowned in the water looks an awful lot like a baptism.

Then there’s the story that Shamier Anderson’s character, Dodge, tells about a theory his grandmother had: That all the world’s problems could disappear in one generation if everyone could just forget all of the problematic stuff they’d learned and start over.

As for what the global event even was, we get a vague explanation of it being a solar flare that changed the way technology works and also the way sleep works. Shh, don’t think about it too hard.

These different puzzle pieces don’t quite fit together. But essentially, Gina Rodriguez and her kids survived a mass extinction event. They will probably be some of the few humans alive in a brand new world. But hey, at least they can sleep.

Watch Awake on Netflix