Carol and The End of the World Ending Explained: Netflix’s limited mini series with 10 episodes over a season is an adult animated sci-fi apocalyptic drama title created by the Rick and Morty writer, Dan Guterman. It stars Martha Kelly as the titular character, Beth Grant, Kimberly Hebert Gregory, Mel Rodriguez, Michael Chernus, Lawrence Pressman and others as part of the voice cast. Releasing on Netflix on December 15, 2023, the show has been produced under the banner of Bardel Entertainment and Netflix Animation.
The show finds direction through its main character, Carol Kohl, a middle-aged woman who doesn’t feel liberated like the rest of the masses during their last days on Earth as another mysterious planet hurtles towards it. While the rest of the people, her own parents included, find their last piece of coping mechanism in hedonism and promiscuous ways of partying the last few months away, Carol still craves for the old definition of normal and the same-old routine in which she found comfort and regularity.
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With humanity’s extinction imminent, work places shut down and the majority of people invest their remaining days cultivating hobbies and passions they never found time for otherwise. On the other hand, Carol ends up discovering a mysterious and possibly the only and last-standing office where people come in to fulfil their white-collared duties everyday except the weekend. There, she starts a new journey of self-discovery, but things aren’t as normal as one would anticipate.
–Carol and The End of the World Netflix Ending Explained Contains Spoilers-
Carol and The End of the World Ending Explained
Does the World Really End?
As the HR woman continues her investigation in the last episode, it also shifts our focus to the picture of the other planet gradually hurtling towards Earth. The show doesn’t end with the catastrophic implosion, so we don’t actually witness the end of the world by the end of the season. This means that the employees, who’ve now found a family in each other’s company still have some more time with each other, but it’s also expected that the inevitable is likely to strike sooner or later.
What was “The Investigation” About in the Final Episode?
One employee’s emotional breakdown leads to mass hysteria among all and the HR woman is tasked with the investigation to find out the root cause of these breakdowns, resulting in the disruption of the previously established silent stability at the office. Joining all dots together, the HR official comes down to narrowing the commencement of these growing changes to the day Carol was hired at The Distraction. She began learning each and every employee’s name, thus acknowledging them as individuals with identity rather than seeing them as mere cogs of the corporate machine.
She went to the great lengths of organising an unlikely wake on the company building’s terrace to honour the passing away of one of her colleagues, David. This acted as the extra push for others to finally jump out of their shells too and join her, thereby making way for a compassionate start to what eventually blossomed into a meaningful friendship among all employees.
Carol had already befriended Donna and Luis previously, and took the chance to ask questions that weren’t asked before by anyone else. Though she loved her job at this new place, she couldn’t just silently agree with the established status quo at this place, wherein people weren’t seen as human beings with feelings, and rather continued to work as robotic presences without uttering a word to each other.
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As eventually looked into by the HR woman, she even sees that the way people were opening up to each other ultimately led them to sharing their off-time with each other as well under the garb of “happy hour”, which was celebrated at Carol’s beloved place, Applebee’s. By renovating the restaurant, and opening it up for the rest of her colleagues, she makes room for them to enjoy and rejoice in each other’s company at a rather humble setting outside of the work establishment.
This is seen as a disruption to The Distraction’s core and premise because these jobs at the accounting firm were presented as a means to impart the essence of mundane regularity of routines that come with such corporate cycles, thus, extending a sense of normality to them despite the impending apocalypse.
However, once they all start mingling with each other, all these co-workers are now and then reminded of how many friendships they’ve found along the way, but with the world coming to an end, they’d all be lost soon enough. Therefore, human attachment is a jarring factor that endangered the placebo effect set in place by The Distraction.
We expect the HR woman to fire Carol for having fanned this fire, but once she too finds a place amongst the rest of the workers, and gains a humanised spot beside them as a friend instead of being reduced to her position as the “HR”, she’s also moved by Carol’s efforts to bring these people together. She’d merely stepped into Applebee’s the first time undercover to carry out her investigation, but the moment Carol recognises her as “Kathleen” and not “HR”, she’s also moved to tears.
What Did Applebee’s Mean to Carol?
Applebee’s was a symbol of regularity and common routine in Carol’s life. For someone who didn’t hold any larger than life ambitions, nor had any desires she wanted fulfilled, Carol found comfort in the usuality of things, and this is especially emphasised on once the fate of the world is sealed and the clock starts ticking, counting down the days to the end of the world.
While the rest of the world was busy partying their days away, Carol took things slow and rather craved for the simple day-to-day experiences instead of diving into a hedonistic lifestyle. Even though Carol was mostly a quiet and introverted person, she deeply cared for simple human interactions, and places like neighbourhood restaurants and supermarkets that are hotspots for such experiences.
Even at the end, she kicks off “party hour” with her coworkers by renovating Applebee’s and serving them all there, to bring them all together as this small community. Seeing things go back to the former normal (as much as was possible), leaves her teary-eyed, and even Donna and Luis can see through her. “The Distraction” particularly opposed this image of “sentimental chaos” because the higher-ups understood that the more the employees get attached to each other emotionally, the further they would drift away from the fake sense of routine this company had reinstated to push the fact about the world’s inevitable implosion to the background.
How Did “The Distraction” Come Into Being?
Episode 7, titled “The Beetle Broach”, shows an employee at The Distraction being sent off for a 2-weak paid vacation due to his unsatisfactory work output. Since this “break” pushes the man in question back to the public realm where the rest of the world is busy partying, he completely transforms himself and turns a disguise into his new identity to find his way back to accounting. This episode further dives into a brief introduction of each employee at this company in addition to the man, aka the boss, we saw at the beginning of the series solving a math problem on his calculator and ultimately hiring Carol.
The seventh episode then lends us a peek into the past when the news of the planetary object hurtling towards Earth first broke and people started experiencing mass hysteria at the same office, except for one workaholic man who kept to his books and work. However, as soon as he walked into his personal cabin, he equally expressed his distraught emotions as he knew that this endangered the routine that had prevailed as the status quo all this time. He simply draws the curtains to cover up the emerging sight of the other planet gradually nearing Earth, and goes back to his files.
Once work resumes for the time being, the boss checks up on the reports and receipts of the past quarter, but the calculations don’t zero down, and he’s left with a 0.38 difference on the calculator. People eventually start leaving the office as the planet comes closer, but the boss keeps up with the same calculation, which never zeroes down, and ultimately it becomes his life and only coping mechanism to keep the thoughts of armageddon at bay. Eventually all his subordinates leave and the entire building is deserted, with just his cabin’s light on at all times.
One day, a heartbroken and purposeless woman’s eyes catch sight of this light. Seeing it as a beacon of hope, she too walks into the office space. She’s none other than the same woman who later takes on the HR job – Kathleen. As the days go by, the boss keeps up with his same calculations and gradually other such people who find comfort in this corporate cycle’s established norms keep coming up to the accounting floor and start working at the place that comes to be known as “The Distraction”.
The same cycle continues to the day Carol also finds the building and the sole operating office. It’s just like what she says in the same episode, “sometimes you just gotta give things time to be lost … before they can be found”, just like all these people who hated the idea of giving up on their normal lives eventually found The Distraction.
Carol & The End of the World series is now streaming on Netflix.