Warning: This article contains a main article Boss Level spoilers. Save this one for after watching the movie!
If you’ve ever caught on to a video game level with which you just can’t time to make your jump right, you know for sure how Frank Grillo’s character feels in his new Hulu movie, Boss Level.
Directed by Joe Carnahan, this new sci-fi thriller is a fast-paced and fun take on the time-lapse genre, which also answers the age-old question of action hero films: How the hell did that ? Well, as for Grillo’s character, Roy, the answer is practice, practice, practice.
But as with most time loop films, the semantics of how a time loop ends – or does not end – can be daunting. The Boss Level completion keeps things open, but so do our theories. Read on to break down Decider on the Boss Level conspiracy and the Boss Level concluding, explained.
What is Frank Grillo’s Hulu movie about? What is the Boss Level conspiracy?
Roy Pulver (Grillo) is a retired special forces soldier, who has been involved in a time curve for months. Every day he wakes up in bed and immediately quits twenty murder attempts with a handful of murderers. While he’s gotten well on it, so far he’s never stayed past 12:47 pm – like grabbing a stage in a video game. And every day, he has to repeat the news that his wife was dead.
In a flashback, we learn, the day before the time loop began, he visited his ex-wife Jemma (Naomi Watts) at her secret job at a high-tech research company. Unbeknownst to him, emergency chief Jemma Clive Ventor (Mel Gibson) is watching the security inspectors.
Jemma tells Roy that she is working on something mysterious that “takes up all time and space and destroys the universe if used inappropriately.” We also learn that Jemma and Roy have a son together, but have no idea that Roy is their father. Jemma then tells him desperately that she wants Roy to prove he deserves to be Joe’s father, suck him, and shake one word in his ear: ”Osiris . ”Huh, that was weird!
Later in the day, Jemma calls Roy at the bar and tells him she’s going to do something magical, but before she can give him the really important information he needs, the call breaking.
Back in the time loop, Roy found a gift from Jemma: A book with the title Iset and Osiris. When Roy finally gets a chance to read the book, he learns that Iset and Osiris were a husband and wife. Iset was an Egyptian high priest who protected the dead and carried them to the next life. Osiris was killed by being taken out of 14 parts and scattered throughout Egypt by his enemy. Iset then restored her husband dead, and Osiris became lord of the dead in the afterlife. Have fun!
After much trial and error, Roy finally confirms that boss Jemma Clive intends to use the time loop technology to rewrite history. You know, Hitler’s baby dead, 9/11 stopped, that kind of stuff. Jemma put Roy in the time loop, trusting him to stop Clive.
How is Boss Level end?
Eventually, Roy manages to kill Clive – he must learn how to operate a sword, first – but just before he takes action, Clive tells Roy that his son is in danger. . Clive also says something about Roy as a “missing mass.” Roy runs to the video game contest where he knows his son is going to be dead. He realizes that he has allowed his son to die more than 100 times. Then the world comes to an end, maybe because Clive has gone and rewritten history, or something.
Roy falls into depression and stops trying to “win” the time loop. He then decides to use his loops to get to know his son, Joe (played by Frank Grillo’s real son, Rio Grillo). They spend dozens of days together, each time the loop resets when the world ends. Then on one of the loops, Joe states that he spoke to his mother on the phone that morning and asked Roy to call him if she got in trouble. Roy realizes that Jemma isn’t dead on the morning of the loop, and that he still has a chance to save – but he only has 14 minutes before he wakes up to do so.
Roy arrives at the facility in 14 minutes by helicopter attack. He expertly kills everyone in the building and saves Jemma. Roy reveals what his son came to know, and Jemma is enthralled by his commitment to his father.
What is the Boss Level ending, explained?
Roy walks through a large time loop machine object at the search facility. Jemma tells him that if he returns “his butt to his heart,” the time loop will reset and he will move on. In other words, a day will reset the time loop once more but then it will not bend again. But Jemma warns him he may not do it.
“If you go in there it might kill you, and you have to say the day again,” she says. “And if you die then there is no return.”
Roy enters the machine and wakes up in the morning of the loop. “Okay, asshole, just don’t die this time,” Roy says in a voiceover. “A piece of cake.” He throws out of the way the incoming knife, as always. (And yes, I’m pretty sure it will throw out of the way, even though the bullet is a bit confusing.) With that, the film ends.
We don’t get to confirm if he’s doing it during the live day, but based on Grillo’s cocky grit and bulging muscles, I’m willing to bet he pulled it off.
What is less clear is whether Roy manages to make it to the search facility within 14 minutes to save Jemma’s life. But it says, “Wait for me,” to her before you get into the machine. So I’m willing to bet he saved her too. If there’s one who can beat the boss level twice, it’s Frank Grillo.
Look Boss Level on Hulu