A philosophical dive into “Everything Everywhere All at Once”

Amidst the enrapturing chaos and screwball comedy of “Everything Everywhere All at Once" there seems to lie a secluded commentary on finding purpose in life. As the plot steadily collapses into multiverse anarchy, a central question is recited: if our existence is just a random permutation in a set of infinite possibilities, what meaning does anything have? In answering this question, Evelyn and Joy seem to have found a tranquil abode within that anarchy. But it wasn’t quite clear to me what that answer actually was, or whether it could opine anything meaningful outside of the plot’s context.

Firstly, let’s piece together what kind of ontological view the film is presenting. Our first exposure to verse jumping shows Alpha Waymond puppeting another universe’s Waymond. Upon first examination, it seems verse jumping can have purely physicalist explanations. The jump technology allows someone to access the brain state of another version of themselves; they can also take control of their brain, supplanting the original’s consciousness temporarily. A physicalist explanation suggests the technology simply links the brains physically, with long term memories only being written to the jumping mind, leaving the puppet amnesiac. We also observe later that Alpha Waymond cannot transfer his consciousness to another universe before dying; his consciousness is tied to his original body. Nevertheless, as we peer deeper into the fractured minds of Joy and Evelyn, it becomes clear that the film adopts a dualist theory of mind. While Alpha Waymond died with his original body, Jobu Tupaki has created her Everything Bagel in an attempt to destroy her mind permanently. Something special has occurred in the creation of Jobu Tupaki causing her consciousness to separate from her physical body and prevent suicide as a simple solution. Further evidence of this comes as we see Joy and Evelyn communicate telepathically as rocks, piñatas, crayon drawings, and even entire planets.

The mind link is apparently only possible between other versions of themselves, but this series of bizarre examples shows that the notion of identity is a hazy construct. A rock has no physical ability to develop thoughts, memories, or a sense of self. Perhaps another universe could have been used as the conduit for communication, but that does not explain their demonstrated ability to exert unphysical locomotive control over these objects. A nonphysical mind or consciousness must ultimately control the actions of these physical forms. Perhaps the extreme frequency and distance of verse jumps is able to permanently dislodge the mind from its bodily cradle. Waymond states that “the overloaded mind usually dies”, which befits the colloquial idea that death causes a separation of body and spirit; in this case however, it is the mind which has forcibly untethered itself.

It is not entirely clear what the breadth of the film’s multiverse is. It is demonstrated clearly that universes will branch when a mind performs some action. The presence of universes where life did not evolve could suggest branching also occurs due to some indeterminism in physical matter, perhaps at the quantum level. However, the fact that minds can inhabit and control inanimate objects like piñatas could mean that these universes are also spawned due to a mind’s choice. The multiverse is initially described as infinite by Waymond, but later characteristics of the multiverse don’t seem to support this. For instance, Waymond tells Evelyn “You can either turn left towards your scheduled audit appointment or you can turn right and go into the janitor’s closet”, and later, “You can either come with me and live up to your ultimate potential or lie here and live with the consequences.”

Choices are only ever described as a finite list of options, rather than infinite possibilities. The local cluster of universes always shows noticeable differences, suggesting branches only occur when a choice creates significant divergence. If every quantum possibility were enumerated, there would be infinite identical universes, any of which could have been used as burner universes. When Jobu Tupaki is first introduced, she enters a named universe: Thetaverse 4655. Naming and numbering universes is only practical when there is a finite set of them. Joy says that “most” universes are ones where life did not evolve, but you cannot have “most” of infinity. The only scenario where it somewhat makes sense is where a finite number of worlds evolved life, but an infinite number did not. Characters also seem to be more or less consistent across universes, with roughly the same desires, personality, and life experiences. Jobu Tupaki tells Thetaverse 4655 citizens she “knows what makes you tick”, not because she is omniscient, but because she knew the person in another universe. Evelyn later makes use of this to satisfy her opponents desires and convince them to stop fighting. Alternatively, this could be accomplished using foreknowledge of the local cluster each opponent resides in and observing one of those universes under the assumption that deep desires will not change with recent life choices. It was demonstrated that Waymond could identify Evelyn’s local cluster on his computer, so there is precedent that Evelyn and Joy could do it by themselves. However, the film seems to push a strong narrative that Waymond’s character, despite any infinite multiverse, displays kindness and optimism in every instance. 

At the very least, I think we can safely say the multiverse is a restricted subset of all possibilities. There may be infinite universes, each “a random rearrangement of particles in a vibrating superposition” as Jobu Tupaki describes, but the random distribution covers a non-uniform, severely restricted range. When Evelyn is working through her climactic epiphany, she states “Even in a stupid, stupid universe where we have hot dogs for fingers, we’d get very good with our feet”, suggesting that a universe is never wholly stupid.

Despite a seemingly irrecoverable mess at the end of the film, Waymond also insists “you can still turn around and avoid all this”, and through his kindness and optimism things do start to turn around. Joy disparages Evelyn, saying “It’s just a statistical inevitability. It’s nothing special […] Eventually that all just goes away.” On cue, the good fortune appears to fade, proving only to be a momentary blip in a sea of possibilities. However, Evelyn presses onward with greater commitment, and to Joy’s apparent surprise, resuscitates the stream of good fortune. To me, the suggestion given by these scenes is that not only is the multiverse restricted, but people can also exert free will to guide how the random distribution of the multiverse is restricted.

The idea of having free will and power over the path your universe takes in a branching multiverse is complicated. Given a choice to turn left or right out of the elevator, if you choose left, a branching universe will manifest where that universe’s mind was seemingly forced to choose right. Given the dualist theory of mind the film portrays, I can think of two possible resolutions that can allow for free will:

1. A conscious mind splits into two every time a branch occurs
2. Two minds coexist along an identical life path, up until the moment that their free choice causes them to diverge

The first might be considered a non-choice. The mind cannot decide between two disparate paths, and so chooses to live both of them simultaneously. Perhaps the mind partitions itself into two isolated processes, or it splits in half through some kind of cell division. Arguably the second solution for free will, where two minds coexisted all along, is much simpler than a mind partitioning or splitting. Nevertheless this contradicts what Jobu Tupaki tells Evelyn: “I am your daughter. Your daughter is me. Every version of Joy is Jobu Tupaki.” Even though we saw Joy puppeted, ignorant of the multiverse, and amnesiac, Jobu Tupaki still insists that this Joy is also her. Another glaring fact is that there is only one omnipresent Evelyn and Joy within the multiverse, rather than an infinite number, all interacting and trying to verse jump among each other. If a person’s choice to verse jump created an additional branch, we never observe such intertwined contradictions in the film; we must conclude that if such branches occur, they are within the context of a meta multiverse— the enumeration of possibilities in a multi-multiverse— while the film’s plot only concerns a single multiverse. In any case, the only way Evelyn and Joy’s omnipresence across the multiverse makes sense is if there is one mind, one identity, one self shared across the entire multiverse. This also absolves the ethical dilemma in stealing another universe’s body, only to inflict pain or death on them. Borrowing the language of the film, perhaps we can describe this state as a single mind experiencing a superposition of all possible realities simultaneously. The amnesiac puppets could be a result of the mind partitioning each experience, so as to avoid “a lifetime of fractured moments. Contradictions and confusion with only a few specks of time where anything actually makes sense.” It would seem even the minds of the untethered, godlike Evelyn and Joy are unable to process more than a few simultaneous superposition states at one time.

More direct evidence for free will can also be found in the film. When Jobu Tupaki’s presence is first announced, it is stated that her being there is a “statistical inevitability”. The statement implies that Jobu Tupaki is not using special powers to perform her godlike feats, but rather she is just moving her conscious awareness to a universe where that statistically unlikely event is manifest. While this may have been the mechanism Jobu Tupaki used in that specific instance, I think it ends up being a poor explanation for moments where a police uniform turns into a salsa dress, bullets turn into googly eyes, or a rock slides on its own down a cliff. Alpha Waymond also describes residual effects of Jobu Tupaki’s embodied chaos: clothes change sizes, your hair texture and style differ, coffee tastes different, and people are more apt to feel suspicious. These corruptions of order are described as unnatural variation, a causal effect of something other than typical random possibilities. Indeed, if Jobu Tupaki’s multiversal rampage was simply another permutation in an endless list of possibilities, there would be no reason behind Alpha Waymond’s sense of urgency to do something about it.

Finally, a dominant point of the film is that despite the many wonderful universes Evelyn could experience in her fractured state, she chooses to place her conscious awareness in her original, mundane one with her husband Waymond and daughter Joy. In fact, this point is also compatible with a truly infinite multiverse as well; in that case, the fractured mind has ascended into a realm beyond the curse of infinite possibilities, reinstating the capacity for free choice in picking which possibility it wishes to live in.

While the screenwriters perhaps did not think this deeply about inconsistencies in the dialogue and plot, we have nevertheless arrived at an overreaching philosophy for the film that makes sense: Behind the eyes of each character there observes an unseen, vast, undivided self. While the specific path each character lives is perhaps still a random possibility, the undivided self exerts its free will to guide which possible futures will be enumerated in the superposition. This is what allows Waymond to always choose compassion, or Evelyn to choose to be with her daughter Joy in every universe. Summarized, I would propose the ultimate message of the film is that a meaningful life is not measured by any specific variation in a list of possible life choices, after all, one cannot predict which one is most desirable until they have all played out. Rather, a meaningful life comes from repeated choices guided by authentic, underlying principles and desires.

How does this message hold up to the real world, and does it present any useful ideas beyond simple entertainment? The film is surely a direct commentary to the popular many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics, which posits that each state in a quantum superposition represents another physical universe. To me, I find the many-worlds interpretation is a way of ridding ourselves of the uncomfortable idea that the laws of physics are not deterministic. Having no answer to explain why a superposition reduces to one state and not another is disconcerting. Saying that a superposition does reduce to another state, except it occurs in a dual universe we cannot currently observe, is an easy way to remove the question altogether. We are just one sample in an infinite list of possibilities, so there is no meaning to why we happen to be in this state. The film answers this apparent lack of meaning by asserting that we have free will in some form, and these choices provide meaning and explanation for why we are in one state and not another. It is somewhat amusing to note that while the many-worlds interpretation aims to dismiss the idea of indeterminism, the film reintroduces it in the form of free will, this time one level deeper as the guiding consciousness behind the quantum probability distribution. To this, I do agree that free will, or simply the illusion that we have free choices, is an essential ingredient in a meaningful life. You do not typically get any sense of reward or value when you observe the successes of another random person. Likewise, I believe you get a similar sense of emptiness and apathy if you learned your own successes were just the result of a random dice throw from the universe. Unlike the film, for us the many-worlds interpretation is just one of many unproven explanations for the observed indeterminism in quantum mechanics. Philosophically, free will and randomness are indistinguishable to an objective observer. You would expect a free choice to vary somewhat if you could rewind time and record each response; otherwise, the choice would be purely determined by the situation and the agent would have no demonstrated ability to choose otherwise. Instead of building a complex multiversal theory of mind, we can simply adopt our own quantum interpretation, one where free will is the source of at least some of quantum indeterminism.

Departing from the stage the film sets, would it be possible to find meaning in life if it were proven that the universe truly is deterministic, and thus no room for indeterminism and free will? It seems to me that “meaning” is a purely relational attribute. Is it meaningful to me? Is it meaningful to society? Is it meaningful in the context of work, school, or religion? Meaning cannot exist apart from a discriminatory mind to define the criteria for meaning. So even if you have no belief in free will, it seems you can still trick yourself into finding things meaningful, so long as you define a criteria to evaluate meaning. Once the criteria for meaning is defined, it can at least bootstrap your actions in pursuit of that meaning, even if those actions might be deterministic. Nevertheless, I think something paradoxical occurs in the human mind when denying free will; it causes a stupefaction of motivation that only leads to inaction. In order to continue, the idea of fatalism must be temporarily abandoned from conscious awareness to make room for choices to be made. A denial of free will I think tends to yield an incredibly dissonant belief system as well, as one will claim determinism, but will not revise their attitudes, behavior towards others, or moral framework to accommodate the implications of determinism. I think the instinctual structure of the mind is partly to blame, as so much of human thought is logically centered around a sense of “self”, an agent which can make decisions and revise them given observations. In a way, abandoning free will necessitates renouncing the self. After all, it would mean the laws of physics and state of the universe are controlling your thoughts, not some distinct, singular entity. As one final thought, a denial of free will seems like it could provide a sense of comfort should your life take a turn for the worse, absolving you of responsibility. But humans are slaves to emotion, and I don’t believe casting yourself carefree into the river of fate will help you cope with the depression that comes from the possibility of unending misfortune beyond your control.