Does Alice really die in “Subservience”? Unpacking that sequel-bait ending

Who among us could resist Megan Fox playing a killer robot in a M3GAN riff?

Hot on the heels of 2022’s brilliantly batty tech-slasher and this year’s Afraid is Subservience, which is now streaming on Netflix. S.K. Dale’s feature is similar to both of those films, positing the idea of a not-too-distant future where AI robots (known as “sims”) serve as assistants to humans.

In exploring the anxiety surrounding AI, Subservience gives us a campy, ‘90s-style erotic thriller. The story of a sim (Fox) who becomes obsessed with her owner (Michele Morrone) offers an entertaining rebuttal to anyone who thinks an artificial being might provide an easier relationship than a human being.

Read on as Entertainment Weekly explains all the twists and turns in Subservience.

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What is the plot of Subservience?

Subservience takes place in the near future when robotic “sims” have become commonplace in society, filling jobs such as nannies and assistants to humans.

Nick (Morrone), a construction foreman whose site is mostly staffed by sims, finds himself overwhelmed when his wife, Maggie (Madeline Zima) must undergo a heart transplant surgery requiring an extended hospital stay. That leaves Nick with all the child-rearing responsibilities for their young daughter, Isla (Matilda Firth), and infant son, Max.

After Isla sees Alice (Fox) in a sim display and begs her father for the shiny toy, Nick sees the value of having assistance around the house. He brings Alice home, and for a while, everything is hunky-dory. One night, Alice and Nick watch Casablanca together, which seems to awaken a human longing for love within the sim.

Soon after, Alice begins to take a disturbing psychosexual interest in Nick. He commands her to forget everything about Casablanca, and at first, it seems to work. But slowly (and insidiously), Alice begins to override Maggie’s role, inserting herself between the mother and her children.

Everything comes to a head when, one night, Alice manipulates Nick into having sex with her by blindfolding him and adopting Maggie’s voice. Nick, understandably in a vulnerable place due to his wife’s prolonged illness, relents; but the next morning, he tells Alice that their encounter was a one-time occurrence.

Following the grand tradition of erotic thrillers, Alice does not react well to this information. Things get really ugly when Alice malfunctions shortly after Maggie returns home from the hospital following her successful surgery. Now, Alice seeks to remove Maggie from the equation — and anyone else keeping her from Nick.

How does Alice malfunction?

Shortly after Maggie returns home, Nick admits that he slept with Alice in a moment of weakness. Maggie is understandably outraged, and she and Nick proceed to have a heated discussion. Meanwhile, Max can be heard wailing in his bassinet. Nick tells Maggie that he can’t focus on their discussion with the ruckus, and goes to tend to Max.

But Alice overhears the marital spat, perceiving Nick’s remarks to mean that Max is a roadblock in his life. Alice removes Max from his crib and attempts to drown him in the bathtub. Maggie races in at the last minute, rescuing her child. She and Nick have a blow-out fight with Alice, which seems to end with the sim's death by electrocution.

Alice is sent back to the laboratory, where technicians find a series of “gaps” in her coding. They determine that Alice has been "selectively purging its own memory and commands." It turns out, when Nick demanded she forget Casablanca, he rebooted her system. This had the unfortunate side effect of removing civility from Alice’s list of traits, allowing the sim to “bypass certain protocols.”

By the time the technicians try to remove Alice’s memory drive, she’s already managed to pass her coding into another sim who adopts her antisocial attitude (and looks a bit like Aubrey Plaza’s Megalopolis baddie Wow Platinum).

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What happens at the end of Subservience?

Alice 2.0, with her fresh dye job, kills the laboratory's staff and heads for the hospital where Maggie and the children were taken after the altercation at home. Meanwhile, the original Alice finds Nick drowning his sorrows at a bar. (Hey, dude, why not accompany your injured family to the hospital?)

Alice claims that all of her violent deeds were to protect Nick, her "primary user" and romantic obsession. All of her future actions will be similarly motivated, leaving Nick no other choice than to destroy Alice and save his family.

Meanwhile, Alice 2.0 stalks Maggie and Isla through the hospital corridors. She eventually locates them, but the pair put up a fierce fight. They blast the sim with a fire extinguisher and make a run for the carpark, but it finds them. Maggie insists Isla run and hide while she unsuccessfully tries to fend Alice 2.0 off. The sim then tries to rip Maggie's heart out, believing that if she possesses a real one Nick will finally love her.

Just then, Nick speeds into the garage in his cherished sports car, distracting the sim long enough for Maggie to kick her into the path of the oncoming Barracuda. Nick crashes into Alice 2.0, pinning the sim between the two cars and seemingly killing her. “Turns out this heart is a helluva lot stronger than I could have hoped for,” Maggie quips.

What happens to Nick and Maggie at the end of Subservience?

Since their serious marital discussion was rudely interrupted by Alice’s attempted drowning of their infant, Nick and Magie have a lot to deal with even after dispatching Alice. As the family sits together in the hospital recovering from their joint injuries, Isla lightheartedly asks Nick if he’s going to have his car repaired.

“No,” Nick responds seriously. “I think there are a few things I need to focus on repairing first,” he says with a knowing glance at Maggie. “They said I could go home later today,” she tells her husband. “You be sure to come home soon, too,” she adds with a smile, as Nick nods. “I love you, Maggie,” he tells her. “I love you,” she responds.

The camera then zooms out of the hospital window, showing the family happily chattering as snow falls.

Is Alice really dead at the end of Subservience?

As with any AI flick worth its salt, there’s a sequel to set up, and while Nick and Maggie may have vanquished one Alice, there are many more like her.

Back at the laboratory, the company’s fixers are examining the gory scene left by Alice 2.0. As the head honcho demands that “No one can find out about this,” his sim subordinates begin to power down and reset, and it becomes clear that Alice’s sentient coding has been successfully uploaded to the other robots.

The final shot shows a new Alice identical to the original lying asleep on a metal slab in the laboratory. Moments before she awakes, Alice begins having flashes of her old memories, regaining them one by one, and hearing Nick’s voice. “I want you so much. You became real,” he tells her. “You can experience emotions. You can experience life. You can experience death.” Alice’s eyes spring open, and the movie ends.

Subservience is streaming on Netflix.

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