Utilizing plot devices like temporal shenanigans to serve up a critique of life, self-acceptance, and mortality isn’t too unique concept in sci-fi narratives anymore. In that context, Omni Loop is a simple story of a dying physicist trying her desperate best to grapple with her fate. What elevates the movie compared to other stories with a similar premise is the way it uses the concept as a means of providing clarity and understanding, building up relationship dynamics, and charting the transformation in the psyche of the characters. Additionally, Mary-Louise Parker and Ayo Edebiri do a remarkable job as the mentor-protégé duo trying to de-mystify the concept of time travel in order to get another shot at their lives, and it feels good to have female leads for a change in a movie like this. as it offers a new perspective. The only major drawback is probably the fact that the implementation of the complex sci-fi concepts comes on a bit too on the nose at times, which could have been handled far better if the makers had been a bit more reserved with information.
Spoilers Ahead
Why Did Paula Consult the Nanoscopic Man To Help Zoya?
The movie opens with a young Zoya Lowe finding a bottle of pills with her name written on it, and she hears a strange voice, which shares an inspirational message, making her feel hopeful for her future. The scene shifts to a decade forward in the present day, as a middle-aged Zoya, an accomplished physicist/writer, is counting her final days at the hospital. She is affected by the most bizarre conundrum ever ; Zoya has a black hole growing in her body. She is released from the hospital to spend what could be the last week of her life with her family—her loving husband Donald, their daughter Jayne, and her fiancé Morris. After spending six days taking a vacation with her family to the sea, meeting with publishers, and visiting her estranged mother in an old age home. Finally, on the seventh day, during Zoya’s 55th birthday party, she experiences a close encounter with death. Taking a moment for herself away from her family, Zoya takes a pill from the bottle and goes back to the first day once again, just as she was about to get discharged from the hospital. The same routine follows: one week later, Zoya takes a pill to return to the first day, and this continues over and over like a temporal loop without any change. Unlike the people around her, Zoya retains the memories of every cycle of the loop and gets incredibly frustrated after following the tedious routine hundreds of times. She is basically immortal in a sense, with those seven days at her disposal—but fixated on her monotonous life, this sort of immortality is of no use to her.
Finally, Zoya snaps and decides to break free from the cycle, and she stumbles across a young student who has been working on similar concepts relating to the the progression of time, which had kept Zoya invested through her promising academic career. Zoya wanted to use her research to find a way to modify the pills she has been taking—and use them to get more time, so she can escape the loop and live a longer life. After this chance meeting with Paula, she starts seeing a possibility of doing so, and in the next cycle, she goes to Paula to explain her situation. It doesn’t take Zoya much time to talk Paula into helping her, and even though Paula is unaware how she could be of help in a situation like this, she takes Zoya to her college lab. According to Zoya, the components of the pill are in a constant state of flux on a subatomic level, and hence, they cannot be studied by conventional means. Zoya decides to take the help of a nanoscopic man, a researcher who has been reduced to the subatomic level due to a failed experiment and has been shrinking ever since. However, even the Nanoscopic man isn’t able to help them discern the components or their workings, resulting in Zoya and Paula having to depend on theoretical research for the time being—and gradually, Zoya’s true motive behind analyzing and modifying the pill comes to surface.
Why Did Zoya Decide To Make Amends With Her Reality?
As Zoya finds Paula to be an ideal protégé, she gradually connects with her, and through their conversation, it is revealed that Zoya suffers from imposter syndrome, given how her academic career has been greatly influenced by this temporal hack using the pills. Zoya had obtained the pills a week after the death of her scientist father and regrets not being able to save the man whose inspiration was pivotal throughout her life. Despite having the potential to have a much more prosperous, prestigious career as a scientist, Zoya had taken a decision to settle down, which now, at this phase of her life, she regrets immensely, and she wants to use the pills to unlock the secrets of time travel so that she can go back in time and explore possibilities she hadn’t considered. Zoya’s estranged relationship with her mother is revealed to have been caused by her appreciation of Zoya’s batchmate Mark, who is a renowned scientist at present, and Zoya regrets not having a life with him, being limited to a life of her own choice. Despite being aware that Mark’s research might provide a solution to her problems, much to Paula’s surprise, she refuses to seek help from him.
Zoya and Paula’s research continues to hit a roadblock, and Zoya repeatedly returns to her on the first day, brings her up to speed about the situation, and resumes the research till the seventh day when she takes yet another pill to go back to the first day. Once again, this routine continues for an extensive period of time, to the point that Zoya starts doubting whether she is on the right track to begin with, and she contemplates going back to her family. She has been away from them through all these cycles, and it feels like a lifetime already. Paula, who has started feeling a bit dependent on Zoya and looks up to her as a mentor, feels betrayed at this sudden change in Zoya’s mind and shares her reason for readily accepting Zoya’s proposal of working together into the time travel situation. Paula blames herself for her parents’ death, which was caused by an unfortunate accident, and wants a chance at a do over as well. Zoya promises her she’ll pay Mark a visit in the next cycle.
During Omni Loop’s ending, Zoya goes to Mark’s place and, in his absence, meets with his son, Adam, who describes an estranged relationship with his father thanks to his workaholic tendencies taking away the majority of his time. Zoya is surprised to find Mark had kept her research with him, and learns that his life wasn’t as picture-perfect as she had imagined it to be when she realizes Mark had probably been infatuated with her. His accomplishments in academics and career weren’t carried forward to his personal life. This realization hits Zoya even more prominently when she realizes how much her own family values her after listening to their anguished cries over voicemail as they are anxious to find a missing Zoya. In remorse of prioritizing the false promise of a reality that remained distant forever, Zoya has forgotten the life she needed to cherish in this lifetime—and she breaks down in agony. In the next cycle, Zoya makes amends with her family and enjoys her seven days to the fullest amongst them. She takes her mother to visit the exhibit of the last greater one-horned rhino, and the creature has a deep significance, which we will discuss later on. Zoya meets Paula once again, but instead of asking her to research about the pills again, she gives the bottle to her, entrusting Paula to carry the research out on her own as she believes Paula will eventually crack the code. Zoya has accepted her reality and made peace with her life, and she wants Paula to have all the chances in her life to make the most out of it. Later, she even sends her Mark’s address so she can use his research for additional help.
Did Zoya Get A Second Chance In Her Life?
On her 55th birthday, Zoya experiences one major alteration in her reality before her physical affliction gets to her—her daughter, Zayna, surprises her with the news of her pregnancy. Incredibly grateful for the life she has had, Zoya takes the last moments to convey to her family her regrets and the love she has for them. Moments later, Zoya vanishes into the singularity, the black hole growing inside her, and seemingly becomes omnipresent—as she goes all the way back in time to when her younger self found the pills for the first time. Zoya’s father narrates the events to a young Zoya like an omniscient narrator, as the grown-up version of Zoya inspires her younger self by sharing motivating words with her, thereby creating a time paradox as she herself was responsible for everything that happened in her life.
As Omni Loop ends, the question remains as to how Zoya got the pills in the first place. Could it be that her father’s death was a catalyst of some sort, or that Zoya’s research leads Paula to create the pills in the future, which somehow, due to Zoya’s present omnipresent nature, found their way back to her younger self? The black hole existing in Zoya seems to have been caused by a side effect of her usage of the pills in the first place, and due to her entering the singularity at the end, Zoya is now present in every point in the timeline. Zoya had floated the concept of multiple realities in her conversation with Paula—that she remains unaware as to what happens in the timeline where she vanishes after taking the pill. The idea was not explored, as it was implied that in this reality time progresses in a linear way, but if Zoya’s assessment is true, then there are infinite realities where Zoya remained absent due to using the pills time and again. Even in the present reality, Zoya disappeared right in front of her family and has become a transcendental form of some sort. Aside from Zoya’s temporal shenanigans, there is a tragic symbolism that the Nanoscopic man and one-horned rhino—the last of their kind—share with each other. In the quantum realm, the nanoscopic man is forever alone, and Paula theorizes that one second in physical space implies an entire lifetime for the hapless researcher. The Nanoscopic man, much like the rhino, is one of his kind, and like Zoya, has all the time in the world, which only contributes to his misery. The rhino is also a metaphor for the inevitability of death, which contributes to Zoya’s acceptance of her fate at the end.
