‘Things Will Be Different’ Movie Ending Explained And Recap: Did Joe Break The Loop?

Time travel narratives pair really well with tropes involving second chances and emotional reconciliations—probably because, between the possibility of starting things anew and the reality of the inevitable, inescapable whims of fate—lies a sliver of hope, which makes for a really interesting premise. Michael Felker’s directorial debut, Things Will Be Different, is a taut, sleek sci-fi thriller that uses the complexities of time travel to explore dysfunctional relationship dynamics between siblings and proves itself to be a remarkable entry amidst dozens of similar ventures. While replicating the temporal shenanigans of Rian Johnson’s Looper, Felker uses atmospheric isolation and minimal use of characters to evoke a sense of dread, which works really well in this bare-bones, minimalistic sci-fi venture. 

Spoilers Ahead

What Is The Vise Grip?

Sibling duo, Joseph and Sidney, are on the run from the authorities after robbing two bags full of cash, and Joseph, who runs a bar, has been given an address by one of his mysterious clients to her house, where they can lay low for two weeks until the heat dies down. Sidney, who runs a pawn shop, needs to return to her six-year-old daughter, Stephanie, as soon as possible, and it was only to ensure a good future for her, that she had partaken in this troublesome trade. As the siblings reach the house, located on the outskirts of the town, it is revealed that the safehouse, which appears to be perpetually stuck in the 50s, is no ordinary place, as it can allow people to travel back in time, with the only caveat being they have to remain within a certain boundary located around the house. Joe has received a handbook from his mysterious client, following the directions of which he and Sidney arrive at an unspecified time in the past. 

With an unlimited food supply in the house, spending a couple of weeks here is not a major issue really, and a night before they are supposed to return to their time, Joe and Sid have a heart-to-heart conversation—and we learn a bit about the relationship between the brother-sister duo. The separation of their parents resulted in the siblings having a rough childhood; Joe grew up with their father while Sid was raised by their mother, and in the past, during a job gone wrong, Joseph bailed on Sidney, resulting in her getting imprisoned. A remorseful Joe considers this two-week time they have got together as a period to make amends with his sister and strengthen the bond they have between them, but Sid isn’t too bothered about the past and has accepted the incident as a learning experience. Their conversation drifts towards Joe’s mysterious benefactor, but to keep his client’s confidentiality intact, Joe doesn’t share her identity with Sid, although he states that his client knows Sid very well. 

The next day, after spending two weeks at the house, the sibling duo prepares to leave, only to see the door barricaded with a wooden plank with a command written on it that asks them to go to the mill adjacent to the house. Out of options, as they go inside the mill, they reach an underground church, where a rotting corpse is seen in front of the altar. The altar is shown to have inscriptions on it that detail a riddle about Vise Grip, which is later revealed to be the name of the temporal flow-controlling organization that commands the house and its vicinity. Sensing that they have found themselves in grave danger, Sid tries her desperate best to leave by running away from the house, only to realize any attempt to escape while being stranded in time will result in agonizing death as the moment she steps out of an unseen boundary around the house, Sid starts vomiting blood. 

What Favor Does The Vise Grip Need From The Duo?

Joe recognizes the corpse to be of his mysterious client and deduces that she lied about owning the house. Realizing that they have to comply with the unknown controllers of the place anyway to return to their time, they agree to follow the directions of the altar and attempt communication. A strange vault appears in front of them, and using the directions in the notebook, Joe is able to open it, which reveals a tape recorder inside, which is to be used as a means of communication with the controllers. After questioning them about their purpose behind venturing into the house, the controllers declare that the siblings will be wiped from existence by them, but Joe is quick to realize that the possible reason they still haven’t done so is because they need the siblings’ help in doing something they themselves are unable to do. Joe guesses correctly, as the controllers offer them a bargain of killing an intruder who has been rampantly using the house to move through time, and because the person remains unknown to them, they are not able to do anything about it. They offer Joe and Sid their freedom in exchange for taking down the intruder. Out of options, the duo agree to comply with their demands, and later Sid expresses her anger with Joe, whose decision led them to this crisis, and conveys that she will not forgive Joe if she isn’t able to reunite with her daughter. 

The siblings spend almost a year in wait of the supposed intruder, and within this period Sid has chalked up every possible theory about their situation and explanation for their predicament, while Joe has slipped further and further into despair, guilt, and hopelessness. He has even started treating the communication vault as a shrine and doesn’t let Sid venture near it too much. Sid’s theories range from one of their own future selves being the intruder to one of their parents being the conspirator behind their present misery. According to Sid’s research, the Vise Grip probably got a hold of the place during the 50s and installed their tech to use it as a gateway through the time stream—but the moment they arrived here and spent two weeks in the past, something changed in the present timeline, which resulted in an anomaly being created that remained undetected by the organization, and hence they are doomed to remain trapped. Joe is a simpleton who thinks this is such a torturous ordeal instigated by someone in power who likes to see their victims suffer. Tension arises between the siblings as the isolated, hopeless experience has taken a toll on their minds, and they are struggling to calm their nerves at this point. 

Who Was The Intruder?

Finally, one day the mysterious intruder approached the house, with face completely covered, Joe was able to spot the person and warned Sid just in time and a prolonged gunfight began between the intruder and the sibling duo kicked off. Eventually, the intruder manages to subdue Joe, and as Sid tries to approach them, the intruder plays an audio recording, which Sid recognizes to have been played by her mother during childhood. Sid gets grazed by a bullet while being disoriented by the recording, and as she is forced to retreat inside the house, she wonders whether the intruder is indeed a past version of her mother. 

Meanwhile, the intruder takes an injured Joe inside the church and forces him to communicate through the recorder in the vault. On the other hand, desperate to find her way out, Sid begins to batter the plank over the time travel door, only to see it appear time and again until the controllers attempt communication with her through another recorder in the vault. The controllers refuse to share what exactly the intruder is trying to do but assure Sidney that she isn’t her mother. By sending information through Joe, the intruder makes the controllers ask Sid to head towards the church to rescue her brother. Before leaving, the intruder reveals to Joe that they are doing this to take revenge upon the man who killed their family. 

After another gunfight, Sid and the intruder enter the house and get engaged in a scuffle, with Sid trying to unmask them to learn their true identity. On the other hand, Joe manages to free himself and rushes back towards the house to save his sister. Sid manages to unmask the intruder for a brief moment and realizes that she is a grown-up Stephanie, her daughter. Joe enters the house right at this point; by now Stephanie has masked herself again, and just as Joe shoots her, Sid lunges in front of him to save her daughter. Stephanie leaves through the door by demolishing the barrier, and as Sid breathes her last in her brother’s arms, she is unable to reveal the intruder’s identity to him. 

Was Joe Able to Break the Cycle?

A distraught Joe is summoned by the Vise Grip operators in a limbo-like space as they prepare to wipe him out for not being able to complete the mission. However, Joe desperately pleads with them to give him a final chance to make things right—kill the intruder and save his sister. He is certain that by changing a few crucial decisions he will be able to do so. The operators take pity on him and reluctantly agree to offer him a second chance, instructing him to remove the redundancy and join his sister in the past. The operators send Joe to the exact day when he and Sid met in a bar before venturing to the house. In private, the operators share their doubts about whether Joe will be able to break the cycle. 

In the past, the future version of Joe finds the past version of himself and kills him—thereby removing the redundancy—and takes his place at the bar while meeting with Sid, hoping to change things this time while hiding at the house so that he ends up killing the intruder and not his sister. However, as Sid arrives, we see a much, much older version of Joe, and unable to recognize him, Sid suspects foul play, seeing the bags of money with him. Older Joe reveals he has been doing this for a long, long time—and on none of the occasions was he able to save his sister. He takes Sid’s gun, which was pointed at him, and asks her to put him out of his misery and advises her to leave the money and flee with her daughter Stephanie. Sid probably recognizes her brother from the identical tattoos both the siblings had in their forearms, but accidentally pulls the trigger, which ends up killing Joe. Sid flees from the bar, leaving the bag, and Things Will Be Different ends by highlighting a portrait of the house hanging in the bar, the same exact shot that was shown in the opening scene of the movie. 

While Things Will Be Different’s ending might seem a bit confusing, it is the classic case of a time loop, the aforementioned cycle, which Joe wasn’t able to break. He went back in time, killed his past self, and joined his sister to spend the two weeks in the house, laying low from the authorities, but every time the result was the same, he ended up killing her while shooting the intruder. Joe aged in real time, and after multiple attempts, finally he became unrecognizable to his sister and realized his attempts were futile. Joe accepted death to put himself out of his misery and guilt, but on the last occasion, as he didn’t take Sid to the house, she was spared from getting entangled in the loop. Another major question that remains is: why was Stephanie using the house’s timeline gateway? It seems that in an alternate timeline, Sid was never able to return to her daughter, who eventually learned about the house and went after the chief controller who created the Vise Grip. Just like how Joe was trying to save his sister, Stephanie tried to save her mother as well and ended up in an inescapable loop. Noticeably, Stephanie and Joe’s mysterious client both shared a facial scar. Also, the fact remains that the client knew Sid very well, which indicates the possibility that unwittingly, Stephanie might have set things in motion that resulted in her separation with her mother, as under her advice, Joe and Sid entered the house in the first place. Of course this is mere speculation, which may or may not be true to the actual reality—which the director has left ambiguous to add to the mystery of the narrative.