'Overlord' Spoilers, Ending Explained: How It Sets Up a Nazi Zombie Sequel
What's next for Private Boyce and the rest of his squad?
by Corey PlanteWhat hope does a ragtag group of American soldiers have against a horde of Nazi zombies? And will we get a sequel that discusses how those zombies might have affected the outcome of World War II? The answers lie in the ending to Overlord a new R-rated movie from J.J. Abram’s Bad Robot studio.
Full spoilers follow for the Overlord ending follow.
When Overlord begins, the task at hand is abundantly clear: Private Boyce (Jovan Adepo) and his squad need to parachute behind enemy lines into Nazi-occupied France and disable a communications tower to help the invasion of Normandy the next morning. (Yes, it’s the night before D-Day.)
But things get complicated by the discovery of a laboratory where a zombie serum is being developed. It can turn almost anyone into a superpowered rage monster, and it quickly becomes clear that Boyce and his squad need to take out this additional threat before it’s too late.
So what happens in the end?
American soldiers to their dang job is what happens, and tons of them die in the process. Unsurprisingly, Overlord remains a testament to the perseverance of American soldiers in WWII. Even when faced with insurmountable odds like crazy powerful zombies.
Jovan Adepo's Private Boyce runs away from the final explosion.
Late in the movie, it’s essentially up to Private Boyce and Corporal Ford (Wyatt Russell) to plant the explosive that’ll take down the facility, but when a Nazi officer injects himself with the zombie serum, he becomes the big bad they have to get through. A gravely injured Ford has no choice but to inject himself too and blow the entire place to hell, killing himself and burying the facility and all the zombies inside it.
The final few scenes of Overlord detail the aftermath of D-Day. Boyce and his comrades recuperate and rejoin the Allied Forces to continue the war effort. With the zombie threat buried, the rest is quite literally history as Allies Forces liberate France, retake Europe, and eventually corner Hitler in Germany.
“They just try to fit in with the new company they’re assigned to,” Overlord star Jovan Adepo told Inverse ahead of release when asked about what’s next for the surviving characters. “They try to take Hitler down!”
Boyce and Rosenfeld are two of the very few survivors in 'Overlord'.
“I like to think that Boyce has matured more into his life as a soldier after all this,” Adepo said. “He’ll try to fit in with his new band of mates and eventually try to get back home.”
For much of Overlord, Boyce is labeled as a pacifist too weak for the violence of war. But when faced with the zombie threat and the impending annihilation it would mean for humanity, he steps up an gets the job done.
So when we last leave Boyce at the end of Overlord, he seems like a changed man, finally hardened into the efficient soldier that the war effort truly needs.
And who knows, maybe some of those zombies don’t stay buried? Overlord might not be the end of this story.
Overlord hits theaters on wide release on Friday, November 9, 2018.
