What does the bagel symbolize in Everything Everywhere All at Once?

The Important Symbol In Everything Everywhere All At Once You Might Have Missed

By Cameron Roy Hall/July 12, 2022 5:30 pm EST

Trying to adequately explain "Everything Everywhere All at Once" to someone who hasn't seen the film is a little bit like, well, it's not an exercise in futility per se, but it's a sure-fire way to have one's sanity cast in doubt. After all, every frame of A24's multiversal majesty could be taken out of context and somehow describe an entirely different picture. That being said, beneath the sentient rocks and the deadly usage of adult toys and hot dog fingers is a film about a family struggling to connect. Everything else? That's all metaphors and symbolism. Well, except for the hot dog fingers. I could've done without those. 

Some of the thematically relevant content was easy to spot, like how Evelyn Wang (Michelle Yeoh), who was deeply displeased with the trajectory of her life, spent a significant portion of the film trapped inside an IRS office where her business decisions were dispassionately dissected. Other parallels were harder to spot or tangled up in the intentionally absurd visual aesthetic that "Everything Everywhere All at Once" thrives upon. For anyone hoping for a modicum of clarity, a fan of the film shared their favorite symbol and laid out why it was so successful. 

The googly eye gag represents Evelyn's opposition to Jobu Tupaki

How Multiverses Work In Everything Everywhere All At Once

Before we get to the Everything Everywhere All At Once ending, we need to talk about how the multiverse was explained in the movie. Rather than multiple universes simply existing separate from one another, they are all connected and based on every option attached to every decision we make throughout our lives. For example, one of the first multiverse lives Evelyn experiences is one where she breaks up with Waymond before getting married to him, continues to live near home and becomes a famous actress instead. 

Evelyn’s access point to the multiverse is another version of Waymond, who briefly takes over his body in her life when he wants to communicate with her. As we learn later in the film, the Waymond who gets in contact with the Evelyn we follow throughout Everything Everywhere All At Once, is from a place called the “Alphaverse,” which found a way to reach the multiverse. They also invented technology that finds ways from one verse to the next and as Alphaverse Waymond teaches Evelyn, it’s often the wildest acts that allow the characters to verse-jump. Such as Evelyn having to confess her love to her IRS agent Deirdre in order to jump into another verse. 

Who Is Jobu Tapaki And What’s With Her Everything Bagel?

Evelyn is introduced to the multiverse by way of Alphaverse Waymond because he believes she is the one who can save the universe from the movie’s villain, Jobu Tapaki. Jobu Tapaki is the Alphaverse version of Evelyn’s daughter, Joy, who ended up verse-jumping so much that she is able to experience every multiverse all at once. This has made her impossibly powerful and so overwhelmed with the vastness of the universe that she has taken on a “nothing matters” opinion in the extreme, leading her to put the fate of the multiverse in jeopardy. 

Jobu Tapaki decides to use her immense powers to make the ultimate “everything bagel” where she places a ton of random things from the multiverse on top of a bagel. It creates an all-consuming black void that has the power to set off doomsday, and more importantly for her, destroy herself and put her out of the misery she’s feeling as Jobu Tapaki. 

What Happened At The End Of Everything Everywhere All At Once

In order to stop Jobu Tapaki from destroying the multiverse, Evelyn decides that she must become her equal in order to defeat her. And thus, Evelyn travels to a myriad number of universes, picking up skills from them all that allow her to be a great opponent to her daughter. With that, Evelyn comes to learn about Jobu Tapaki’s motivations and that her actions are the result of some of the problems the mother and daughter have been facing in multiple multiverses. Joy doesn't feel accepted or welcome in her family, and she then goes off the rails in an attempt to suck everyone else into her mood. 

Throughout the events of Everything Everywhere All At Once, instead of feeling hopelessness when she gets in touch with the multiverse, Evelyn taps into the importance of love and kindness in her life and how grateful she is, especially, to have her husband Waymond a part of it, despite being previously annoyed with his incessant need to put googly eyes on everything. In the epic final fight of the movie, Evelyn places a googly eye on her third eye, and fights everyone in the army against her by doing acts she knows will make them happy. This, in turn, helps her defeat this doomsday and mend things with her family and even tax inspector. In the end, despite the often meaninglessness and vastness of life, it’s love that can fight the evil that is hopelessness. It’s the perfect metaphor for life itself and how different perspectives on life can alter how dearly we hold our existence. 

Here’s Why Michelle Yeoh’s Evelyn Was “The One”

The last question that remains is how Evelyn, of all the people in the multiverse, was the right person to save it. The answer is revealed in the movie itself and it’s kind of beautiful. The other versions of Evelyn in other multiverses are often accomplished, distinct people who have chosen a specific calling. However, there’s a lot of untapped potential and missed paths for this Evelyn that allows for her to become the right match for Jobu Tapaki. 

The Evelyn we follow throughout Everything Everywhere All At Once has a lot in disarray and room for finding a gratefulness for her life. When she realizes all the different ways her life could go, and still finds herself fighting for her own life and happy to be within her body instead of one from the multiverse, she masters the conflict that causes Jobu Tapaki to create the Everything Bagel. 

Check out CinemaBlend's interviews with the Everything Everywhere All At Once cast and get ready for the other upcoming 2022 movies that are on the way next. 

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