Everything, Everywhere, Over and Over Again

     The movie Everything Everywhere All at Once does depict a hero's journey style narrative, yet it's hard to track and seems to cycle back on itself a lot. Each time Evelyn thinks she has things at least slightly figured out, something new comes in, and there's layers upon layers of unfamiliar scenarios. This movie represents how the Hero's Journey is nonlinear, it's a series of events that may have to be repeated because you don't get them right on the first try. It speaks to how a person's development requires not only the building of new ideas, but the willingness to deconstruct those ideas and be flexible when faced with something new.

    The earliest representation of repeated, cycled steps is with the Call to Adventure and its subsequent refusal. The first time she's called onto that adventure is when she's told to abandon her meeting to go meet with an alternate version of her husband. She goes to her meeting anyway, refusing the initial call, before curiosity overtakes her and she follows his steps, and enters the closet where she's called again asking for aid. She mostly ignores him, finding taxes to be more important. But that's not the end of it. After an incident in the tax office they're confronted by security, and during that sequence her husband (from the other universe) says "Come with me and live up to your potential, or just lie here." and Evelyn, despite the expected answer, responds with "I will just lie here." This sequence of interactions shows that the development of a character often doesn't start with just one call, but rather a systematic repetition of new conflicts.

    While not all the first, Evelyn crosses a lot of thresholds along her journey. The phase where she steps out of the familiar, and into something new is cycled over and over again, both literally and metaphorically. The first threshold overlaps with one of the calls to adventure, when the alternate version of her husband makes her verse jump to ask for her help. The second threshold would be placed around when they're being chased by Dierdre and Waymond explains the full mission, introducing her to the concept of the "Omniversial being of chaos with no real motives or desires." Lastly, the introduction to the everything bagel, and her mind fracturing, would be another representation of that step of the hero's journey. Just as she's figuring out and understanding the concept and application of verse jumping, she's suddenly set back to the beginning of her growth cycle.

    Another important and repeated phase of the journey was Apotheosis, the death and rebirth symbolizing a greater understanding of the world beyond the known. There are two prominent signs of Apotheosis. First of which being the office scene where she discovers the hidden vault due to verse jumping, and then proceeds to jump across more universes and protect her family. The second being in the scene with the bagel where her mind fractures across all universes. She discovers that there are no rules, and she can do whatever she wants wherever she wants. In both Apotheosis scenes she is attempting to save her family, specifically her daughter, Joy. This drives home the point that people will take risks to protect the people they love, and can learn and grow because of it.