Us: What Does The Ending Really Mean?

4. The Tethered Symbolise Social Inequality

This all plays into the explanation - or maybe lack thereof - of how and why these doubles were created in the first place. Although it's detailed that they were created for the purposes of control, there's plenty of questions left unanswered: Who specifically was in charge? Why/when was the project abandoned? How does the "tethering" process work? How did they get access to those sick jumpsuits?

While there'll be plenty of people frustrated that the movie doesn't offer any in-universe answers to these questions, the ambiguity is purposefully maintained to support the idea that the Tethered are representative of any institutional or social inequality. Nobody knows for sure why the doubles were created, or how they persist (just how you can’t pinpoint any one origin for class inequality or racism) but just like those grand cultural issues, they’re still very real, and can't be ignored.

This is the great thing about the Untethered, as while I've viewed them under the lens of this class/privilege prism, they don't necessarily reflect one specific social group. Peele has mentioned that no matter what you identify with in the movie - whether it's class or race or anything else - the point is you’re still identifying with an "us", a group of some sort. And when you identify with an "us", that inherently creates a "them". The twist is all about further blurring distinctions between those two categories, and make you question your own role in creating these in-groups and out-groups.

These same sentiments were also echoed by the movie's composer, Michael Abels:

"To me, the doppelgangers represent the underprivileged. I feel like they are people who haven’t had opportunities. They could be any one of us. Except that we’re somehow the lucky ones and they aren’t. You are both terrified by the doppelgangers and you empathize with them"

So in the end, while the logic of the universe leaves a few loose threads to debate, it makes sense from an allegorical perspective. It’s not just about race or class or any whole number of social inequalities, but more about introspectively analysing your own failings, and learning to blame “us” instead of jumping to always blame “them”. It doesn't matter so much what/who you identify with, but more so acknowledging that there's an act of identification at all, and how solidarity with "us" turns to hatred and misunderstanding of "them". The twist about the Tethered - and Adelaide being the one who dragged Red underground - only underlines that even more.

As Peele puts it:

"Think about this as sort of the collective dark side of all of us and, that way, if you’re looking at the problems of the world and pointing your finger out, then ask yourself: 'What’s my part in it?'"