‘Self Reliance’ Ending Explained: Jake Johnson Explains That Ambiguous Ending

Self Reliance on Hulu is the kind of movie that will start arguments. Why? Because there’s not one definitive way to interpret the Self Reliance ending. That’s what makes it fun!

Written, directed, and starring Jake Johnson, Self Reliance follows the story of a guy named Tommy (Johnson), who is selected for an unusual dark web reality series. Johnson keeps the audience guessing the entire time: Is this reality series real? Or is it all in Tommy’s head?

That was, Johnson said in a recent interview with Decider, the goal. “I wanted both [possible endings] to work 100 percent,” Johnson said. That said, there’s only one ending in the end. Read on for a full breakdown of the Self Reliance plot summary and the Self Reliance ending explained, including whether the game was real, according to Johnson himself.

Self Reliance plot summary:

Tommy Walcott (Johnson) is a floundering middle-aged man who lives with his mother and was recently dumped by his longtime girlfriend. He often stands outside her front door, but can’t get up the courage to knock. One day, Tommy is approached by comedian Andy Samberg (played by Andy Samberg) in a limo. Andy tells Tommy he’s been selected to participate in a dark web game show, in which he will be hunted by trained assassins. Tommy, desperate to escape his depressing life, decides to hear more.

Andy escorts Tommy to a warehouse, where Tommy meets two mysterious, accented men who explain the rules of the game: There will be hunters trying to kill him for the next 30 days. If Tommy survives the 30 days, he will win $1 million. The men assure Tommy he has a good chance of surviving: The hunters will be all over the world, and may not even come to Los Angeles. Tommy will be filmed the entire time with “sneaky” production assistants who will tail him, and film him with hidden cameras and microphones. Tommy mentions he’s worried the people around him might get hurt, and the men tell him the hunters will only attack if Tommy is alone. (Or, at least, alone in the sense that no one else is within striking distance of him.)

This is, in Tommy’s mind, a loophole: If he’s never alone for the next 30 days, he’ll never be killed. He agrees to the play the game. Tommy tells his family—his mom, his two sisters (Mary Holland and Emily Hampshire), and his sister’s husband—about the game, but they don’t believe him. Apparently, this is not the first time Tommy has made up an outrageous story to cope with feelings of loneliness. When Tommy’s dad abandoned the family after a night playing video games with Tommy, he began telling his classmates at school he was moving to Japan to become a samurai with his father. He also once told everyone to call him Michael Jackson. They believe he is simply delusional and upset that his ex-girlfriend has a new baby.

Tommy posts a Craigslist ad in an attempt to find more people who are also playing the game. He finds what he believes to be a hidden camera in his house. While staying with his brother-in-law, Tommy sees (or thinks he sees) a man outside with a gun. His brother-in-law kicks him out for accosting him in the bathroom, so Tommy approaches a nearby homeless man, James (played by I Think You Should Leave‘s Biff Wiff), and pays him to follow him around at all times.

Things go well with James for a while, even though Tommy gets fired from his job (presumably for bringing a homeless man to work with him) and therefore kicked out of his house (his mom’s condition for letting him live there was he needed to have a job). But then James fails to show up one night, and Tommy is attacked by a man dressed like Michael Jackson from the music video “Beat It.”

Tommy meets up with a woman named Maddy (Anna Kendrick), who saw his Craigslist ad, and says she is also playing the game. Tommy and Maddy decided to team up and spend every second of every day together, so they could both win the game. This goes well for a while, and it seems like there might be a spark between Tommy and Maddy. With Maddy’s encouragement, Tommy confronts his ex-girlfriend (Natalie Morales), who tells him she left him because she wanted someone who was more invested in their life. Closure!

There is one weird moment where Tommy wakes up in the middle of the night by that guy from Stranger Things (Eduardo Franco), who claims to be one of the “ninja” production assistants. The PA tells Tommy he’s a fan favorite, and the assistants want to help him, but that he shouldn’t trust Maddy. Huh! Maybe this explains why Maddy is so reluctant to meet with another game contestant who finds Tommy’s Craigslist ad.

This new contestant (played by GaTa) claims that the name of the game show is “Delusions of Grandeur” and that it’s a comedy that mocks people who are struggling with self-doubt. Maddy is freaked by this interaction and tells Tommy she needs space. The next night, Tommy is once again visited by the ninja PA, who leads him to a limo. Inside the limo? It’s Tommy’s absent father (played by Christopher Lloyd). Dad tells Tommy he was escorted by television personality Wayne Brady on a private jet to talk to Tommy. Dad apologizes for leaving the way he did, and says he has a nice life in Ohio.

Tommy pays a visit to Maddy, who drops a bomb: She was never playing the game. She says she thought the Craigslist post was a joke, and that they were doing a weird, elaborate role-play. She apologizes because she now realizes that Tommy thinks the game is real. Back at home, Tommy’s family has hired a professional to stage an intervention on behalf of his mental health. Tommy escapes and runs off with James to a homeless encampment downtown. James informs Tommy his name is not, in fact James, but Walter. Tommy admits that sometimes his “brain makes stuff up.”

Self Reliance ending explained:

Tommy wakes up in the homeless camp alone. He gets another visit from the PA ninja, who tells him he needs to leave this area because the audience finds it depressing. He tells Tommy if he leaves the area and “finds a limo,” he’ll be taken to the show’s grand finale. Tommy follows a woman to a bus stop and has a conversation with one of the hunters: a man in a cowboy hat. It’s not clear if the woman at the bus stop can also see this man. Cowboy hat points out to Tommy that the entire game has been set up for Tommy, specifically. That’s why there have been so many references to Tommy’s past and his interests: Michael Jackson, westerns, video games, and Ellen Degeneres.

Tommy finds the limo, where he is once again greeted by Andy Samberg. Andy offers Tommy the chance to go home safely, but Tommy decides to see the game through to the end. Back at the warehouse, Tommy outruns a sumo wrestler and Sinbad (who were both mentioned by GaTa back at the bar), and a samurai (who was mentioned by Tommy’s sister at the beginning of the movie). Then Tommy is greeted by a crowd of all the people we’ve seen over the course of the film, who applaud Tommy and tell him he’s won the game. He’s awarded his $1 million in Danish krone, the currency of Greenland.

Tommy relays all of this news to his family and chastises them for not believing him. His family still seems not to believe him—especially given the fact that Tommy is not, in fact, a millionaire, given the twist about the currency—but are happy that he’s happy. But then it’s revealed that Wayne Brady is in the living room and that Tommy’s family can see him. So was everything real all along?

In the final shot of the film, Tommy goes with Walter to knock on Maddy’s door. Tommy tells Walter he wants to do this alone, and Walter says he’ll meet him at home. (Roommates!) After some hesitation, Tommy knocks, and with that, the movie ends.

Is the game show in Self Reliance real?

According to writer, director, and star Jake Johnson: Yes, the game show in Self Reliance is real. In an interview with Decider, Johnson said, “The way we’ve ended this movie, it seems very likely that it was real.”

That said, Johnson is perfectly fine with viewers who interpret the movie as the game show being all in Tommy’s head. “As the writer of it, I wanted both [possibilities] to work 100 percent,” he said. Wayne Brady’s cameo in the final scene seems to indicate that not only was Tommy telling the truth about this crazy game show, he was right. And Johnson says the cameo was added to provide a clear ending, after test audiences rejected multiple, more ambiguous endings.

“The ending of this movie really changes the viewing experience in a way that I didn’t expect,” Johnson said. “It’s probably just my lack of experience, but for me—and I know this seems naive—but it’s choose your own adventure. The ending doesn’t matter, the journey is what matters. But for audiences, those last ten minutes really matter. Andy [Samberg, who produced the film]’s big push was that it should end in a very clean way, that’s understandable.”

But Johnson knows that Brady cameo won’t convince everyone the game show was real—and, again, he’s fine with that.

“I had people say to me, ‘That Wayne Brady cameo doesn’t prove anything. You can pay anyone to do anything!’ I was like, ‘You’re dead right.’ The truth of the matter is, if you want to believe it’s not real, there’s enough to believe that it’s not real. I’ve also had somebody have a theory that Anna Kendrick’s character didn’t exist, and he was going to knock on somebody’s door. Great! I know that might not be the most satisfying answer, but I like the choose-your-own-adventure aspect of it.”