Movie Ending Explained
Fast forward 12 months. Jump Facilities have been created around the world to send the military to fight the alien threat of white spikes.
When governments run out of soldiers to send, the world holds a civilian call. As the survival rate of summoners is less than 20%, protests are started around the world to counter this, to no avail.
Next to be drafted is Dan Forester, a science teacher tasked with stopping the alien threat, whatever it may be.
Who are the people sent forward in time?
It turns out that the majority of people who are projected forward are over 40 years old. In order for time jumps to occur, those present must be dead during the jump. Otherwise, it may lead to a paradox.
This explains why these young people are thrown back to 2051 to save the future. It turns out that they were not born in this timeline yet, no paradox.
According to those responsible, humanity succeeded in opening the wormhole in 2051, which closed this period. A jump link works like a river, time flows between two points. Soldiers can jump back and forth between these two timelines, but not beyond.
Who is Commander Romeo?
When Dan and the gang arrive in 2051, they are immediately bombarded with instructions from Commander Romeo. He is in charge of operations during this period.
As we soon learn, he is actually a full-grown Muri. He is a brilliant scholar and talks about Dan leaving when he was 12 years old. He leads the army and resistance forces. He brought Dan with a specific purpose - to bring toxin therapy back to our times.
What's in Romeo's toxin?
The toxin that Romeo eventually concocts and sends back with Dan also includes Chinese volcanic ash. It turns out that he flew to Russia in 946 during the Millennium Eruption.
This volcano is located between China and Korea, and the explosion was so violent that it blew ash as far north as Russia. This means aliens were here before that eruption.
Where did the aliens come from?
When did they arrive?
It's safe to assume that aliens have been here for a long time. Calculations would probably place them before 943, when the volcano erupted. It is possible that these aliens were caught in a volcanic explosion and fell under the ice, where they froze to death. Why they came to Earth is still a matter of debate.
The aliens themselves are located in Russia, where the first attack began. The group reaches the glacier and uses charges to reveal a crack in the ground, which leads to an ice cave inside a frozen ship.
How are aliens stopped?
Dan leads his team underground and into an ice cave. They refuse to send the photos and give them to the UN because it would be a "nightmare" and "too long" to get them. (This is the same UN, as you will recall, that in less than a year was setting up jump-off facilities and mobilizing troops around the world)
Anyway, Dan and co. raise your head and decide to commit genocide against these creatures. The alien travelers are frozen in ice, long dead. Their cargo contains the embryos of White spikes. Dan quickly realizes that they are planet-cleansing weapons and must be stopped.
Dan and the gang blow up the ship, take out all the White Spikes, and head back home to get on with their lives.
Were the White Spikes really the enemy?
An interesting presentation for all of you. White spikes are not out to destroy everything, they just want to live.
Near the end, we learn that these White Spikes are just "cargo," potentially traveling to another planet to breed and live on. We know nothing more about this species than what we have to go on here.
Flying over Puerto Rico in the middle of the film, we see these creatures jumping in packs, blissfully unaware of the helicopter flying overhead. At this time, Romeo says that these creatures are simply "hungry". This also explains why they hunt people, they are hungry and just want to eat.
Lately, we're told these creatures are cargo, but Dan quickly assumes they're dangerous and should be killed. It's clear that living things were never meant to be transported to Earth, while he committed genocide.
Maybe they were going to another planet that could better accommodate these creatures? Maybe they were disappearing in their own world? I guess we'll never know until Dan and his team kill them all.