Warning: This article contains spoilers for The Life of Chuck.Act 3 of The Life of Chuck involves a mysterious apocalypse that has an explanation, though it is not necessarily laid out explicitly over the course of the movie. The 2025 film is an adaptation of the Stephen King novella of the same name, which was originally published as part of the collection If It Bleeds in 2020. It was directed by Mike Flanagan (The Haunting of Hill House, Oculus, Midnight Mᴀss), who has previously brought two different King novels to the screen, namely the 2017 Netflix horror drama Gerald’s Game and the 2019 sequel to The Shining, Doctor Sleep.
The ending of The Life of Chuck is actually the beginning, because the story is told in three acts, going backward in time. Act 2, which follows Chuck Krantz (Tom Hiddleston) spontaneously dancing to the music of a street drummer, comes in the middle, followed by Act 1, which traces Chuck (Cody Flanagan, Benjamin Pajak, and Jacob Tremblay) through his childhood and adolescence. However, while Act 3 does feature Chuck on his deathbed, it largely follows high school teacher Marty Anderson (Chiwetel Ejiofor) and his ex-wife, nurse Felicia Gordon (Karen Gillan) attempting to physically and emotionally navigate an apocalyptic event.
The Apocalypse Doesn’t Actually Happen In The Life Of Chuck
Act 3 Features Several Major Clues
While the apocalyptic event in The Life of Chuck is harrowing, it does not technically take place in the universe of the Stephen King movie. However, that is not clear at first, as the characters’ experiences at first exhibit signs of being related to disasters related to climate change or bureaucratic breakdowns. This includes the Internet being disconnected, a sinkhole opening up in the street, California crumbling into the ocean, floods, fires and more.
However, one of the first clues that all is not as it seems comes with the arrival of a flurry of billboards and commercials thanking Chuck Krantz for 39 great years, which Marty ᴀssumes is a retirement announcement. However, long before the final scene of Act 3 shows Chuck on his deathbed, hinting at the explanation behind the apocalypse, Chuck’s presence becomes more and more eerie, including his glowing face spontaneously appearing in the windows of every house in Felicia’s neighborhood.
Act 3 of the movie is тιтled “Thanks, Chuck.”
While other elements of The Life of Chuck have a magical realist sensibility that muddies the waters somewhat, other clues that the apocalypse is not happening in real life include a scene where every heart monitor in Felicia’s hospital goes off at the same rate and the stars in the night sky winking out one by one. While these events hint that there is something else going on, the origin of the apocalypse is not explained until later in the movie.
Act 3 Takes Place Almost Entirely Inside Chuck’s Head
He Contains Mulтιтudes
It is not until Act 1 that the reason the apocalypse is happening is actually explained, though the explanation comes in an oblique way that draws subtextual connections between the events rather than specifically linking them. This explanation comes when young Chuck asks his English teacher Ms. Richards (Kate Siegel) about the Walt Whitman poem “Song of Myself,” excerpted below, which she read to the class on the last day of school before summer break. He specifically asks about the meaning of the line “I contain mulтιтudes,” which is also the тιтle of Act 1 in The Life of Chuck.
Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain mulтιтudes.)
In response to his question, Ms. Richards shares her philosophy about the mind as well as the world in general. She tells Chuck that containing mulтιтudes means that a person’s mind contains themselves, everyone they know, everyone they’ve seen, everywhere they’ve been, and everything they can imagine. She tells him that people’s worlds become more and more developed the longer they live, and in doing so, she finally lays out the groundwork that explains what was actually going on during Act 3 at the beginning of the movie.
As implied by Chuck’s face suddenly appearing everywhere in town, Chuck’s life and death are explicitly linked to the apocalypse in Act 3, which takes place almost entirely within Chuck’s internal world. The reason that the world around Marty and Felicia has been slowly crumbling is the fact that Chuck has been on life support for some time, leading to a steady degradation of his world. This is further underscored by a scene from the original Life of Chuck novella where Chuck’s brother-in-law shares a similar philosophy with his nephew at Chuck’s deathbed, though it was cut from the adaptation.
Which Characters From Act 3 Of The Life Of Chuck Are Real?
Several Appear As Real People In Acts 2 & 3
Because Chuck’s “mulтιтudes” also include things that he has only imagined, not every character shown in Act 3 has a direct analogue to Chuck’s real life, which is depicted in Acts 2 and 3. This roster includes characters such as Gus Wilfong (Matthew Lillard), who is Marty’s distraught neighbor who works a maintenance job for the city, and Bri (Rahul Kohli), who is Felicia’s coworker at the hospital. The same is true of several actors who play parents that have conferences with Marty, including David Dastmalchian (Late Night with the Devil) and Harvey Guillén (What We Do in the Shadows).
Rahul Kohli has worked with Mike Flanagan multiple times before The Life of Chuck, having previously appeared in projects including The Haunting of Bly Manor, Midnight Mᴀss, and The Fall of the House of Usher.
However, many major characters from Act 3 are slightly altered versions of people who Chuck encountered throughout his life. For instance, Marty is based on a teacher from his elementary school who had the classroom next to Ms. Richards’. He is only shown in a few sH๏τs, sitting at his desk and watching Chuck dance at the Fall Fling, but his image remained in Chuck’s mind until the end of his life. In addition to Marty’s profession being changed to high school, another alteration in Chuck’s internal world is that Marty lives in the house where Chuck grew up.
Similarly, Act 1 of The Life of Chuck reveals that Felicia is also present at the Fall Fling (either as Marty’s coworker, wife, or both) and that funeral home director Sam Yarbrough (Carl Lumbly) is actually the funeral director for Chuck’s grandfather Albie (Mark Hamill) after he dies toward the end of the movie. The reveal of the true explanation of the apocalypse is also hinted at in Act 2 when Chuck sees a skater girl (Violet McGraw) who has already appeared in Felicia’s neighborhood in Act 3.
