A middle-aged Chinese immigrant doing her taxes discovers she can access the skills and memories of her alternate selves across infinite universes. It sounds like a setup for a superhero movie. Instead, it becomes one of the most profound explorations of nihilism, meaning, and love in recent cinema - and its answer to the void resonates deeply with pantheism.
Everything Everywhere All at Once won seven Academy Awards in 2023, including Best Picture. But beyond the accolades, it's a film that takes the biggest questions seriously: Does anything matter? How do we find meaning in an indifferent universe? What do we do when we've seen too much?
Note: This article discusses major plot points. If you haven't seen the film, it's worth experiencing fresh.
The Setup: Infinite Possibilities
Evelyn Wang (Michelle Yeoh) runs a struggling laundromat, has a strained relationship with her daughter Joy, and faces an IRS audit. Her life feels small, disappointing, full of paths not taken.
Then she discovers the multiverse - infinite parallel universes where every choice spawned a different reality. In one universe, she's a movie star. In another, a chef. In another, she has hot dogs for fingers. Every possibility exists somewhere.
This premise could be played for pure spectacle. Instead, the Daniels (directors Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert) use it to ask: if everything is possible somewhere, does anything matter here?
Jobu Tupaki: The Nihilist Villain
The film's antagonist is Jobu Tupaki - a version of Joy who was pushed too hard by her mother to explore the multiverse. She experienced everything, all at once. Every possibility, every outcome, every version of herself.
And it broke her.
Having seen everything, Jobu concluded that nothing matters. She created the "everything bagel" - a black hole of infinite density containing everything and therefore meaning nothing. She wants to destroy herself, to end the overwhelming meaninglessness of infinite existence.
"Every new experience I have just reminds me that nothing matters. I've seen too much. I've experienced too much. Nothing surprises me anymore."
This is nihilism taken to its logical extreme. If every choice leads to every outcome somewhere, then choices don't matter. If you exist in infinite forms, then no particular form is special. If everything is possible, nothing is meaningful.
Jobu isn't evil in the traditional sense. She's in pain. She's seen the truth about the universe - its vastness, its indifference, its overwhelming multiplicity - and she can't bear it.
The Nihilist Challenge
The film takes nihilism seriously. It doesn't dismiss Jobu's perspective as simply wrong. In a sense, she's right: the universe is vast beyond comprehension, human life is cosmically insignificant, and there's no external source of meaning waiting to be discovered.
This is the challenge pantheism also faces. If there's no personal God arranging things for our benefit, if we're just temporary patterns in an indifferent cosmos, why does anything matter?
The film's genius is that it doesn't offer easy answers. It sits with the void. It lets us feel the weight of meaninglessness. And then it offers something else - not a refutation of nihilism, but a response to it.
Evelyn's Journey
As Evelyn gains the ability to access her alternate selves, she initially uses it for combat - downloading kung fu skills, acrobatic abilities, whatever she needs to fight. But the real journey is internal.
She sees all the lives she could have lived. The movie star. The chef. The versions of herself that seem more successful, more fulfilled, more impressive. And she has to confront the life she actually chose - the struggling laundromat, the difficult marriage, the daughter she doesn't understand.
The temptation is to escape into those other lives, to abandon this disappointing reality for something better. But that's just another form of nihilism - treating this life as worthless because other possibilities exist.
The Answer: Radical Presence
The film's response to nihilism isn't an argument. It's a choice.
Yes, everything is possible somewhere. Yes, the universe is vast and indifferent. Yes, there's no cosmic meaning written into reality. And yet - we can choose to be here, fully present, caring about this particular life with these particular people.
"When I choose to see the good side of things, I'm not being naive. It is strategic and necessary. It's how I've learned to survive through everything."
Evelyn doesn't defeat Jobu with violence. She defeats nihilism with love - specifically, with the choice to love this daughter, in this universe, despite everything. Not because the universe demands it, but because she chooses it.
This is profoundly pantheist. Pantheism doesn't claim the universe was designed for human happiness or that meaning is built into reality. It simply recognizes that we're part of the universe, that connection is real, and that we can choose to find the sacred in what actually exists.
The Googly Eyes
One of the film's most memorable images is Evelyn putting googly eyes on everything - rocks, papers, her own forehead. It's absurd. It's silly. And it's the film's answer to the void.
If nothing has inherent meaning, we can give it meaning. If the universe is absurd, we can embrace the absurdity. If existence is strange and overwhelming, we can respond with playfulness rather than despair.
The googly eyes transform objects into faces, into beings that seem to look back at us. It's a small act of connection, of seeing life where there was just stuff. It's ridiculous - and that's the point. Meaning doesn't have to be grand or serious. It can be as simple as choosing to see something differently.
The Hot Dog Fingers Universe
In one universe, humans evolved with hot dogs for fingers. It's the film's most absurd reality - and also one of its most moving.
In this universe, Evelyn and her husband Waymond never married. They meet as strangers, unable to hold hands or touch normally. And yet they find connection - learning to express love through their feet, through presence, through simply being together.
The scene is simultaneously hilarious and heartbreaking. It shows that connection is possible in any circumstances, no matter how absurd. Love doesn't require perfect conditions. It requires choice.
This is what pantheism offers: not a perfect universe designed for our happiness, but a universe where connection is possible, where meaning can be created, where love is real even amid absurdity.
Waymond's Philosophy
Waymond, Evelyn's husband, might be the film's secret hero. He's gentle, kind, seemingly weak - everything Evelyn sometimes wishes he wasn't. But his approach to life turns out to be the answer.
"The only thing I do know is that we have to be kind. Please, be kind. Especially when we don't know what's going on."
Waymond doesn't fight the chaos. He doesn't try to control or dominate. He responds to confusion with kindness, to conflict with gentleness. And in a multiverse of infinite violence and possibility, this turns out to be the most powerful response.
His philosophy isn't naive. He knows the world is hard. He knows things don't always work out. But he chooses kindness anyway - not because it's guaranteed to succeed, but because it's how he wants to move through existence.
Mother and Daughter
At its heart, the film is about the relationship between Evelyn and Joy. Across infinite universes, in every possible configuration, they keep finding each other - and hurting each other.
Joy feels unseen by her mother. Evelyn feels disappointed in her daughter. They're trapped in patterns of expectation and resentment that seem impossible to break.
The multiverse becomes a metaphor for all the ways we imagine our relationships could be different. If only my mother had supported me more. If only my daughter had made different choices. If only we were different people.
But the film's answer is: this is the mother you have. This is the daughter you have. This is the relationship that exists. You can spend eternity imagining alternatives, or you can be present to what's actually here.
The Ending: Choosing This
In the climax, Evelyn has the chance to follow Joy into the everything bagel - to embrace nihilism, to end the pain of existence. Instead, she chooses to stay. To be present. To love her daughter in this universe, with all its disappointments and limitations.
She doesn't solve the problem of meaninglessness. She doesn't prove that the universe has inherent purpose. She simply chooses to care anyway.
"I know you're tired. I know you've been through so much. But I'm here. I'm here because I choose to be here."
This is the pantheist response to nihilism. We don't claim the universe was made for us. We don't pretend suffering has a hidden purpose. We simply recognize that we're here, that connection is possible, and that choosing to engage fully with existence is better than retreating into the void.
What the Film Gets Right
Everything Everywhere All at Once succeeds because it takes both sides seriously. It doesn't dismiss nihilism as edgy teenage philosophy. It shows why someone might conclude that nothing matters - and it shows why that conclusion, while understandable, isn't the only option.
The film's answer isn't intellectual. It's not an argument that defeats nihilism through logic. It's a demonstration that meaning can be created through choice, through presence, through love.
For pantheists, this resonates deeply. We don't believe meaning is handed down from above. We believe it emerges from engagement with reality - from connection, from wonder, from choosing to see the sacred in what actually exists.
The Mundane as Sacred
The film begins and ends with taxes. Laundry. The ordinary, unglamorous stuff of daily life. And that's the point.
Evelyn could escape into infinite adventures across the multiverse. Instead, she returns to the laundromat, to the IRS audit, to the difficult conversations with her daughter. Because that's where her actual life is. That's where meaning can actually be made.
Pantheism makes the same move. The sacred isn't somewhere else - in heaven, in enlightenment, in some transcendent realm. The sacred is here, in the ordinary, in the mundane details of existence. Doing laundry can be as sacred as meditation. Taxes can be as meaningful as prayer. It depends on how you engage with them.
A Film for Our Time
We live in an age of overwhelming information, infinite options, constant awareness of all the lives we're not living. Social media shows us everyone else's highlight reels. The news shows us everything wrong with the world. It's easy to feel that nothing we do matters, that our small lives are insignificant against the vastness of everything.
Everything Everywhere All at Once speaks directly to this condition. It says: yes, everything is overwhelming. Yes, infinite possibilities exist. And yet - this moment, this relationship, this choice - it matters because you're here, making it matter.
That's not a refutation of nihilism. It's a response to it. And it's the same response pantheism offers: the universe may be vast and indifferent, but you're part of it, and your engagement with existence is real.
Watch Everything Everywhere All at Once when you're feeling overwhelmed by possibility, paralyzed by meaninglessness, or disconnected from the people you love.
It won't solve your problems. But it might remind you that choosing to be present, choosing to be kind, choosing to love - these are the only answers that matter.
