Over the years, Gerard Butler has cemented himself as a bonafide action star in Hollywood. From the high-stakes Has Fallen film series (2013–present) to disaster flicks like Geostorm (2017) and Greenland (2020), Butler has officially locked into his flight path as a go-to guy for adrenaline-fueled chaos.

One of his most recent hits, Plane (2023), has soared with audiences. In this high-altitude thrill ride, Butler plays Brodie Torrance, a commercial pilot who pulls out all the stops to protect his passengers. Beyond the plot’s sharp turns and sky-high tension, some creatively grounded action sequences make great use of the film’s aviation backdrop.

Below, we’re diving into the wild landing that is Plane‘s ending, including whether Torrance saves the day and if a potential sequel is on the horizon.

What is Plane about?

Lionsgate’s official synopsis of Plane promises a wild ride, going as far as to call it a “white-knuckle action movie.” The nail-biting story kicks off with pilot Brodie Torrance (Butler) making an emergency landing on a war-torn island after a lightning strike nearly takes out his plane — but the real trouble begins after they touchdown.

“When most of the passengers are taken hostage by dangerous rebels, the only person Torrance can count on for help is Louis Gaspare (Mike Colter), an accused murderer who was being transported by the FBI. In order to rescue the passengers, Torrance will need Gaspare’s help, and will learn there’s more to Gaspare than meets the eye,” the synopsis continues. 

The film was just as intense offscreen as it was onscreen, seeing as Butler revealed on Late Night With Seth Myer that he accidentally smeared phosphoric acid on his face during the shoot. Still, the Scottish actor thrives on this kind of gritty, high-stakes storytelling.

He previously told Screen Rant, “It’s like an everyday man in a very out of the ordinary … everyday people actually in a very out of the ordinary situation. And how do we as a people or as an individual deal with that situation? What is it going to pull out of us? What are the decisions that we have to make that will go wrong?”

Why does Brodie team up with Louis?

Once Louis reveals he’s a former military officer who was sentenced for a crime he committed as a teen, Brodie decides to remove his handcuffs.

Brodie briefly contacts the airline’s emergency hotline, but the operator doesn’t believe the flight crash-landed in hostile territory. Instead, he reaches out to his daughter Daniela (Haleigh Hekking), who helps relay crucial information about their whereabouts to David Scarsdale (Tony Goldwyn), a former Special Forces officer leading the rescue.

Scarsdale then bands together with airline owner Terry Hampton (Paul Ben-Victor) to organize a rescue mission involving a team led by Shellback (Remi Adeleke). Scarsdale is frustrated to learn Brodie was forced onto low-profile flights after a past incident in which he restrained an unruly passenger. But he’s even more enraged by Hampton’s admission that the airline pushed him to fly through dangerous weather to save money.

When local militia forces attack and cut off Brodie’s communications, he and Louis soon realize that warlord Datu Junmar (Evan Dane Taylor) and his squad have taken the passengers hostage and plan to transport them by boat for ransom. Louis soon trains Brodie on how to fight and use a weapon as they prepare to rescue the hostages before it’s too late.

What happens at the end of Plane?

Brodie and Louis join forces with Shellback and the mercenaries to free the hostages. But knowing rescue won’t arrive for another day, Brodie works quickly to repair the damaged plane. Louis warns that surviving in the jungle isn’t an option, so Brodie decides their best shot is to get airborne as soon as possible.

Junmar and his men are still hot on their trail, but luckily, the mercenaries hold them off long enough for Brodie to board the passengers and contact Scarsdale, who tells him to land on a nearby island where a rescue team awaits. As the plane takes off, Junmar makes one last attack, only to be killed by the landing gear as the aircraft climbs into the sky.

In the end, Brodie finds the rescue team and calls his daughter, relieved to be safe and looking forward to spending time with her. As for Louis, he stays behind to take down a rebel just as they try to fire a rifle-propelled grenade at the plane. He’s presumed alive after slipping into the jungle with the ransom money, choosing freedom over certain imprisonment.

Butler later revealed to Uproxx that he came up with the idea of Brodie flying the plane into Junmar himself, stating, “It was something I had pitched to everybody.”

He continued, “I love being able to put into big ideas, the small ideas, and think of them from an actor’s point of view. What are those magical moments? What are the challenges that we can put in? What are the surprising bonding moments, twists, and turns? But then the bigger moments, always, I’m all about that. You know, realize you can take it anywhere. I can take this anywhere! You make it as crazy or as weird, but then the challenge is, always, but how in that moment do you make it believable? Even if the audience is, oh, that’s crazy, but if they’re in it, they’re with you.”

Will there be a Plane sequel?

In February 2023, Deadline reported that Colter would reprise his role as Louis Gaspare in a sequel to Plane, aptly titled Ship. Butler isn’t expected to star, but he reportedly could make a cameo appearance.

As of March 2025, development on Ship has stalled. Speaking at Indiana Comic Con during a panel moderated by Collider‘s Maggie Lovitt, Colter provided an update:

“The status on that is that it was a thing that happened during the strike,” he said. “They were supposed to be following through on it [then the strike happened]. There’s things going on. Obviously, Gerard and his company that produce that, they own the rights to it. So that’s a question for them moving it forward, because I got things going on. I’m sure he’s got things going on too, he’s shooting stuff. But I’d love to do the sequel, but it’s kind of in their ball park right now. It’s another thing to pray for.”

Where can I watch Plane?

Plane is now streaming on Netflix.

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Warning: This article contains spoilers about Echo Valley.

How far would (or should) a mother go to protect her child?

That’s the question at the heart of Echo Valley, the new thriller starring Julianne Moore and Sydney Sweeney. On Apple TV+ beginning Friday, the film follows Kate (Moore), a mom grieving the recent loss of her wife, and Claire (Sweeney), Kate’s troubled daughter.

From start to finish, the film offers no easy answers about what constitutes a breaking point for a parent caring for their child. Kate loves Claire unconditionally, so much so that when Claire shows up crying and covered in blood, Kate jumps into action to dump the body of Claire’s boyfriend, Ryan (Edmund Donovan).

It seems perhaps rash or a bridge too far, even for a devoted mother, but Moore says it’s a result of the character’s unstable mental state at this point in her life. “I don’t think she’s thinking very far ahead,” Moore tells Entertainment Weekly. “It’s a one step at a time kind of thing, and she is at a very, very low point when we first meet her. She’s lost her partner, and she’s completely bereft.

“She’s under enormous economic pressure trying to keep this farm going, and she’s dealing with her daughter’s addiction,” she continues. “The one person she loves more than anything is this girl who’s struggling with drugs. When she comes to her and says, ‘I need help,’ her first instinct is, ‘Okay, well what do I do?’ Then it just gets out of hand. But we all struggle with that, certainly as parents. Were you helping somebody? But somebody not thinking something through makes for great drama.”

Claire tells Kate that she killed Ryan in a moment of self-defense during a fight, only for Kate to later discover that Claire manipulated her to dump the body of a kid who overdosed on drugs that Ryan sold him. Though one must wonder why the tarp-wrapped duct-taped body in Claire’s car doesn’t raise more questions.

“That’s really funny,” Moore says, chuckling. “That’s the production’s choice. That wasn’t me. It’s true; it’s rather suspicious. But she’s not being rational. Also, if I saw a dead body wrapped up, I don’t know that I would unwrap it. I’d be scared. And that’s the other thing, too. She’s scared.”

That fear turns into anger when she realizes that Claire has manipulated her into becoming an accomplice in another man’s death. “The betrayal is extreme,” Moore notes. “She’s shocked by it. But these women are very, very close, and they’re both exceptionally volatile. They both push things to extremes. And you certainly see that at the end, when you realize what Kate has been able to do.”

That extremity is particularly evident in a showdown between Kate and Claire in which Claire threatens to hurt Kate’s dog to force her mom to give her money. Kate then shields her dog with her own body. “Actors always like to have fun, extreme emotional stuff to do,” Moore notes. “There was a lot of enjoyment. We were able to push it really far. But the one element was that we needed to be very careful about was this dog. We could not scream around the dog because the dog doesn’t know that you’re pretending. Sydney and I know we’re pretending, so we can do it, but the dog doesn’t. So all those scenes where the dog was present, we weren’t actually yelling.”

By the end of the film, Kate must concoct her own elaborate manipulations. Ryan’s dealer/boss, Jackie (Domhnall Gleeson), uses Kate’s protectiveness to blackmail her into giving him more money. She feels utterly trapped until she devises a plan to frame Jackie for insurance fraud, arson, and homicide. It’s a shocking turn of events when her helpless submission to Jackie turns out to be a front for her masterful scheme.

Moore remembers being utterly delighted by that twist. “When I got the script, I was sick in bed and I was just like, ‘Okay, let me read a few things,'” she recalls. “So I’m like, ‘Okay, this is a family drama. It’s emotional. It was really well written. And I did not see that twist coming. I was absolutely thrilled. I laughed out loud. Don’t underestimate a middle-aged woman.”

With normalcy restored once more in the aftermath of their showdown and a barn fire, Kate hears a knock on the door one night — and opens it to see Claire once again standing on her stoop. Then, the film cuts to black.

So, will Kate forgive Claire and welcome her with open arms, or slam the door in her face? “That’s a question for the audience, isn’t it?” Moore posits. “That’s where the movie ends. The movie ends with, ‘And here’s a knock on the door.’ I know what my answer is, but a lot of people who’ve seen the movie have said different things.

“Some people say like, ‘Oh, absolutely, she’d let her in,’ or ‘I would let her in,'” Moore continues. “Others say, ‘Oh no, I wouldn’t open the door. I wouldn’t do that.’ It’s wonderful to see that it’s really open for discussion at the end of the film. It’s been inciting a lot of conversation, which is great.”

Moore is reluctant to share what she thinks Kate or even she herself would do. “I want you to wonder,” she says. “I want you to go, ‘What would I do?’ That’s what the movie asks.”

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The final silent looks between Kate and Claire are fairly inscrutable, and Moore notes that she and Sweeney were instructed to give a wide range of options in their acting choices. “I was given a lot of direction,” she says. “I did a lot of different things. A lot of the direction was to feel everything and to let a lot of choices cycle through my head.”

Moore, however, does finally relent and admit that her instinct would be to forgive Claire. “I would open the door and let her in,” she says. “A lot of people have different relationships to that kind of thing. But I feel like she’s forever and ever connected to this daughter.”