How Does ‘They Cloned Tyrone’ End?

When glancing at the Netflix sci-fi film library, you tend to be served up titles in the vein of Atlas or the Rebel Moon films. In other words, one is mostly better off not taking a glance at the Netflix sci-fi film library.

An exception to this—and it’s a mighty fine exception—is Juel Taylor’s They Cloned Tyrone, the pulpy, intelligent genre exercise that serves up biting social commentary and delightfully entertaining performances from the likes of John Boyega, Teyonah Parris, and Jamie Foxx. A year later, it’s one of Netflix’s finest original films.

So, what’s the deal with They Cloned Tyrone‘s happy but also twisty ending?

How does They Cloned Tyrone end?

Shortly after Fontaine (Boyega) uncovers the depth of the shadow government’s plot—spearheaded by the original Fontaine, who the protagonist is a clone of—of whitewashing Black people into white people (an act driven by the original Fontaine’s belief that assimilation is better than annihilation), Fontaine manages to trick another one of the clones, Chester, into shooting the original Fontaine in the head. Elsewhere, Yo-Yo (Parris) and Slick Charles (Foxx) manage to eliminate Nixon, who was overseeing the Glen division of the project (the Glen being the neighborhood that Fontaine, Yo-Yo, and Slick Charles all live in).

After rescuing all the clones and subsequently exposing the shadow government’s plot to the rest of the world, the trio vow to shut down down as many of these operations across the country as possible, starting with Memphis. Elsewhere, an Angeleno man named Tyrone watches the news as the story out of the Glen breaks, and his friends notice that he and Fontaine look exactly alike.

And so ends Juel Taylor’s bitingly brilliant examination of systemic racism, the power of identity, and its capacity as both a source of pride and a point of struggle for those who are othered by society.

They Cloned Tyrone is available to stream on Netflix.