What Happened to the Bird In 'Flow'? The Meaning-Heavy Ending, Explained

Spoiler alert: This article contains spoilers for the film Flow.

Every now and then, a film comes along that steals hearts and changes the way people view the world. The 2025 Oscars celebrated just such a film with Flow, a SIDESHOW and Janus Films production that earned the big win for Best Animated Feature Film.

The movie, marking the first Oscar win for a Latvian film, shows the story of several animals as they navigate community, peril, and the need to rely on one another. It explores concepts like self-sacrifice, toxicity, and altruism. But what on earth happened to the secretarybird in the end? Here's what we know about the film's ending and the deep meaning that people have found in the film.

The world at the heart of Flow is a perplexing and complex one. The film follows a black cat with yellow eyes, and he encounters other animals along the way, including a capybara, a lemur, a dog, and a secretarybird.

Water levels in the Flow world rise unexpectedly, forcing the animals to cope with a rapidly changing life and unexpected perils. As they travel the suddenly flooded world, they encounter challenges and other animals, navigating these instances with their own little community as it interacts with other, larger communities.

One of those outside communities is a flock of secretarybirds. One secretarybird, who appears to be the leader, fights to protect the cat's life and is injured in the process.

From there, he travels with the unlikely little group and serves as their protector. Later in the film, a storm arrives. Unexpectedly, the secretarybird, long flightless from the injury it sustained before, takes flight. The cat is washed onto land by the storm, and there it encounters the secretarybird. Together, the two are lifted into the air by a cosmic force. The bird floats up into a light, while the cat descends back to the ground.

What does it mean? The answer depends on who you ask.

To many, the story of Flow is about how we create community, and how we learn to rely on one another and serve roles in that community. Sometimes, we have to sacrifice ourselves for the greater good of the community. Sometimes, we have to be the protector. Sometimes, we have to be the protected.

Overall is a sense of a communal journey through life, representative of the challenges we face in our own lives.

The bird's ending could be seen as the bird being given rest and peace after serving its role in the community, and many have chosen to interpret the ending that way. Others see it as more spiritual, representing an eternal reward for being altruistic.

But whatever you might think about how to interpret the ending, the internet is full of people sharing those feelings and others about the emotional film.

On TikTok, one user posted a video of herself weeping "24 hours" after watching it. @xo.jennyxx called the film, "one of the most beautiful, haunting, and emotional movies I’ve ever seen — no words, just pure storytelling through animation."

In her comments, other people agreed, adding how deeply they had been touched by the film.

The film's heavy imagery and community-focused messaging is somewhat controversial, with some people concerned that it encourages people to sacrifice their own happiness for the happiness of others.

But the majority of the internet seems to be in love with the animals who tell their story of building a family, navigating challenges, and moving through difficult changes the same way humans are forced to.