What happens to the bird in Flow? Explained
The Latvian animated film Flow has earned high praise from critics and audiences alike. It has become a huge hit with the award season as well and has been nominated as Latvia's entry for the Best International Feature Film at the Academy Awards 2025.
The movie notably lacks dialogue, which sets it apart from other acclaimed animated movies of 2024. Some scenes of the film leave room for some speculation or are open to interpretation. One such scene brings the bird's fate into question.
Did the bird manage to survive in Flow?
Flow opens with a dark grey cat's existence threatened by other animals in a post-apocalyptic world where there is no sign of humans. However, its problems do not end there, as it soon faces yet another of nature's dangers, a flood that leaves its surroundings submerged.
To save its life, it gets aboard a sailboat that already has a capybara as an occupant. Soon, they are joined by a few other animals, which include an injured secretarybird.
Towards the movie's end, the cat and the secretarybird get caught up in a life-threatening storm. The cat swims ashore and climbs a pillar where it reunites with the secretarybird briefly before the two suddenly begin flying towards a portal of colorful lights.
The cat returns, but the bird does not. This could mean two things: one, the bird crossed over to the afterlife if the portal is to be considered a cosmic pathway, or two, the cat imagined reuniting with the bird after the storm as a way of dealing with its potential loss.
It has to be noted that the bird had been injured, which is why it joined the members of the sailboat in the first place. However, it started flying right after the storm, which possibly means that it had drowned in the storm and the cat imagined it flying into the portal.
How did the bird get injured in Flow?
The morning after the cat joins the capybara on the sailboat, it goes overboard while trying to avoid a secretarybird and begins sinking in the flood water. A whale comes to the cat's rescue, and then the same secretarybird puts it back on the boat, saving its life. This builds trust between the cat and the bird.
As the water level keeps on rising, the capybara then invites a ring-tailed lemur with its basket of trinkets on the boat. Later that day, when they get on shore, they are joined by the Labrador dog the cat had encountered before.
Soon, they encounter a flock of secretarybirds, which once again puts the cat's life at risk. It runs away. The secretarybird from before requests the leader of the flock to let the cat go. This lands it in a duel with the leader. The kind-hearted secretarybird gets injured in the duel and becomes a pariah as the flock abandons it.
The injury makes the bird incapable of flying. This leaves it no choice other than to join the crew of the sailboat. All other members of the crew survive in the end except the bird that had shown kindness towards the cat. Even the whale can be seen swimming around in the post-credits scene, which is a sign of its survival.
Flow is available for streaming on Max.
