The long-awaited prequel film to George Miller’s 2015 epic Mad Max: Fury Road has finally landed in theaters, to massive critical acclaim, despite its poor box office numbers. Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga is the fifth film in the growing Mad Max franchise, centering on the eponymous Imperator first played by Charlize Theron in Fury Road. In this prequel film, the role of Furiosa is expertly played by Anya Taylor-Joy, as she ravages against the marauding kidnappers commanded by Chris Hemsworth‘s Dementus. The film takes place roughly 15-20 years before Furiosa first encounters Max Rockatansky in the water-sparse badlands, and establishes a well fleshed-out backstory for Furiosa as the mysterious badass that we know and love.
If you haven’t yet seen the film, be sure to bookmark this page and come back after doing so, as we’ll be diving in to heavy spoiler territory. If you are one of the lucky few that has caught Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga on the big screen, you may be at a loss for words, still grasping to understand the bizarre and twisted ending of the film, which is largely left up to the viewer’s interpretation. Luckily, we’ve got you covered with a full explanation, breakdown, and analysis of the film. Without any further preamble, let’s dive into the plot synopsis and closing moments of Furiosa.
Furiosa’s Plot Explained
Like the other entries in the Mad Max film franchise, Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga takes place in Australia following an apocalyptic event that has thrown the world into abject chaos. While most of the island nation has been overrun with leather-clad raiders and demented performance artists, one aptly-named location, the Green Place of Many Mothers, is able to grow crops and provide fresh water to those who can survive the trek. A young Furiosa and her family have built fruitful lives for themselves within the Green Place, living in harmony until a group of pillagers locate and raid the untouched community. Furiosa is taken by one of the bikers, and brought to his commanding warlord Dementus as a prize.
Furiosa’s mother Mary fights back against the raiders, killing several of them in the process, and eventually tracks down their headquarters in order to save her daughter. Unfortunately, Mary isn’t able to retrieve Furiosa and escape, as she is caught by Dementus. In one particularly harrowing scene, Dementus forces Furiosa to watch in horror as he crucifies her loving mother, before attempting to coerce the young woman to reveal the location of the Green Place. Furiosa refuses, though she tattoos a sigil on her arm detailing the coordinates of her home, in the hopes that she can eventually escape from Dementus and safely return.
Some Key Players Return
After years of living under the thumb of Dementus, Furiosa is finally given an opportunity to escape from the biker horde, when she is traded to the concubine of Fury Road‘s Immortan Joe. Dementus and Joe engage in a battle which sees the latter ceding control of his oil refinery to the amateur warlord. As one of many women in Joe’s stable of so-called wives, Furiosa plots her escape, sneaking out of her prison with the assistance of the Immortan’s son. After disguising herself as a young man, Furiosa begins to work for Joe, and slowly climbs the ranks over the course of several years while constructing the armed tanker known as the War Rig. Eventually, Immortan Joe decides to renege on his power-sharing deal with Dementus, citing the latter’s inability to successfully manage the fuel supply.
Furiosa’s cohorts are killed in the ensuing battle, including one man named Jack with whom Furiosa bonded closely over the years. Dementus also manages to capture Furiosa, though she goes to great lengths to escape his grasp, including severing her own arm, losing her map of the homeland in the process. This explains why she has a mechanical prosthetic limb when we see her in Fury Road. After donning the prosthetic, Furiosa returns to Immortan Joe, and leads the effort to plan an all-out assault on her former captor. Furiosa and Joe’s retaliation goes according to plan, and sees nearly all of Dementus’ raiders killed in battle. Joe is so impressed with Furiosa’s battle acumen and tenacity that he promotes her to the role of Imperator, and offers her command of her own Rig.
The Film’s Final Moments
The conclusion of the film shifts gears, and sees a potentially unreliable narrator explaining Furiosa’s own perspective on how she handled Dementus. If the characters’ claims are to be believed, Furiosa chased down Dementus and captured him before beginning to torture him. In his final lucid moments, Dementus claims, with a smile, that killing him will not make Furiosa whole again, as she has become the exact same kind of murderous psychopath as him. Rather than outright kill him, however, Furiosa opts to do something much worse. She utilizes his body as a source of natural fertilizer, growing a peach tree inside of him from a pit taken from the Green Place. In a shocking and twisted turn, the tree sprouts out from Dementus’ crotch, and eventually bears fruit.
The film closes just as the timeline catches up to the events of Fury Road, with Furiosa smuggling the remaining wives of Immortan Joe into her rig with the intention of escaping from the Citadel and bringing the women to freedom. Fans of the franchise already know that what comes next will be incredibly tumultuous for the hardened Imperator, though it’s nothing she can’t handle. With a bit of help from Max Rockatansky, Furiosa will soon free herself and the wives from the clutches of their captor, and continue their journey towards safety.
Ending Analysis
Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga is rife with symbolism regarding the state of humanity, growth, and revenge. The film also concludes on a major WTF moment, in the form of a man’s genitals serving as mulch for a sprouting tree in a desolate wasteland. Furiosa’s roots in the Green Place and her love for her mother inspire nearly every decision she makes throughout the course of the movie, and serve as the everlasting inspiration for her drive to escape from the clutches of Dementus, and later Immortan Joe. However, over the course of the film, Furiosa is stripped of her humanity, becoming the very monster she has vowed to destroy. This is most evident in her collaboration with Immortan Joe.
While she only draws up battle plans alongside the horrific warlord due to their shared enemy, her years of service to Joe seem to cloud some of Furiosa’s judgement. Her time in the wasteland has stripped her of any empathy and kindness she once held, and has hardened her into a cold, calculating killer, who knows only survival. This is why the planting of the peach pit is so significant to Furiosa, as the pit was the final gift she was given from her mother, accompanied by the request that she never forget where she came from. Furiosa kept the pit with her throughout her many years facing torture and subjugation, and her planting it serves as both a reminder of her roots, as well as her ability to finally let go of her past and accept her role as a ruthless Imperator.
Connections To ‘Fury Road’
As we already know, Furiosa is not genuinely too far gone on her ethical journey. This is evidenced by the final moments of the film setting up the plot to Fury Road, which sees Furiosa betraying Joe and springing a prison break to free the wives of his concubine. Furiosa may have become a ruthless killer like Dementus, but her care for others proves that she is not truly like him, as he seemed to find great joy in torturing and killing others, while she only did so for survival. Like Furiosa, Dementus lost his family in a tragic backstory, which cements the truth that the wasteland does horrible things to those who venture through it.
Dementus’ tragedy is still no excuse for his horrific behavior, but it does shed some light on the cyclical nature of revenge and violence that pervades the post-apocalyptic land. By the time Fury Road takes place, the Green Place of Many Mothers has long since vanished. The place could have run dry of its resources or been fully pillaged, but the explicit details are never revealed to Furiosa.
Biblical Imagery In Furiosa
While many fans were shocked by the effects-driven violence and fascinating storylines of Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, others made note of the multiple instances of religious imagery which permeated the film. The Green Place of Many Mothers functions as something of a parable for the biblical Garden of Eden, a land with lush greenery and life, complete with its own forbidden fruit. When the raiders first invade the Green Place at the start of Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, their ransacking of the peach tree sets off a chain of events that introduces original sin to Furiosa’s previously sheltered life. Her mother, who touts the biblical name Mary, attempts to instill a sense of safety in her child, before suffering a Christ-like crucification, which is ultimately used to justify Furiosa’s actions throughout the remainder of the movie.
While it’s never made explicitly clear if her tale about the tree sprouting from Dementus’ loins rings true, Furiosa seems to utilize this plot point to close the chapter on her arc, signaling her acceptance that she will never truly be able to return to an untainted land of innocence. The new tree blends the two eras of Furiosa’s life, connecting the sacred and the profane in a harmonious blend which produces its own fruit, which guides her journey forward.
