A Parfitian Deconstruction of the Multiverse in Everything Everywhere All at Once
Aaron Hall
Everything Everywhere All at Once (A24, 2022) is a science-fiction, comedy-drama film where Evelyn Wong, an unfulfilled Chinese immigrant mother, learns to harness her abilities from her different multiverse counterparts to save the universe. Although the film’s premise appears to be a typical multiverse film, the driving conflict comes from the familial issues between Evelyn, Waymond (her husband), and Joy (her daughter and the film’s main antagonist). The multiverse is a collection of diverse universes or alternate realities where different counterparts of these characters have unique skills and personalities. One of these counterparts includes Alpha Waymond, Waymond’s counterpart who serves as Evelyn’s mentor. Due to the subject matter portrayed in the movie, analyzing this film from a personal identity perspective is not far-fetched. This paper aims to discuss the thought experiment of multiverse splitting. This analysis discusses how the multiverse splitting relates to Parfit’s account of personal identity as multiverse splitting resembles his fission case.
Aaron Hall is a recent Television, Radio, and Film alumnus who minored in Philosophy during his undergraduate. He hopes to incorporate complex and provocative ethical issues and themes into his films in the future. Also, he likes to talk nonstop about Everything, Everywhere, All at Once.