Peele explained it's the idea that what one thinks they deserve comes at the expense of someone else's freedom or joy, so for one to have their privilege, another one has to suffer. This is exemplified through the Tethered, as they are the ones who suffer while their doubles above ground thrive.
The film is basically one big allegory for different classes in society. You could spend all day picking apart the logistics of creating the clones, but ultimately, they exist to horrifically highlight what American society does to those who don't have the resources to excel. They're forgotten about.
This reveal is quite good, especially since the seed is planted at the very start of the film, but it can be a little confusing. As it turns out, Red is actually the original non-Tethered Adelaide. In reality, the Adelaide we've been following the entire movie, and thought was the hero, is actually the Tether.
The reveal as to why Red talks the way she does is one of Us's most haunting moments, and it's one of Jordan Peele's screenplay's cleverest payoffs. As revealed in Us's big twist, the reason Red's voice sounds so creepy is that she was strangled as a child.
“How you could have taken me with you,” Red wistfully states to the Adelaide that has taken over her life. All that you have, all that you are, all that you've become — you took from me. Careful planning and preparation have lead to this day and this very moment where she faces the villain of her heroic tale.
Red then continued to live aboveground and eventually married Gabe and had two children, with everyone believing she was the real Adelaide—and the movie seems to imply that Red repressed her origins as a childhood trauma and believed she was Adelaide too.
Thus, the Pluto could actually have been Jason all along. But there's no indication that Tethers have the ability to switch souls — Adelaide and Red switch places physically — and Pluto has a clear scar on his face. Jason does not have a scar at the end of the movie.
And realises that it's she, in fact, who is the original Red. When they met in the house of mirrors as girls, she strangled Adelaide until she was unconscious and substituted herself into Adelaide's life. This ending explains why Adelaide stopped talking months after the incident.
They won't stop until they kill us... or we kill them. Red (Adelaide) on the Tethered. Adelaide Wilson, originally Red, is both the anti-villainous main protagonist and the overarching antagonist of the 2019 psychological horror film Us written and directed by Jordan Peele.
Most of the Tethered don't escape because they don't have Adelaide's clarity and ambition, but Red is a normal child, with every reason to explore until she finds her way out.
But there's one more subtle twist at the end of the movie that complicates it further. Jason looks at Adelaide in the car—who we now know is a Tethered—and some sort of acknowledgement passes between them. This seems like an indication that Jason seemed to realize that his mother was actually one of the Tethered.
Pluto wears a mask to cover up the burns of the accident. This would explain why Jason is often wearing a mask throughout the film. Pluto's death is by self-immolation, which reinforces this as well. Several other small details speak to Jason's potential swap.
The Tethered were made by humans and were originally meant to control their surface-counterparts. However it failed and the Tethered were abandoned. For generations, the Tethered copied their surface-counterparts; whatever they did, they did as well, except in more horrific and strange ways.
The tune she's whistling is “The Itsy Bitsy Spider” — the last song she had stuck in her head before she was kidnapped. (The song also invokes the slaves' ascent to freedom by “crawling up” the water spout, i.e. the sewers, to their escape.)
The idea behind the stunt was to raise between $50 million and $100 million to combat hunger and homelessness in America by convincing millions of people to hold hands and create a human chain across the nation beginning at 3 P.M. ET, and lasting for 15 minutes.
Thanks to Adelaide, the Wilson family members are safe for now, but each is aware that you're never really out of danger when the villains look just like us. A steady parting glare from Adelaide's son, directed at a mother he might no longer recognize, says as much.
In Us, Jeremiah 11:11 reads as, "Therefore thus saith the Lord, Behold, I will bring evil upon them, which they shall not be able to escape; and though they shall cry unto me, I will not hearken unto them." Narratively this is represented through Adelaide's duplicate, Red, who represents the evil she and the other ...
She appears to be examining Adelaide's facial structure, before returning to Kitty's vanity and digging into her face with her scissors, leaving a deep cut in her cheek, all with a smile on her face. This is intended to mirror Kitty Tyler's implied facial surgery.
Another question viewers might have had: Why were each of the Tethered wearing a single, leather half glove? Barrett approached this design element from a very practical standpoint. Her team learned early on that it's easy to cut yourself when handling large shears, which the Tethered use as their primary weapon.
Why did Jason put his mask back on at the end of Us?
Jason's silence and the act of pulling the mask over his face implies that he is choosing to remain silent about Red's secret, but it leaves a very important lingering question. Jason could be accepting of who his mother was and the implications of what she had done, or he could remain quiet out of fear.
As an adult, he never speaks, though perhaps this is because we've never witnessed interactions with someone he trusts. The reason it's a “maybe” check is because selective mutism can also be a response to trauma, which Jason most certainly experienced after witnessing the death of his mother.
However, the rabbits hold a deeper meaning too. Rabbits commonly symbolize rebirth in human culture as explained by their usage around Easter to signify the rebirth of Jesus Christ. In the case of Us, the rabbits symbolize the rebirth of the Tethered who are now rising up to take their place in society.
