Carry-On ending explained – what does the Traveller want?

Carry-On has soared to the top of the most-watched movies list on Netflix after recording the biggest debut of the year.

The new thriller is for anybody who prefers their Christmas movies with more action, and sees Taron Egerton play TSA agent Ethan Kopek, who, on Christmas Eve, is blackmailed into letting a dangerous package on to a busy flight.

For most of Carry-On, we’re left to question exactly what the mysterious Traveller (Jason Bateman) wants and why this package – which, spoiler alert, contains a bomb with a deadly nerve agent – is being delivered to a specific flight.

All the secrets tumble out in Carry-On‘s finale, but if you’re still confused, we’re here to help by untangling all the twists with the help of major spoilers.

To be fair to Ethan, he tries everything to avoid having to let the suitcase pass undetected through the scanner. But whether he’s trying to contact 911 or warn a colleague, the Traveller has him covered thanks to the Watcher (Theo Rossi) looking at security cameras.

With the life of his pregnant girlfriend Nora (Sofia Carson) at stake, Ethan has no choice but to let Mateo (Tonatiuh) through security. However, he does put Mateo’s name on a list of 50 random bag checks, thinking that could stop the Traveller.

Wrong. The Traveller activates the bomb with a 10-minute countdown and says he’ll talk Ethan through disarming it as long as he stops the security check. Ethan manages to do just that, but not without his boss Sarkowski (Dean Norris) being killed by Mateo.

It’s now that Ethan discovers Mateo is just like him – the Traveller abducted Mateo’s husband Jesse – who is currently tied up in the Watcher’s van outside the airport – to force Mateo to carry the bomb onto the plane.

Mateo is then told to kill Ethan, but Mateo’s attempt only leads to his death when the TSA plastic gun he’s firing overheats and fatally backfires on him. Ethan leaves the suitcase for the Traveller to pick up in order to go and protect Nora.

To tie up loose ends, the Traveller orders the Watcher to kill Nora and before Ethan can get there, he’s caught by Detective Elena Cole (Danielle Deadwyler). She knows that a nerve agent is at the airport, she just doesn’t know why and she thinks Ethan is behind it all.

He tells Elena about the Traveller and the bomb, revealing that he’s heading for a flight to New York, leading to Elena locking down the terminal where New York flights depart. Ethan breaks free and goes to save Nora and just when it seems too late, Jesse kills the Watcher with his own sniper rifle to save Ethan and Nora.

Jesse then tells Ethan that Mateo was actually given two tickets and Ethan saw the wrong one. The Traveller’s target was actually a flight to Washington, DC and they’ve locked down the wrong terminal.

Why that flight? Because congresswoman Grace Turner is on that flight. She’s trying to get a bill through Congress that would invest in the “defence of democracies” worldwide, but in reality would just favour private contractors.

The bill doesn’t have the required support, but if the Congresswoman – and an entire flight of people – were killed by a Russian nerve agent, then Congress would rally around the bill and open up a “firehose of funding”.

As Elena puts it, “it’s a set-up” and would lead to private contractors getting “more than they dreamed”.

Luckily, Ethan has a plan.

Before the Traveller got his hands on the suitcase, Ethan had the clever idea to switch out the case for one that would be slightly too big for a piece of carry-on luggage. He took a note of the checked baggage tag so that they could track it.

(We get it, you’re asking why he didn’t just take the bomb suitcase, rather than transferring the bomb to a new suitcase. It’s because it seems Ethan worked out that the Traveller was tracking the bomb, so would know the bomb wasn’t in the suitcase. We think.)

When the Traveller gets on to the planned-to-be-doomed flight (because Mateo is dead and can’t do it now), he can’t fit the suitcase into the overhead compartment, so it’s taken away to be put into the cargo hold. When the tag is scanned, Ethan and Nora see which flight the Traveller is targeting.

You might be wondering why the Traveller would willingly choose to go on a flight with a deadly bomb. However, he’s got a parachute so never intends to be there when the bomb goes off, and he’s just a villain who adapts.

“Traveller isn’t really the petting-the-white-cat, twirling-the-moustache kind of bad guy,” Bateman told TUDUM. “He’s a little more like you and me: He’s got a job to do, and he’s going to find a way to do it.”

Nora manages to persuade Elena to let the flight take off as Ethan knows he can disarm the bomb. If the flight is grounded, the Traveller will know his plan is up and will just detonate the bomb, leading to increased casualties.

Ethan sneaks into the cargo hold just before take-off, finds the suitcase and starts to disarm the bomb. What he doesn’t account for is that the process of disarming puts the bomb into manual mode, and the Traveller gets an alert on his phone. The Traveller confronts Ethan and shoots him in the leg to stop Ethan disarming the bomb.

What the Traveller doesn’t know is that Ethan has removed the nerve agent canister. When the Traveller retrieves the suitcase, Ethan pushes him into the vacuum-sealed fridge in the cargo hold and breaks the canister in there with him, causing the Traveller to die a gruesome death.

Don’t worry if you thought it was a little bit silly that Ethan was able to contain the deadly Novichok, so did Taron Egerton.

“I shoved him in a fridge. It’s a very legitimate way of taking out a bad guy in a movie. It’s industrial strength airtight fridge,” he joked to Variety. “He’s a very strong character. He’s able to create a stronger airtight seal that saves everyone in the vicinity.”

All’s well that ends well and Carry-On‘s epilogue picks up a year later with Ethan and Nora off on a long-planned journey to Tahiti with their baby. He’s also fulfilled his lifelong dream to become an LAPD officer, presumably because, clearly, airport security was a bit too stressful for him.

“I think there’s that thing of pursuing your dreams and things not being too late,” Egerton told TODAY about the final police reveal. “And that’s a nice thing to think about Christmas, I suppose.”

Merry Christmas.

Carry-On is now available to watch on Netflix.

Movies Editor, Digital Spy  Ian has more than 10 years of movies journalism experience as a writer and editor.  Starting out as an intern at trade bible Screen International, he was promoted to report and analyse UK box-office results, as well as carving his own niche with horror movies, attending genre festivals around the world.   After moving to Digital Spy, initially as a TV writer, he was nominated for New Digital Talent of the Year at the PPA Digital Awards. He became Movies Editor in 2019, in which role he has interviewed 100s of stars, including Chris Hemsworth, Florence Pugh, Keanu Reeves, Idris Elba and Olivia Colman, become a human encyclopedia for Marvel and appeared as an expert guest on BBC News and on-stage at MCM Comic-Con. Where he can, he continues to push his horror agenda – whether his editor likes it or not.