WARNING: The following contains spoilers for The Swarm, streaming now on Netflix.
Netflix’s The Swarm ends on an emotional note when Virginie (Suliane Brahim) saves her young daughter, Laura (Marie Narbonne), from a horde of bloodthirsty locusts that escapes their breeding tent on a French farm. The mother cut herself, allowing them to feed on her, and while she drowned most of them, a few made it out alive. With that in mind, let’s break down how The Swarm sets up a sequel.
The Locust Hunt
The film concludes with Laura holding the bloody body of her mom in the lake, but while she’s relieved because it seems like Virginie’s life was spared, they still have to stop the remaining creatures. Virginie claimed that locusts have a short lifespan, but the mutated ones like to feed on flesh and blood, making them unpredictable.
There were also a couple of other accidents that saw some escape earlier on in the film, so a sequel can focus on all the remaining locusts breeding at a faster rate and spreading the population. It’s possible France will be engulfed in an insect epidemic, with locusts not only damaging business, agriculture but also taking lives, leaving Virginie guilty over keeping their evolution a secret just to make money.
Finding a Cure
The locusts could also undergo new mutations in their evolution, which could make them nearly unstoppable. And an interesting angle to take would be that neither Virginie nor Laura are the key to a cure — but instead, it’s the son, Gaston. The kid was off at soccer camp when the finale occurred, but he’s a science whiz and someone who kept locusts in his bedroom.
If Virginie does end up drying, a time jump can lead to Gaston being the genius who works to stop this new plague. He loves the insects, and he may opt to find a way to cure and sterilize them, rather than render them extinct, adding potential conflict with policymakers and the military. Laura can still play a role as well, with this mission being what reunites her and her brother.
Healing the Family
The Swarm isn’t truly a horror movie — it’s more of a drama and character study about how the family coped after Virginie’s husband took his life. With Laura referring to the farm as a place that “stinks of death,” it would be interesting to see how the family moved on knowing what they let loose into the world.
A sequel can follow the tone of A24 movies like It Comes At Night, using the swarm as a way to shut the family in. It can then follow the rebuild of relationships in the wake of Virginie’s greed and Laura’s carelessness. The village already sees them as monsters and social pariahs, and by taking this route, they’ll be forced to come to grips with that. And the family may even run into an unforseen enemy in religious zealots. Virginie lost her faith, so wrestling with people who think she unleashed the plague can test her resolve and how they overcome together.
To see how the movie sets up a sequel, The Swarm is now streaming on Netflix.
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