How ‘Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes’ Sets Up the Future of the Franchise

The latest release in the long-running Planet of the Apes franchise is Wes Ball’s Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, which has received rave reviews and is doing well at the box office, too. The film’s ending has a clear setup for a sequel, and keeping that in mind, let’s break it down.

**Spoilers for the ending of Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes ahead!**

The Planet of the Apes franchise has been one of the longest film franchises in Hollywood, spanning 56 years. The first film was released in 1968, and the current reboot trilogy is expected to continue the legacy, now four films with seemingly more to come.

A pivotal moment Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes is when the audience finds out Nova (Freya Allen) is not one of the primitive humans who have been named “echoes” by the apes, and her actual name is Mae. She belongs to a group of humans who were attacked by the movie’s antagonist Caesar Proximus’ (Kevin Durand) troops and is the only survivor who manages to make it to the villain’s base (a former U.S. military site). Mae had been following Noa (Owen Teague) in the hope of procuring rations and blankets from the young ape before she fled.

Mae’s main motivation is to stop Proximus and his soldiers from getting their hands on weapons and military tech present inside the base, which will enable the Bonobo to realize his plan of establishing a new kingdom of apes with him as the leader. She gains access to the base with the help of Noa and his friends Anaya and Soona and manages to locate a hard drive that holds encrypted military information, but the trio is soon ambushed by Proximus and his troops.

While Proximus and Noa engage in a one-on-one battle, Mae manages to shoot one of Proximus’ soldiers and escapes to set off the explosives she and the apes had planted the night before. The ensuing explosion breaks the walls of the base and floods it, with Noa and his clan fending for themselves by clinging to the cliffs. Proximus is able to locate Noa there and beats him black and blue, but the young ape triggers an eagle attack by singing his clan’s song, and the band of eagles is able to overpower the tyrant and make him fall off the cliff to his eventual death.

Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes ends with Noa poised to take succeed his father as the leader of the clan and Mae visiting a former U.S. government facility. She submits the hard drive to personnel in the facility, and the viewers are told that it is one of the three hard drives that form a “key” to operating an inert satellite array system. This is a callback to an earlier scene where Mae told Noa about her search for a “book” that would enable the nonverbal humans to speak again.

After the satellite powers up, the facility receives an immediate reply from another group of humans from an unknown location. With two human resistance groups in contact, the stage is set for the next films in the franchise to be an open ground for conflict between apes and humans to decide who gets to rule over the Earth.