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This article contains Project Hail Mary spoilers.
Ryland Grace never saw himself as a hero. It’s also fair to say no else did either. No one human, anyway…
When the Ryan Gosling protagonist is shipped off on the last rocket out of Earth, Ryland isn’t so much being elevated as he is sacrificed by his superiors. He’s considered the most qualified man left alive to study astrophage—and perhaps discover a solution for how to stop these damned little space “dots” from dimming our sun until we enter a new Ice Age. He also is single, without a family, and frankly expendable. “They’ll remember you as a hero,” Sandra Hüller’s Eva Strait coldly promises Grace as he’s put into a chemically induced coma. Succeed or fail, Ryland is on a one-way ticket to his doom, and all without the good grace of making that fate his own choice.
Which is, of course, the beauty of the final movements of both author Andy Weir’s 2021 source material novel and the new sci-fi film it inspired from directors Phil Lord and Christopher Miller. Because like Weir’s The Martian before it, Project Hail Mary is an ebullient story about human ingenuity, survival—and, eventually, heroism.
This is crystallized during the Project Hail Mary ending where after making friends with a new, genuinely selfless alien whose home world is as threatened as Earth, Grace is faced with a similar conundrum like the one from years earlier. His new best buddy, Rocky—an adorable rock-shaped alien who is more engineer than scientist, and who has no real real concept of either relativity or radiation poisoning—has given Grace some of his alien ship’s astrophage, which will allow Ryland to return home, after all. Yet what neither space traveler realizes is that taumoeba—the alien microbe Rocky and Grace discover that can eat astrophage and keep the microscopic threat from dimming their home solar system’s stars—also has evolved to eat through the xenoite containers that Rocky made to contain the substance. In other words: it will cause yet more radiation poisoning on Rocky’s ship, killing the alien who will die alone, scared, and unable to save his world.
Ryland could return to Earth a hero, or he could send his taumoeba discovery back via small satellites and use what’s left of his astrophage supply to go save Rocky. He at last makes the heroic choice willingly.
It’s ultimately a happy ending, too, since not only does Grace live up to his surname and save an extraterrestrial BFF, but Rocky’s grateful species of Eridians are able to build biosphere replicating Earth’s climate (at least if you live in northern California). It’s basically a luxurious biological preserve for humans, but it still leaves Ryland happy because he can nerd out with fellow science enthusiast Rocky, and pass that enthusiasm down to the next generation. At the end of the day, Grace will always be more teacher more than action hero.
Nonetheless, there’s a curious note at the end where Rocky offers to help build for Grace a ship that might be able to take him back to Earth. The Gosling character suggests he’ll consider it, but not too quickly. He has a class to teach.
It’s an ambiguous note for the story, seemingly suggesting that Grace might not want to go home. Perhaps he is happy so long as he has some bluish gray skies, beachfront property (though digital, it might be), and pupils to teach. Yet when we recently caught up with author Andy Weir the open-endedness of the conclusion meant something else entirely: room for a sequel.
Project Hail Mary 2?
“I didn’t define that,” Weir says when asked if he ever thinks Ryland Grace gets back to Earth. “So I respectfully decline to answer because I might write a sequel someday and I might want to talk about those things. Right now, I don’t define things that are outside the pages.”
It’s an intriguing answer, which at a glance could suggest there are already pages in the science fiction writer’s office featuring the further adventures of Grace and Rocky. However, Weir insists that is not the case.
“I am not working on a sequel right now,” Weir confirms. “The book I’m working on right now is a new standalone story that’s not a sequel to anything else. I have absolutely thought about sequel ideas for Project Hail Mary, but I don’t feel like I’ve got something that’s good enough to run with yet. But I’ve got some bits and pieces. Some ideas.”
With regard to his next novel, Weir only cryptically adds, “I don’t talk about those until they’re published because I might change my mind and ditch major things. So I don’t want to commit to things. I will tell you that it’s science fiction, and it’s a new standalone novel. It’s not a sequel to anything.”
Be that as it may, it creates a curious prospect over whether we have not seen the last of Gosling’s Ryland Grace or his hard-nosed best friend. One imagines that with enough astrophage, Grace could get back to Earth one day easily enough. Or perhaps he might find the courage to go somewhere altogether new. Like Ryland’s grace under pressure, the moment may (or may not) eventually present itself.
Project Hail Mary is in theaters now.
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