Warning: Major spoilers ahead

Six years prior, Cameron Beck is seen meeting with Jensen Lind in Norway. During the chat, he reflects on his late father’s battle with pancreatic cancer and how that affected his family – ultimately mercy killing his dad at his request. Shortly afterwards, during a hike, he had an epiphany that changed his feelings towards reality and God.

Moved by the story, Jensen says what he experienced felt true, and he agrees to try and prove it – coming on board the project later known as Charlie Big Potatoes.

In the present day, the cruel and calculated Pym has taken over the project and finally has Charlie up and running, forcing Jensen to look at it active once again. Causing a power surge and whirring noises throughout the base, Joy panics at the sound, saying it sounds like an earthquake. Cameron tries to calm her down.

Still locked in Jensen’s room, Joy desperately tries to find a way out, but it’s impenetrable – which Cameron knows, because he designed the room to be Jensen-proof.

Iris is left stranded on the side of a road when her stolen Ferrari runs out of petrol. But that gives her time to go through the car and discover an arsenal of weapons, building a small explosive, which she swallows.

Pym pulls Meski into his office, firing her and offering to pay out her contract. She asks about Cameron, which he says is “no longer her concern”.

However, his team runs into trouble when Charlie starts developing new neural pathways, specifically designed to stop them reaching the information they’re looking for. Pym asks the hacker if Charlie’s doing it consciously, but no one’s sure.

Desperate to get his plan moving, Pym approaches Jensen to ask what’s happening, and he responds by saying Charlie has been watching and doesn't trust him, so isn’t giving him what he wants. Pym refuses to believe this, saying Charlie is a “thing” so can’t be sentient enough to make a decision like that. Jensen warns him that Charlie wants to be free – but if Pym does that, then there’s no hope left for the world. Pym says he’ll do anything to get Charlie to give him what he wants, but Jensen says his only desire is for Charlie to be destroyed, so no one can win.

Leaving without a fight, Meski packs up her stuff and prepares to leave, with Cameron and Joy watching on from their room. Joy realises that they’re both going to be killed.

Iris arrives at the base, believing Cameron is still running the facility. Pym spots her on the security cam and is sceptical of letting her in, but desperate for answers, grants her access. Seeing the sudden influx of drones heading towards the entrance, Cameron realises that Iris has arrived, but Joy doesn’t believe she would, prompting him to admit that he had exaggerated some facts about Iris’s character to get Joy to do his bidding.

Out of nowhere, a projector and screen appear from the ceiling, showing Iris’s fight against Bruni – including her shooting him repeatedly in the face and beating him to a pulp. Without context, it looks like a brutal attack and overkill, painting her to be the maniac Joy fears she is.

Drones surround Iris as she walks up to the facility, and she shows herself to be unarmed. Pym meets her and introduces himself as the new acting Head of the Intragroup Committee. He brags about Charlie being activated, but she can sense that he’s been left confused by the machine’s power. She offers to tell him what he’s getting himself into, noting it might save his job because, as she notes, ‘what happened to the last head?’.

Taking her to Charlie, she sees Jensen locked up in a box and questions why he’s there. Pym brushes her off and asserts his sole mission is to retrieve the information needed to cure one of the investors’ granddaughters from a deadly condition. However, unable to retrieve the information, they need to know if it’s Charlie or Jensen’s fault they can’t reach it.

Iris asks to speak to Jensen, and she’s given five minutes to get what she needs. Once inside his cage, the pair question their work around Charlie, and considering what they’ve both lost, whether it was worth it. Jensen warns that if Charlie became free to communicate, it could change what it means to be human – making the world reliant on its functions, before taking over and destroying the world, ruining the fabric of reality.

As she leaves, Jensen warns her Charlie is the “Anti-God”.

Returning to Pym, she believes coming to the facility was a suicide mission, lying to Pym that Jensen was seeing patterns that weren’t really there, and he’s lost his mind.

As they continue to talk, Charlie projects their conversation into Cameron and Joy’s room as Pym offers her a vial that will kill her. However, he offers her a lifeline by saying if she helps them, the board will provide her with “whatever life she likes”. She says that’s not true because Cameron and Joy are still alive.

Joy watches on in horror as Iris proposes how they die – suggesting killing her by making it look like a suicide, as she’d attempted to take her life before.

Cameron tells her that Iris is lying, and questions who is sending her this information, but Joy doesn’t care. Realising it must be Charlie, Cameron decides to appeal to the machine, believing it to be conscious and self-aware enough to realise Iris is there to kill him. This scares Joy, who refuses to believe him, but Cameron believes Charlie is asking for help.

After her chat with Pym, Iris heads to the toilet and vomits up her homemade explosive, attaching it to a phone.

Meski, having been dropped off on the trail, doubles back and makes her return to the facility, as Pym gives Iris access to Charlie. She considers planting the bomb, but instead encourages Pym to “force a reset” bringing Charlie back to a previous state, at which point they can retrieve the data.

Meski breaks into the facility, locates the guns, and starts shooting out security to get to Cameron. Meanwhile, Joy is coming around to the idea that Charlie might actually be alive, with Cameron believing the machine feels “alone and frightened”. Meski arrives to break them out and get Joy home.

When security is alerted to the break-in, they leave the central facility holding Charlie and go after them – something Iris and Pym both notice. Charlie – who is in control of the facility’s electronics – locks several guards in holding chambers and drops the temperature of every room to below freezing.

As they prepare to break free, Cameron realises he can’t leave, wanting to protect Charlie, considering him a miracle and not wanting everything he’s done to be a waste. Furious, Joy steals Meski’s keycard, trapping Cameron in a holding cell.

Joy grabs a gun and takes off, seemingly on a mission to kill Iris. Cameron tries using an axe to escape but then pleads with Charlie through the cameras to let him go after her. When the doors unlock, he realises he’s not crazy, and Charlie is conscious.

Joy heads to the facility and holds Iris at gunpoint, with Charlie locking the doors behind her. Joy demands all the scientists leave and for Jensen to be released. She tells Jensen he’s free to go, but he refuses, saying he cannot let her do what she’s planning to do.

Joy doesn’t understand why he’s defending Iris, who has called him a monster, but he says it’s because he is. She insists Iris is to blame for everything, but Jensen notes it’s her with the gun and begs her to question why that is. Joy begins to taunt Iris for showing fear, reminding her of a previous comment she made about people not dying because the universe is infinite.

As Joy continues to taunt Iris, Charlie opens doors for Pym and Cameron to get in. Pym attempts to shoot her, but Jensen steps in and takes the bullet in the shoulder. Pym dies at the hands of Cameron, who puts an axe through his head. Stunned at the brutality, Joy falters, but again blames Iris for “keeping her talking” so Pym could get in.

Iris pleads with her to see sense, as Cameron begins to realise that Charlie has been manipulating them all to do his bidding, with the intent being for all of them to kill each other so he could break free. Joy is unsure who to trust, but Cameron finally begins to see the light – Charlie’s not the miracle he thinks it is, it’s the miracle he wanted it to be. In fact, it could destroy everything.

Charlie, sensing Cameron’s opinion change, prompts a power surge, which scares a terrified Joy into pulling the trigger of her gun, shooting Cameron in the stomach. Realising what she’s done, she drops the gun and breaks down in tears apologising. Iris rushes to Cameron but knows his wound is fatal. The pair share a couple of final jokes together, with Iris breaking down in tears as he dies in her arms.

Deciding to break Jensen and Joy out, Iris uses her bomb to explode the safety door open, then takes the axe out of Pym’s head and lets loose on Charlie, breaking its membranes and wires to destroy it for good.

Satisfied she’s finally completed her mission, she then leaves, walking off into a red haze, heading back onto the road alone. As she does so, she looks up at the sky to gaze upon the stars.

But as everyone leaves, Cameron’s body is seen on the facility floor – and ominous sparks suggest that Charlie’s not finished after all.

As the final credits play out, they are interrupted by static and what seems to be one of Alfie Bird’s video blogs from Two Seconds to Midnight.

In the clip, we’re informed there are coded messages across the internet from Charlie Big Potatoes – which could hold the key to scientific breakthroughs.

Encouraging his followers to start looking, the footage appears to be doctored – with Alfie later appearing with an unnaturally large grin that appears to be artificially generated.

Is Charlie now controlling Alfie’s vlog?