Jordan Peele recap: the story so far

No. 01 · 2017 · Film

Get Out recap

Get Out (2017) follows a young Black photographer whose weekend at his white girlfriend's family estate turns into a trap. Chris Washington (Daniel Kaluuya) drives upstate with Rose Armitage (Allison Williams) to meet her parents, neurosurgeon Dean (Bradley Whitford) and psychiatrist Missy (Catherine Keener). The family's Black housekeeper Georgina (Betty Gabriel) and groundskeeper Walter act strangely. Missy hypnotises Chris with a teaspoon against a teacup, supposedly to cure his smoking, and he sinks into a paralysed void she calls the sunken place. At a garden party of wealthy white guests, a Black man named Logan King (LaKeith Stanfield) shouts at Chris to get out when a camera flash goes off. Chris's friend Rod Williams (Lil Rel Howery), a TSA officer, recognises Logan as a missing man. Jordan Peele wrote and directed it, his first feature, and won the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay. It begins his directing career, before Us.

How Get Out ends

Get Out ends with Chris escaping the Armitage house and Rod arriving to take him home. Chris learns the family transplants the brains of white buyers into Black bodies; a blind art dealer has bought his. Plugging his ears with stuffing from the chair, he resists the hypnosis and kills Dean, Missy and Rose's brother Jeremy. Walter, carrying Rose's grandfather's mind, is freed briefly by a phone flash and shoots Rose and then himself. A police car pulls up, but it is Rod. Peele has said he shot an alternate ending in which police arrest Chris.

Post-credits scenes

No. Get Out has no mid- or post-credits scene.

No. 02 · 2019 · Film

Us recap

Us (2019) follows a family on a beach holiday in Santa Cruz who are attacked one night by red-clad doubles of themselves. As a girl in 1986, Adelaide Thomas wandered into a hall of mirrors on the boardwalk and met a copy of herself. Now married, Adelaide Wilson (Lupita Nyong'o) returns with her husband Gabe (Winston Duke) and children Zora (Shahadi Wright Joseph) and Jason (Evan Alex). That night four figures stand in their driveway: copies of the family, led by Adelaide's double Red, the only one who can speak. Red says they are the Tethered, who share souls with the people above and have come to cut loose. The doubles of their friends Josh and Kitty Tyler (Tim Heidecker and Elisabeth Moss) kill the Tylers, and across the country the Tethered join hands in a long human chain. Jordan Peele wrote and directed it as his second feature, following Get Out.

How Us ends

Us ends with Adelaide killing Red in the tunnels and a twist about which of them is the original. Red explains the Tethered were made as copies to control people above, then abandoned underground eating raw rabbit. Adelaide chases Red to the funhouse and kills her, then rescues Jason. Driving away, she remembers the truth: in 1986 the double choked the real Adelaide, dragged her below and took her place. Jason seems to sense it as the Tethered's chain stretches across the hills.

Post-credits scenes

No. Us has no mid- or post-credits scene.

No. 03 · 2019 · Series · optional

The Twilight Zone recap

The Twilight Zone (2019) revives Rod Serling's anthology series, with Jordan Peele as narrator introducing a new standalone tale each episode. Developed by Simon Kinberg, Peele and Marco Ramirez, it ran on CBS All Access for two seasons and 20 episodes between April 2019 and June 2020. Season 1 aired weekly from April 1, 2019, opening with two episodes: "The Comedian", in which a stand-up (Kumail Nanjiani) finds that anyone he jokes about disappears, and "Nightmare at 30,000 Feet", a reworking of the original's airplane episode with Adam Scott as a journalist who finds a podcast about his own flight's disappearance. Other first-season stories include "Replay", where a mother (Sanaa Lathan) uses a camcorder that rewinds time to escape a hostile state trooper, and "A Traveler", with Steven Yeun as a stranger at an Alaskan police station. Season 2 dropped all ten episodes at once on June 25, 2020. Peele narrates and executive produces through Monkeypaw but did not direct. It sits on the Written or produced rail between Us and Candyman.

How The Twilight Zone ends

The Twilight Zone ends with season 2's "You Might Also Like", a satire in which a suburban homemaker (Gretchen Mol) is abducted by aliens promising a coveted product called the Egg, drawing on the original series. Season 1 closed with "Blurryman", in which a writer (Zazie Beetz) on the show is stalked by a figure in the background of every shot, and Peele appears as himself. Each episode stands alone, so there is no ongoing story to resolve. In February 2021 the producers announced the series would not return, ending it after two seasons.

No. 04 · 2021 · Film · optional

Candyman recap

Candyman (2021) follows a Chicago artist who becomes obsessed with the hook-handed killer of a Cabrini-Green urban legend. Anthony McCoy (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) lives in a gentrified Cabrini-Green with his girlfriend, gallery director Brianna Cartwright (Teyonah Parris). Stung by a bee in the projects, he meets laundromat owner William Burke (Colman Domingo), who saw police beat a hook-handed man, Sherman Fields, to death in 1977. Anthony builds a mirror installation inviting viewers to say Candyman five times, and people who try it start dying. His sting spreads into a rotting wound and his paintings fill with the faces of murdered Black men. Nia DaCosta directs from a script she wrote with Jordan Peele and Win Rosenfeld, and Peele produced through Monkeypaw. A direct sequel to the 1992 Candyman, it follows The Twilight Zone on the Written or produced rail.

How Candyman ends

Candyman ends with Brianna summoning the Candyman to kill the police who shot Anthony. Anthony learns he was the baby taken from Cabrini-Green in the 1992 film. William plans to turn him into a new Candyman, saws off his hand, attaches a hook and calls the police. Brianna kills William, and officers shoot Anthony as he collapses in her arms. In the back of a squad car she says the name into the mirror; the Candyman appears with Anthony's face and slaughters the officers, then takes the face of the original Daniel Robitaille (Tony Todd) and tells her to tell everyone.

Post-credits scenes

No. Candyman has no post-credits scene; the credits play over a shadow-puppet history of the legend.

No. 05 · 2022 · Film

Nope recap

Nope (2022) follows two siblings who train horses for Hollywood productions and set out to film the strange thing hiding in the clouds above their ranch. In Agua Dulce, California, Otis Haywood Sr. (Keith David) is killed by a coin falling from the sky. Six months later his son OJ (Daniel Kaluuya) and daughter Emerald (Keke Palmer) are struggling to keep the business going, selling horses to Ricky "Jupe" Park (Steven Yeun), a former child star who runs a Western theme park and survived a chimpanzee attack on a 1990s sitcom set. When the power flickers and horses vanish, the Haywoods realise something is taking them and hope to sell footage of it. They recruit electronics salesman Angel Torres (Brandon Perea) and the cinematographer Antlers Holst (Michael Wincott), and OJ comes to suspect the object is a living animal. Jordan Peele wrote and directed it as his third feature. It follows Us and is his most recent film as director here.

How Nope ends

Nope ends with Emerald photographing the creature as it dies and OJ alive outside the theme park. The creature, which OJ names Jean Jacket, swallows Jupe's whole audience at a live show and hunts anyone who looks at it. The team baits it with inflatable tube men while Holst cranks an analog camera, but he walks into its path for the perfect shot. OJ draws it off on horseback while Emerald releases a giant Jupe balloon, which it swallows and bursts. She takes the picture with a tourist well camera and sees OJ through the dust.

Post-credits scenes

No. Nope has no mid- or post-credits scene.

No. 06 · 2022 · Film · optional

Wendell & Wild recap

Wendell & Wild (2022) follows two demon brothers who promise an orphaned teenage girl they will revive her parents if she summons them from the underworld. Kat Elliot (Lyric Ross) has blamed herself since her parents died in a car crash when she was eight. Five years later, she is sent back to her decaying hometown of Rust Bank to a Catholic girls' school, where she learns she is a Hell Maiden. Wendell (Keegan-Michael Key) and Wild (Jordan Peele) spend their days rubbing hair cream on the bald head of their father Buffalo Belzer (Ving Rhames), dreaming of building an amusement park; they discover the cream also wakes the dead. Sister Helley (Angela Bassett) watches over Kat, while the Klaxon family plans to turn the town into a private prison. Henry Selick directs in stop motion, co-writing with Peele for Netflix. It follows Nope on the Written or produced rail and is Selick's first feature since Coraline.

How Wendell & Wild ends

Wendell & Wild ends with the Klaxons arrested and Kat at peace with her parents' deaths. Kat's friend Raúl uses the cream to revive her parents, but the brothers and the revived Father Bests try to kill them. Belzer forgives his sons and backs their fair, and Raúl revives several brewery workers killed in the Klaxons' fire, who testify against them. The cream wears off and Kat's parents fade, but she shows them a vision of a revived Rust Bank first, and the brothers give them passes to their afterlife fair.

No. 07 · 2025 · Film · optional

Him recap

Him (2025) follows a concussed young quarterback who trains for a week at the desert compound of the aging star he idolised as a boy. As a child, Cameron "Cam" Cade watched his hero Isaiah White (Marlon Wayans) win a championship for the San Antonio Saviors and suffer a brutal injury doing it. Years later Cam (Tyriq Withers) is attacked on an empty field by someone in a goat costume and concussed just before the league combine. His agent arranges for Isaiah, close to retirement, to train him as a successor. At the compound, Isaiah's drills grow violent, Cam is secretly injected with Isaiah's blood, and obsessive fans try to scare him away. Isaiah's wife Elsie (Julia Fox) seduces him, and the team doctor whispers that he should run. Justin Tipping directs and co-wrote, with Jordan Peele producing through Monkeypaw. It is the most recent title on the Written or produced rail, following Wendell & Wild.

How Him ends

Him ends with Cam refusing the contract and walking off into the desert. At a party with the team's owners, Cam is drugged with more of Isaiah's blood. Isaiah reveals he is one of a line of manufactured greatest players, made by blood ritual, and that the two must fight; Cam beats him to death with a helmet. The masked owners, Elsie and his agent show him that his own father arranged the deal and that the goat attack was staged. When they threaten his family, Cam kills the attacker, his trainer Malek, and the owners. Two alternate endings exist, one where he signs.