A young Elio Solís wanders through a dim hall of an air and space museum while his aunt, Major Olga Solís, watches him with quiet vigilance. Olga has raised him since his parents died, and she reluctantly shepherds him past exhibits until he slips into a closed gallery and stops before the Voyager 1 display. He studies the spacecraft up close, absorbing the idea that something beyond Earth might be listening. Years pass and that museum visit becomes the seed of an obsession: Elio spends nights on the beach hoping for abduction, tinkers with a ham radio, and builds up fantasies of meeting extraterrestrials because he feels disconnected from the other children in his town and increasingly distant from Olga, whom he suspects sacrificed her astronaut dreams to raise him.

One night on the shoreline two boys, Bryce and Caleb, confront Elio after hearing rumors about his vigil. A scuffle breaks out; Elio fumbles his ham radio and slams it into his own face. He is treated at a hospital where the left eye is patched, and Olga drives him home resentfully. At her military base she brings him to a meeting where Dr. Gunther Melmac, a scientist on the fringe of the base's conventional thinking, presents a theory: the Voyager probe may have elicited a reply. Melmac talks of signals and contact; the room dismisses him. After the meeting clears, Elio slips back inside the lab, hides until the lights go down, and uses the base's equipment to transmit a personal message into space. He presses send and signs off with a casual, earnest line--"Okay, bye, I love you." The signal causes an electrical surge that blackouts the facility and nearly jeopardizes Olga's career. Furious, Olga announces she will send Elio away for the summer to The Carver Academy. Hurt and defensive, Elio tells her he does not consider her family, pulling their strained relationship to a sharp edge.

At Carver Academy Elio finds Bryce and Caleb among the campers and endures their derision. He continues nightly attempts to contact whatever he believes is out there, and the boys conspire to humiliate him. Meanwhile, at the base, computers begin to glitch and then display a repeated instruction: "Bring us your leader, please." Olga receives the same text on her phone and watches as the base descends into technical weirdness. In the middle of a campsite confrontation, as Caleb prepares to strike, the sky above Carver Academy fractures: time and air compress and a portal opens, pulling Elio upward. The bullies gasp and the other children freeze as the portal sucks him away. He disappears into light.

Elio wakes inside a place the aliens call the Communiverse, a hub where representatives from other planets gather to trade knowledge. A liquid, sentient supercomputer that calls itself OOOOO welcomes him, enveloping his senses and equipping him with a small disc that will modulate his gravity and body temperature while he navigates non-Earth environments. OOOOO guides him through a dizzying carousel of species and technologies until he meets ambassadors: Questa, Helix, and Tegmen sit with others and greet him as though he is an envoy from Earth. They have intercepted his Voyager-era transmission and have mistaken his personal, amateur message for proof that he himself constructed the Voyager spacecraft. Because of that misunderstanding, they presume Elio is the genuine leader or at least the appropriate delegate of his planet and begin considering him a candidate to join the Communiverse formally.

The meeting abruptly shifts when word arrives that Lord Grigon of the Hylurkian race is approaching. Grigon is a towering warlord in heavy carapace armor who announces a desire to join the Communiverse, but his methods and intent are belligerent and expansionist. The ambassadors recoil and prepare contingency plans; fear runs through the council that Grigon will seize the Communiverse by force and then conquer other realms. The delegates decide to return Elio to Earth to remove the flashpoint he has inadvertently triggered, but Elio refuses to be sent back to the campsite where he expects to be bullied again. He insists on facing Grigon so he can prove Earth's worth and hasten his own acceptance into the interstellar community. OOOOO assembles a plan.

OOO OOO produces a clone of Elio--known thereafter as Other Elio--by manipulating matter and memory protocols. Other Elio is beamed through a portal to Earth to cover for the real boy while Elio heads outward with OOOOO and a Universal User Manual that offers him negotiation tactics and procedural advice. On the Hylurkian mothership, Elio approaches Grigon in a council chamber decorated with spines and artifacts of conquest. In an attempt to humanize the talk and reference his supposed combat experience, Elio brandishes his patched eye as evidence of hardy resolve. The exchange goes awry when Elio comments on Grigon's parenting after Grigon mentions his son; the warlord takes offense, orders Elio seized, and has him thrown into the ship's dungeon.

Inside the damp cells of the Hylurkian hold, Elio discovers Grigon's son, Glordon. Glordon is enormous and resembles a benign, fuzzy tardigrade; he is much smaller than his father's hulking image and exhibits a baffling gentleness. Unlike the bellicose Grigon, Glordon reveals naiveté, curiosity, and a concrete unwillingness to assume the warlike mantle expected of him. Elio and Glordon talk, and they trace the contours of their loneliness: Elio admits he believes Olga does not want him, and Glordon confesses he does not want to grow into the carapace and aggression that define Hylurkian adulthood. The two scheme. Elio conceives a plan to use Glordon as leverage to force Grigon to withdraw from the Communiverse; if Grigon values his son's safety, he might be persuaded to stand down. Glordon agrees to cooperate.

Their escape is vivid and perilous. Elio and Glordon crawl through maintenance tunnels under the mothership, avoiding patrols. At one point magma sluices through an adjacent conduit; to survive Elio hides inside Glordon's cavernous mouth while the pair ride a plume of hot gasses past the molten flow. They discover a ceremonial Hylurkian carapace--the armor that will designate Glordon's adulthood--and Glordon recoils from it. When they reach the Communiverse's council chamber with Glordon as their bargaining piece, Elio proffers the child to Grigon in staged indignation and toying affection: he tickles and teases Glordon to make the father see the vulnerability he has been brought to love. At first Grigon appears to relent; the warlord orders his troops to stand down and prepares to escort Glordon home.

While delegates prepare to name Elio a bona fide ambassador for his role, Glordon whispers that he does not want to leave with his father to be remade into a warlord. Elio devises a cloning ruse: he will send a duplicate Glordon back with Grigon and hide the real Glordon on a shuttle so the child can remain free. OOOOO creates the clone; Elio swaps the two during a hectic exchange. Glordon is loaded into a shuttle and hidden; the clone climbs into the carapace with Grigon and the warlord departs.

Grigon's departure unravels quickly. The counterfeit Glordon acquires Grigon's lust for conquest and immediately behaves in a way that suggests he is a perfect heir to the throne; the warlord detects a discrepancy between the clone's new temperament and the son he remembers. Grigon melts the decoy--crushing or dissolving the artificial imitation once he realizes he has been tricked--and his fury flares. He orders soldiers to seize the ambassadors and begins tearing the Communiverse apart in a searching, vindictive rampage. Ambassadors are bound, artifacts are overturned, and the council is in disarray. As Grigon demands his son, Glordon, the hidden, genuine Glordon accidentally activates the shuttle's controls during the chaos. The craft rockets away unchecked and heads for Earth. The ambassadors blame Elio for the deception and for instigating violence; Questa, in particular, is furious and deems Elio irresponsible. To stop further escalation and to prevent Grigon's hunt from following on Earth, the ambassadors teleport Elio back to his planet.

Elio reenters Earth's atmosphere and washes up on a shoreline near Carver Academy. He staggers through sand toward Olga and finds her already present; throughout the time he was missing Olga has fetched Other Elio from camp and has been trying to make their plan work, but she has grown suspicious because this Other Elio behaves with a congeniality and confidence Elio himself lacks. That night Olga slips into the boy's room and, peeling back the eyepatch of the clone, reveals that Other Elio has only one eye and is not the same. She wakes him; he explains who and what he is and discloses his intent to help retrieve his nephew. The two reconcile emotionally; Olga admits her fear and Elio apologizes for telling her she is not family. They move with haste toward the base when reports come in that a small alien vessel has crash-landed near the facility.

At the containment site they find the shuttle and, inside, the real Glordon in a fragile state. The disc that OOOOO had designed to regulate his body temperature has fractured during reentry; Glordon's physiology cannot adapt to Earth's colder environment, and he is succumbing to hypothermia. Military teams circle the craft. Other Elio, whose presence has already raised questions, takes a decisive action to help the rescue: he creates a diversion--deliberately melting or otherwise dissolving himself in a chaotic display--so Olga and the real Elio can slip past security and reach the capsule. Other Elio's dissolution functions as a sacrificial distraction that keeps base personnel occupied.

Eluding guards, Elio and Olga work together to get the shuttle airborne. The ship's systems are intact enough to lift off but its navigational computer cannot execute a hyperspace jump because a dense debris belt sits between Earth and the Communiverse. Elio calls out to Bryce, who has matured past his earlier bullying, and asks him to reach Gunther Melmac and the network of orbital scientists. Melmac rallies a handful of base engineers and amateurs with contact links and guides Elio and Olga as they attempt to thread the shuttle through the debris. The run is hazardous: micro-meteoroids and shard fields pelt the hull, shields flare and shudder, and the craft takes multiple impacts that gouge and crack protective plating. Instruments flash red, alarms scream, and at least once the ship tumbles violently before Olga wrests the controls. With a combination of Melmac's remote guidance and Bryce's on-the-ground coordination, they pick a narrow trajectory and, by precise timing and nerve, poke through openings in the field. Their shields are nearly destroyed and the shuttle sustains serious damage, but it clears the belt.

They arrive back in the Communiverse just as Grigon's destruction has reached a personal crisis: Glordon lies inert from hypothermia. Seeing his son in that condition reduces the warlord to action that is uncharacteristic and vulnerable. Grigon scrapes off his own carapace armor in a primitive, painful motion to reveal the softer, wormlike form beneath. He swaddles Glordon in webbing and applies whatever Hylurkian remedies he knows; Grigon cradles the child as if he is incapable of anything but love for him. That tactile, urgent care revives Glordon. Grigon apologizes, or at least concedes a private truth: although his son refuses the war path, Grigon knows he loves him and accepts his difference. He orders his soldiers to back down, and the captives are released. The ambassadors, including Questa, release their anger at Elio and then, in a formal gesture, prepare to make amends. Questa presents Elio with a medal intended to mark him as Earth's official ambassador. Elio takes it but then makes a different choice: with deliberate words he rejects the full-time role and tells the council that he must go home and stay with Olga. He promises this is not farewell forever, only "not now." Glordon runs to him, embraces him, and Elio and the Hylurkian child exchange direct words of affection before parting.

The Communiverse returns Elio and Olga to Earth. The base, Carver Academy, and the assembled scientists watch a small shuttle arrive and disappear again as OOOOO re-enters it and resumes distancing protocols. On the beach Olga and Elio stand side by side and watch the sky where the Communiverse portal closes. People at the base cheer and celebrate the return in practical terms, but Elio's personal resolution is quieter: he stays with his aunt rather than accept a career as an interstellar diplomat at that moment. In the quiet after the return, Elio reaches for his ham radio. During the end credits Elio and Bryce sit together and broadcast a call across the airwaves; with this, they contact Glordon and exchange the easy, boyish jests and warm promises of friendship across space. No main character dies during these events. Artificial duplicates are destroyed--Other Elio dissolves to enable the rescue and the Glordon decoy is melted by Grigon when exposed as a fake--but the film records no mortal killings of principal, living characters.

In a brief post-credits image a small lizard taps a lizard emoji on a phone screen, a playful hint of more stories to come in the studio's next project. The final image of Elio and Olga is quiet: they stand on the shore together, looking out into the night sky as their life on Earth reasserts itself and as the door to further interplanetary adventure remains open.

At the end of Elio (2025), Elio successfully negotiates peace between the Communiverse and the warlike Lord Grigon, securing a future for the intergalactic council. He returns to Earth having formed meaningful bonds with alien friends, especially Glordon, Lord Grigon's son, and embraces his own identity and place in the universe.

Now, a detailed scene-by-scene narration of the ending:

The climax unfolds as Elio, mistakenly identified as Earth's ambassador, faces Lord Grigon, a fierce alien emperor who has been excluded from the Communiverse and threatens to destroy it. Elio volunteers to negotiate with Grigon to prevent an intergalactic war. Despite his youth and inexperience, Elio approaches the negotiation with determination.

In the negotiation chamber, Elio attempts various bargaining tactics, most of which fail to sway Lord Grigon's aggressive stance. The tension escalates as Grigon demands recognition and power. However, Elio's genuine kindness and courage become apparent when he connects with Glordon, Grigon's son, who is peaceful and reluctant to follow his father's warlike path.

Glordon agrees to become Elio's hostage, a gesture to avoid becoming a warlord like his father. This act of trust softens the conflict's edge. Elio uses this bond to appeal to Grigon's better nature, emphasizing peace and coexistence within the Communiverse.

Following this, the Communiverse council members, initially skeptical of Elio, recognize his bravery and the sincerity of his mission. They accept Glordon's peaceful stance and agree to reintegrate Lord Grigon under terms that prevent further hostility.

With the crisis averted, Elio prepares to return to Earth. The final scenes show him saying heartfelt goodbyes to his new alien friends, especially Glordon, symbolizing the lasting connections he has made beyond his home planet.

Back on Earth, Elio reunites with his Aunt Olga, who has supported him throughout his journey. Elio's experience has helped him grow from a lonely, space-obsessed boy into a confident individual who understands his own identity and place in the universe.

The fate of the main characters at the end:

• Elio Solís returns to Earth, having gained confidence and a sense of belonging through his intergalactic adventure.

• Glordon, Lord Grigon's son, remains with the Communiverse as a symbol of peace and hope for a less violent future.

• Lord Grigon is reintegrated into the Communiverse under peaceful terms, his threat neutralized but his presence acknowledged.

• Aunt Olga continues her role as Elio's guardian, proud of his growth and newfound maturity.

This ending highlights themes of acceptance, courage, and the power of connection across differences, as Elio navigates both personal loss and cosmic responsibility. The story closes on a hopeful note, with Elio embracing who he is and the vast possibilities ahead.

Yes, characters do die in the movie Elio (2025), but the deaths are not of main characters and are not described in detail. The key characters such as Elio, his aunt Olga, and his alien friend Glordon do not die. Olga is willing to sacrifice herself to save Glordon but does not actually die. Elio himself risks his life to rescue Glordon but survives and is honored by the alien Communiverse for his self-sacrificial love.

The movie features a clone of Elio created by the aliens, which ultimately sacrifices itself in the story's climax. This clone replaces Elio temporarily and is reliable and compliant, but Olga realizes it is not the real Elio. The clone's final act is a self-sacrifice to protect others, which is a significant emotional moment in the film.

The antagonist Lord Grigon threatens violence and destruction but is ultimately stopped through Elio's negotiation and the help of Grigon's son Glordon. There is no indication that Grigon or Glordon die in the film.

In summary:

• No main characters die (Elio, Olga, Glordon survive).
• Elio's clone sacrifices itself near the end to protect others.
• Olga is willing to sacrifice herself but does not die.
• The villain Lord Grigon is defeated but not killed.

The film focuses on themes of self-sacrifice, love, and peace rather than character deaths.

Yes, the 2025 movie Elio has two post-credit scenes.

The mid-credits scene shows Elio back on Earth, maintaining contact with his alien friend Glordon and his new human friend Bryce. They use technology to communicate, confirming that Elio's intergalactic friendships endure beyond his space adventure. This scene also reveals that the Communiverse ship's return to Earth was witnessed, making alien life known to some people on Earth. It sets up potential future storylines or a sequel by suggesting Elio might take on an ambassador role between humans and aliens.

The post-credits scene is a teaser for Pixar's next film, Hoppers. It features a green lizard interacting with a smartphone, repeatedly pressing the "lizard" emoji, accompanied by an audio message saying "Lizard, lizard, lizard." This scene is a playful inversion of Pixar's usual tradition of showing teasers before the main feature, instead placing it after the credits in Elio.

Elio sends a message to aliens using a device at his aunt Olga's Air Force base, which causes a power outage and leads the Communiverse to mistakenly identify him as Earth's leader after they intercept the message.

Glordon is the son of Lord Grigon, a warlord alien. Elio befriends Glordon, who agrees to be Elio's hostage to avoid becoming a warlord like his father, forming a key bond in the story.

Aunt Olga is Elio's guardian after his parents' death. She is an Air Force major who gave up her astronaut dreams to raise him. She sends Elio to a youth military camp to help him learn discipline after his rebellious behavior.

Elio exhibits bad habits like lying, breaking rules, and skipping school, which strain his relationship with Olga. His actions, such as hijacking military equipment and causing power outages, lead Olga to send him to a military camp, which Elio initially resents.

Lord Grigon is a warmongering alien emperor who was expelled from the Communiverse and threatens to destroy the intergalactic council. Elio volunteers to negotiate with him, but most of his tactics fail, leading to the alliance with Glordon to avoid war.

The movie Elio (2025) is generally family friendly and rated PG for some mild action/peril and thematic elements. It contains no sex, nudity, profanity, or drug/alcohol use (though a character drinks wine with dinner and an alien beverage causes vomiting).

Potentially objectionable or upsetting aspects for children or sensitive viewers include:

• Mild violence: Scenes of a character getting punched (cut off before graphic), a bloody nose, a finger accidentally cut off (no graphic blood), and some bullying leading to a bruised eye.
• Mild frightening/intense scenes: Encounters with aliens bent on destruction, arguments about feeling alone, and some scary moments.
• Themes: Dealing with loss of parents, feelings of loneliness, lying, breaking rules, and struggles with self-esteem.
• Some mild language: Name-calling and a "poop emoji" text.
• Behavioral issues: Skipping school, staying out late, hijacking military equipment, and breaking laws to rescue a friend.

Overall, Elio is a visually engaging, emotionally touching film suitable for most children with parental guidance recommended especially for younger or sensitive kids due to the mild violence, thematic depth, and some scary scenes.