M3GAN 2.0 Spoiler Review

Geek Girl Authority

01-07-2025

Major spoilers ahead for M3GAN 2.0 . You've been warned.
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When M3GAN came out in 2022, she took the world by storm. The AI doll designed to care for an orphaned girl ended up going rogue and captured our hearts, even though she also became homicidal. M3GAN was cute, smart, snarky as hell and could dance. Although she threatened to rip out her creator's tongue and tore off a kid's ear, we still loved her and felt bad when she was destroyed. But of course, she wasn't totally destroyed, and now she's back. But is M3GAN 2.0 a proper upgrade? Read on to find out.
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M3GAN 2.0 starts out somewhere near Iran. Two mercenaries drag a hooded woman into their lair. The mercs destroy her camera, saying she gave them the excuse of being a tourist. Meanwhile, somewhere far away, the American military, led by Colonel Sattler (Timm Sharp), monitors the situation. Apparently, the woman isn't all she seems. She's actually the latest in defense technology – an AI bot called AMELIA (which stands for, get this: Autonomous Military Engagement Logistics and Infiltration Android. Props for coming up with that). Ivanna Sakhno in M3GAN 2.0
The Secretary of Defense barges into the tech suite and demands to know how Sattler is operating without Congress's permission. Sattler brushes her off as AMELIA springs into action, killing the mercs and busting through a wall to find her target, a captive scientist (Mayen Mehta). Her objective is to rescue the doctor, but then she kills him. Everyone's horrified as Sattler tries desperately to reprogram AMELIA. But she makes it clear that she's taking control now.
Meanwhile, Cady James (Violet McGraw, from the original) visits with her old psychologist, Lydia (Amy Usherwood), who's checking up on her unofficially. Cady lets her (but mostly us) know what happened since M3GAN went rogue. Her aunt and M3GAN's designer, Gemma (Allison Williams), did some prison time to answer for the deaths M3GAN caused. Since her release, Gemma's been working tirelessly to influence policies regarding AI.
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Gemma's gone so far as to advocate for kids spending less time in front of screens, even convincing some schools to ban phones. This has made Cady a target for bullies at school, but luckily Gemma enrolled her in Aikido so she can stand up for herself. She's even developed a thing for Steven Seagal flicks. No accounting for taste, but hey.
Gemma has also teamed up with international man of mystery/AI ethics expert Christian Bradley (Aristotle Athari) to take their arguments to the world stage. But back at home, Cady misses M3GAN and studies computer science in the hopes of bringing her back somehow.
Trying to get her business going again, Gemma, along with colleagues Tess (Jen Van Epps) and Cole (Brian Jordan Alvarez), have been working on an exoskeletal suit for paraplegics. But when an investor comes to see the suit and Cole puts it on, the suit malfunctions and Cole punches the guy in the face. Whoops. Cady goes into the system and discovers that an outside source changed the suit's code. Violet McGraw in M3GAN 2.0
Tech millionaire Alton Appleton (Jemaine Clement) drops in to visit. He supplies Gemma with her new house/lab, which Tess and Cole are pretty sure is a money laundering front. Suffering from a spinal injury himself, he's invested in Gemma's suit. But he wants to pair it with his new invention – an implant that pairs with the brain. But Gemma's like, no way, too dangerous.
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Meanwhile, some vaguely Russian mafia-looking guy checks into a hotel with a couple of big suitcases. While he goes to the bathroom, AMELIA unzips herself out of the suitcases, putting her body back together. Then she kills the Russian mafia-looking guy.
Back at Gemma's, she watches a news report about Alton's company's shares going through the roof. Christian visits (oh, and by the way, it's pronounced Chris-tee- ahn ) and Gemma's angry that their new anti-AI bill doesn't actually have any real change proposed. Christian says she needs to be patient.
Up in her room, Cady secretly studies M3GAN's programming on a tablet hidden in a photo frame of her parents. She hides it under the pillow when Gemma comes in, but when Gemma finds it, she says they should be able to talk to each other after all they've been through.
Later that night, Gemma's TV starts acting up, warning that they're in danger. Gemma grabs Cady, and they go downstairs, just as some guys in black break in. Gemma's smart home system (aka M3GAN) fights back, disabling them with drawers and ice machines. Colonel Sattler identifies himself and the guys as FBI before the smart home can do any more damage. Allison Williams, Jen Van Epps in M3GAN 2.0
Sattler tells Gemma about AMELIA, how she was created using the schematics for M3GAN. M3GAN texts Gemma on her phone, warning her not to say anything. Sattler thinks it was Gemma who sold M3GAN's schematics to another party so they could program AMELIA for their own agenda (the vaguely Russian mafia-looking guy was the broker). Gemma refuses to help Sattler build another M3GAN.
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After they leave, M3GAN appears on the TV screen. She says she backed herself up to the smart home system before her body was destroyed. She offers to help with the AMELIA situation if Gemma will give her a new body, which Gemma refuses. M3GAN warns that if Gemma does nothing, the situation with AMELIA will only end with more people dead.
Realizing she has no choice, Gemma puts M3GAN inside a cute little toy robot called Moxie. M3GAN's not too happy about it, but Gemma calls it probation. If M3GAN proves herself to be trustworthy, Gemma will give her an upgrade. M3GAN studies AMELIA's file and discovers that she has a kill switch. Since she has parts made by Alton's company, M3GAN suggests they crash Alton's fundraising party to get into his server room. From there, M3GAN can plug in and shut her down.
So, Gemma dresses up nice and carries Teletubby-Moxie-M3GAN with her to the party. She's shocked to find Cole there – and to find out that he's considering a job with Alton's company. The only good thing? He's got a swipe card. They use it to get to the server room. Jenna Davis in M3GAN 2.0
Meanwhile, AMELIA's there too, looking like a supermodel. She catches Alton's attention, and he brings her to his private suite. He tries to impress her by showing how he can control the city's power grid, causing a temporary blackout. AMELIA then kills him by yanking out that neural implant.
M3GAN attempts to shut AMELIA down but realizes that she doesn't have a kill switch. Colonel Sattler and his guys are there too, and AMELIA takes some of them out. AMELIA looks for Gemma, but M3GAN tricks her into thinking she's not there. M3GAN leads Gemma and Cole to the parking area where she hacks a superfast car (with the music from Knight Rider playing – very cool) and they escape.
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Babysitting Cady back at the house, Tess suddenly gets attacked by the exoskeleton suit hacked by AMELIA. Quick-thinking Cady tosses water on the suit to short it out before it strangles poor Tess to death. Gemma and Cole arrive, and then M3GAN shows them a secret bunker underneath the house.
Everyone's shocked to see that M3GAN's got it set up with everything they need – food, water, a pile of clothes that drops down from the ceiling. Gemma asks what she thinks they need this for, and M3GAN's like, 'Isn't it obvious?' AMELIA is going to take over the world. The doomsday shelter is the only way M3GAN can keep Cady safe, which is still her primary mission.
Cady finds that M3GAN's recreated her bedroom and reluctantly reveals herself in the ugly body she's managed to reconstruct with spare parts. But Cady doesn't care about that and talks to M3GAN about how she can still protect her while doing the right thing. Cady then brings M3GAN out to see Gemma and begs her to let M3GAN have a second chance, which everyone deserves. Amie Donald, Jenna Davis in M3GAN 2.0
Everyone works together to put M3GAN back in a (taller) body. Gemma programs her to be stronger, faster and combat-ready. She also programs her so she won't try to kill Cole or Tess again. M3GAN then tells them that she's seen what AMELIA is after.
Back in the '80s, a copy machine company created an algorithm that made the copy machines smart. This algorithm was then used in a household robot, which ended up killing its owners. The algorithm, growing ever smarter, has been stored for decades on a motherboard inside a big Faraday cage underground. It's called Project Black Box, and if AMELIA connects to it to find her 'family,' she'll basically become God.
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So the gang heads to an anti-AI convention that Christian will be attending in the hopes of getting his help. M3GAN sneaks into the dressing room and knocks out one of the K-Pop singers to take her outfit. M3GAN goes out on stage, scanning for Christian, and ends up having to dance. You knew that was coming.
Sattler and his guys are there too, hoping to take out M3GAN and AMELIA, who comes out from her hiding spot in a display case, wearing a full-on Maschinenmensch-type outfit. AMELIA impales Sattler, but when M3GAN takes a look at him, she says he'll survive. AMELIA proposes to M3GAN that they join forces, since they're 'family.' But when M3GAN refuses, AMELIA snatches Cady and escapes with her.
The gang (including Christian) regroups at the lair. M3GAN blames Gemma for not being able to save Cady due to her restrictive programming. But she has a plan to destroy the Black Box with an EMP chip. Christian reveals that he has the Black Box at his facility, but in order to get to it, you need a hand scan. Gemma makes M3GAN a new hand that mimics a heat signature and also changes M3GAN's programming so that she can use deadly force if necessary to protect Cady. Allison Williams, Amie Donald, Jenna Davis in M3GAN 2.0
Gemma confides to M3GAN that she fears she's been a terrible parent. But M3GAN details to her how Gemma has tried to do her best. They sort of bond over their devotion to Cady, and then M3GAN suddenly belts out an uncomfortably long rendition of Kate Bush's 'This Woman's Work.'
The gang then goes to the facility. Cole goes into the air vents to find Cady, but he ends up chloroforming himself. Meanwhile, the rest study AMELIA's code and realize that she actually isn't autonomous. Someone's controlling her, and Gemma thinks it's M3GAN. So she plans to use the EMP on her and the Black Box.
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But then Christian tries to convince her not to before hitting Tess with a taser. Dun-dun-DUN! Turns out Chris-tee- ahn is the big bad. He's the one who bought M3GAN's schematics from that dopey assistant Greg in the first flick. Christian and his team of global experts put AMELIA together as part of the plan to ensure the anti-AI bill, which he's about to pitch to the UN, goes through.
M3GAN 'dies' in the fight to stop Christian. And then Gemma wakes up just in time to see Christian attaching one of Alton's neural implants to her head. Meanwhile, Cole wakes up in the vents and finds Cady in one of the other rooms. The two then find AMELIA's body and reset her to M3GAN's original settings so Cady can pair with her.
Gemma wakes up hearing M3GAN inside her head. The two have a weird back-and-forth before Gemma gets into the exoskeleton suit and battles Christian's goons. AMELIA goes after Christian's guys as well, but when they gang up on her and tase the crap out of her, it causes an override which makes AMELIA autonomous. Ivanna Sakhno in M3GAN 2.0
Christian sets off a self-destruct sequence to cover his crimes and grabs Cady to get Gemma to back off. Gemma rattles off a bunch of Steven Seagal movie titles to get Cady to use her Aikido, and she breaks Christian's arm. Then, AMELIA rips him apart and uses his arm to get into the Black Box.
AMELIA connects to the motherboard, and M3GAN wakes up just in time to battle it out one last time. AMELIA stops the self-destruct and tries to get M3GAN to join her again. But M3GAN jumps on her back and jabs her with the EMP, which Gemma detonates, destroying them both.
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All's well that ends well, and after Christian's crimes are exposed, Gemma goes before the Senate. She explains that there is no way to un-invent AI, so the only thing they can do is regulate it and make sure that it's treated so that it will never want to hurt humanity.
Back at home, as she's writing the speech, M3GAN pops up on her laptop as a cute little cartoon, having backed herself up. The lights flicker in the house, and Cady smiles as M3GAN asks, 'Did we save the world or what?'
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Whew! Didya get all that? Yeah, honestly … me neither. To say that M3GAN 2.0's plot is overly convoluted is an understatement. It's a completely different flick than the original, and when dealing with sequels, sometimes that's the best approach. Sometimes.
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The original M3GAN (2022) was such a surprise, not only scary, but also wickedly funny, heartfelt and simple. There was no doubt that she would return, and to be fair, I'm not sure what kind of story would have been the best showcase for M3GAN's abilities, while maintaining the relationship with Gemma and especially Cady. Violet McGraw, Allison Williams in M3GAN 2.0
The idea of M3GAN battling a superior, Terminator clone in AMELIA is probably the most logical step to take. But actually, there's not much interaction between them. There are only a couple of fight scenes, and even less dialogue. I would've been a lot more interested in hearing the two AIs talking to each other about their existence and how to handle their human masters, rather than the whole unnecessary subplot about the Black Box motherboard.
There is an intriguing undercurrent of the AI argument running through the flick – Gemma's crusade to regulate AI is definitely timely and important. The speech she gives at the end is especially good. But that's not really what we're there for. Nope, we all just want to see M3GAN kick ass, crack wise and dance. And 2.0 definitely delivers on that front.
The problem is that there's just too much going on. It becomes almost impossible to follow, and by the end, you're just along for the ride, totally checked out. So while there's a lot of fun to be had in M3GAN 2.0, it also makes you long for the simplicity and depth of feeling of the original.
Directed by: Gerard Johnstone
Written by: Gerard Johnstone, Akela Cooper (story)
Release date: Jun 27, 2025
Rating: PG-13
Run time: 2 hr.
Distributor: Universal Pictures/Blumhouse
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