Warning: This article contains spoilers for Leave the World Behind.
Mahershala Ali’s character in Netflix’s apocalyptic thriller Leave the World Behind, G.H., got an early warning of the doomsday event from a mysterious client – but who was this client? Julia Roberts and Ethan Hawke star in Leave the World Behind as a couple who take their kids to a rented vacation home on Long Island. Late at night, George H. Scott, better known as G.H., shows up at the house and claims that he owns the property and a blackout in the city forced him and his daughter to head out to Long Island.
Strange things start happening – the TV and Wi-Fi are both out, a cargo ship crashes into a beach, and electric cars smash into each other on the highway – signaling the end of the world. G.H. eventually reveals that he got an early warning about this apocalyptic event from a powerful client in the Department of Defense. The day before the blackout, this client made some unusual changes to his financial portfolio and vaguely suggested that a disaster was imminent. Who is this client, and how did he know the end was near?
GH’s Client Is Likely A Former Politician
G.H.’s client was probably a former politician. The only information that G.H. reveals about this client is that he works for the Department of Defense. He wouldn’t just be a standard mid-level bureaucrat; he’d have to have some very high-up connections to know about the impending apocalypse. A government employee with that much top-secret access would have to be a high-ranking politician or someone related to the government with significant business control. The most likely answer is that he once held a powerful office.
The Real Reason Why Leave The World Behind Never Reveals The Identity Of GH’s Client
The final scene of Leave the World Behind ends the movie quite abruptly. Rose finds the bunker that the survivalist, Danny, told G.H. about. But rather than gathering the others and showing them to the bunker, Rose goes straight to the DVD collection so she can finally watch the last episode of Friends. The Friends theme song plays over the end credits. The movie never reveals who G.H.’s client was, and exactly how he knew that the apocalypse was nigh, but there’s a good reason this information is omitted.
Writer-director Sam Esmail doesn’t reveal who G.H.’s client is because it really doesn’t matter. Any given viewer can think of plenty of real people who could potentially fit his description, but it all comes down to the fact that the obscenely wealthy and powerful are the ones who get a heads-up while the masses suffer. There’s a lot of commentary about how people will destroy each other and turn on one another in Leave the World Behind, and the client reveals that the extremely powerful were already doing that before the disaster even struck.
