Scott Pilgrim Takes Off is an animated series based on the Scott Pilgrim graphic novels and follows the eponymous character in his quest to be with the girl of his dreams. The series is streaming on Netflix.
Warning: This article contains heavy spoilers
Plot summary
Scott Pilgrim is a 23-year-old living in Toronto, Canada with his gay best friend, Wallace Wells. He is the bass player in a band called Sex Bo-bomb and is technically dating a high schooler named Knives Chau.
Scott’s band consists of Stephen Stills and one of Scott’s exes, Kim Pine. Scott also has a sister named Stacey who works with Julie Powers, a local girl who knows everyone.
When a girl named Ramona Flowers uses the subspace highway inside his mind to deliver Netflix DVDs, Scott cannot think about anyone else but her. However, what he finds out later on is that to date her, he must defeat her seven evil exes.
Apart from Gideon, the league consists of Broadway enthusiast Mathew Patel, Hollywood superstar Lucas Lee, Vegan rockstar Todd Ingram, Ninja Roxie Richter, and genius twins Kyle and Ken Katayanagi.
Ramona’s exes joined together to form the League of Evil Exes, led by Gideon Graves, a producer with a platinum record label and a huge financial empire. Scott invites Ramona to his band’s performance at the Rockit where Mathew Patel shows up.
He defeats and kills Scott with one punch and celebrates his victory while Ramona mourns Scott’s sudden loss. Mathew uses the confidence of beating Scott to challenge Gideon over the leadership of the league and Gideon’s empire.
He defeats Gideon and becomes the new leader of the exes while Gideon retreats in shame. At Scott’s funeral, international superstar and Scott’s ex, Envy Adams shows up and performs a number in his honor.
Ramona hears Scott’s voice in a dream and investigates his death. She confirms her suspicions with the security footage of the Rockit that shows Scott being pulled into a portal during the fight.
Young Neil, Stephen’s roommate, learns that he’s a cinephile and decides to write a screenplay. He doesn’t get a single word down but he wakes up in the middle of the night and sees someone sitting at his computer, assuming it is his sleep paralysis demon.
When he wakes up the next morning, he finds a complete screenplay on his desk and believes he wrote it himself. The screenplay is an alternate story of Scott’s life where he defeats Ramona’s exes.
It gets picked up with Lucas cast as Scott and Envy cast as Ramona. Ramona decides to question her exes and find out who might have kidnapped Scott.
After fighting Roxie at a video store and achieving closure with her, she heads to the set of “Scott’s Precious Little Life” and approaches Lucas Lee. She helps him escape a horde of paparazzi and confirms that he isn’t responsible for the kidnapping.
She moves on to Todd, who is dating Envy at the time. Wallace gets the role of himself in the movie and starts an affair with Todd in secret. While he considers it a work romance, Todd falls in love with Wallace and breaks up with Envy.
When Wallace breaks his heart, he gives up his veganism, and Envy looks at the video evidence and tells Ramona that Todd couldn’t have been the one to open the portal.
Ramona finds out that Gideon, going by his original name Gordon Goose, is now living with Julie Powers. She visits them to see if he is the mastermind behind the kidnapping.
Julie explains her history with Gordon and insists that he isn’t responsible because he lost his ambition within a few days of moving in with her. With Scott no longer around, Knives learns the bass and along with Stephen, writes a musical based on Young Neil’s screenplay.
They convince Mathew to star in it during a pitch meeting at his secret lair. Gordon reveals that he has a super secret plan to get back everything he lost and brings Julie in.
Ramona deduces that the ones responsible for Scott’s kidnapping are the Katayanagi twins after seeing their robot on the floor at the Rockit when he disappeared. She talks about how she played them by dating them at the same time.
Scott returns her suspicions and confirms that the robot opened the portal, but explains that someone else was responsible. He then begins to narrate the story of his future self, Old Scott, who pulls him to the future.
Old Scott beat the exes and married Ramona but after several years of happiness, it ended in divorce. Old Scott wanted to ensure he didn’t make that mistake and with the help of the future twins and their robot, time-traveled.
Scott uses the robot to look back and see what happened after he disappeared and then goes to meet future Ramona. Future Ramona confirms that she was the one who wrote the screenplay based on Old Young Neil’s memoir.
She hoped that it would convince Old Scott to do the right thing but she failed. Scott tells her that it is not a failed attempt and asks her to take him back. He is reunited with Ramona but they realize that they cannot kiss because of a force field.
They wonder aloud if Scott still has to defeat Ramona’s exes and Knives says that the premiere of their musical is the perfect moment to fight them all.
Scott Pilgrim Takes Off ending explained in detail:
Does Scott defeat the exes?
Everyone heads to the premiere for the final showdown but every ex that Scott faces up against says that they’re not interested in fighting for Ramona anymore and don’t know about any force field.
Lucas is busy with the paparazzi and attempts to resurrect his career, Roxie has made her peace with Ramona and doesn’t care, Mathew is focused on the musical, Todd is still obsessed with Wallace, the Twins learn that they’re friends with Scott in the future and let him go.
Gideon says he has other plans of his own with Julie by his side and brushes Scott away.
Who is really responsible?
Everyone takes their seats for the show but during the opening number, they are transported to a different place where an Older Scott reveals himself. He says that Scott didn’t listen to him in the future so he had a backup plan.
He spends 10 years living as a monk and training so that he can beat Scott, Ramona, and all of their friends as well as the League of Exes. Everyone tries to fight back, but Older Scott defeats the others, sending them back to the theatre.
Scott and Ramona are the only two left and they do their best but Older Scott is too strong. It takes Ramona from even further in the future to come and stop the fight.
Present Ramona is unsure of what she should do but when Older Scott tells her to run away from the thing she loves like always, she has a change of heart.
What happens to Scott, Ramona, and the others?
Ramona embraces her future self and they become an all-powerful Ramona, they send Older Scott back to his time so that he can begin fixing things for himself. They then send Scott back to his time so that he can start his journey with Ramona.
Gordon’s plan is to blow up the stage with dynamite and get his revenge on Mathew, but Mathew foils that plan. He then tells Gordon that he doesn’t want to be CEO anymore and offers everything back apart from the musical.
Ramona becomes a stuntwoman and spends more time with Scott and his friends. Knives joins Sex Bo-bomb and makes them inexplicably better. Lucas becomes a barista where Stacey and Julie work, and Todd takes up veganism again with Roxie helping him train.
The twins just do their thing while Gordon and Julie observe everything and plan their next evil venture.
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