Disclosure Day ending explained: What is revealed about the aliens?
Steven Spielberg has once again turned his focus to extra-terrestrials for his new summer blockbuster.
Universal
- Patrick Cremona
Published: Friday, 12 June 2026 at 2:48 pm
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When a legendary filmmaker like Steven Spielberg has a new movie out, most film fans will stop and pay attention. And that's doubly the case when it's a summer blockbuster that takes him back to one of his favourite themes: extra-terrestrials.
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Disclosure Day – which has attracted mostly positive reviews including a three-star verdict from us – opened in cinemas this week and stars Josh O'Connor as Daniel Kellner, a whistleblower desperate to expose his employers for covering up proof of alien life.
On his mission, he comes into contact with Emily Blunt's TV weather presenter Margaret Fairchild, who had been drawn towards him after she began behaving oddly following a mysterious encounter with an otherworldly red cardinal bird.
As they team up, Daniel's company the Wardex Corporation – led by shady boss Noah Scanlon (Colin Firth) – is constantly on their tail, with things getting increasingly tense as the pair realise the extent of their mysterious connection to one another.
But how does it all end up? And what exactly is revealed about the aliens? Read on for everything you need to know – with the warning that there are obviously some pretty major spoilers for Disclosure Day ahead.
Disclosure Day ending explained: Why were Daniel and Margaret linked?
From fairly early on in the runtime, we learn from Daniel that Wardex has been holding and torturing aliens – experimenting on them in order to use their advanced technology for their own ends.
This is one of the reasons Daniel is so keen to make the existence of aliens public knowledge – and by that same token one of the factors driving Noah and his allies to stop him whatever the cost.
As the chase continues, Daniel and Margaret come into contact with Hugo Wakefield (Colman Domingo), the leader of a band of fellow Wardex defectors who has been desperate to reach them.
Tommy Martinez as Santiago, Emily Blunt as Margaret Fairchild and Josh O'Connor as Daniel Kellner in Disclosure Day. Universal
Soon we discover the reason why Daniel and Margaret have a seemingly inexplicable connection and have had trouble accessing their memories.
Hugo has constructed a replica of Margaret's childhood home which allows her to recover those suppressed memories, and for the first time she is able to recall that – as a child – both she and Daniel had been abducted by extraterrestrials and given powers.
The earlier encounter with the red cardinal bird – the latest of a string on aliens disguised as animals that she has seen throughout her life – had reawakened her latent powers, and this is why she was suddenly able to read minds and control behaviours.
What is revealed about the aliens in Disclosure Day?
Equipped with this new knowledge – and with help from some alien tech – Margaret, Daniel and co are able to avoid Noah's attempts to close down their operation, successfully breaking into Margaret's television studio to broadcast their findings to the public.
The world watches as everything is revealed: mountains of video evidence showing alien encounters dating back to the Roswell Incident in 1947, the subsequent attempts to cover it up and the experiments that have been carried out on the extra-terrestrial species.
The impact is immediately seismic, with seemingly everyone stopping what they're doing to watch the footage, with these new findings also appearing likely to stop the war that was on the verge of breaking out.
Meanwhile, after showing the video, the whistleblowers have one more major trick up their sleeve: wheeling out one of the aliens they had freed from Wardex captivity.
The species communicates something to Daniel, who in turns tells Margaret. Then, in a move that will no doubt frustrate some fans, the film ends just as she is about to deliver the message – cutting to black as she says the word: "Listen."
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Interestingly, screenwriter David Koepp revealed in an interview with Den of Geek that that had been the last line in his very first draft of the script.
"As I typed and was reaching the end, I knew she was going to face the camera. So I wanted her to say something and I wrote the first word of the line because I thought it represents quite a bit.
"She’s saying ‘listen,’ because the space boy just told me a bunch of interesting stuff, and she’s saying ‘listen to one another,’ which is the heart of the message."
Explaining why the film didn't go into more detail about precisely what the message was, or the nature of the reactions in the aftermath of disclosure day, he added: "In the beginning, we’re told that this information is super important, and it needs to get out, and at the end of the movie, the information gets out.
"That is your story. If you continued, you could never stop. If the movie was called ‘Disclosure Day and the Subsequent Week,’ then you know you've got a lot of explaining to do. But our story was accomplished and it was time to end it."
So what happens next is largely down to the audience to decide. Will this new information about aliens change humanity for the better for ever? Or will it perhaps only lead to further squabbling down the line? Exactly how you interpret it is likely down to your own disposition.
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Disclosure Day is now showing in UK cinemas.
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Authors
Patrick CremonaSenior Film Writer
Patrick Cremona is the Senior Film Writer at Radio Times, and looks after all the latest film releases both in cinemas and on streaming. He has been with the website since October 2019, and in that time has interviewed a host of big name stars and reviewed a diverse range of movies.
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