Mad Max: Secret Meaning Of Fury Road’s Ending Quote Explained

Mad Max: Fury Road ends with a strange quotation, prompting some franchise fans to wonder where the line came from and how it relates to the preceding movie. The Mad Max franchise has never been big on explaining its complicated word building. However, 2015’s belated sequel Mad Max: Fury Road featured more unexplained lore than the series ever attempted before.

For example, viewers who hadn’t read the Mad Max: Fury Road tie-in comics would have no idea who the little girl that Max hallucinates is or how she relates to the movie’s story. Similarly, a quotation briefly glimpsed at the end of Mad Max: Fury Road is closely tied to both the story and themes of the movie, but is never actually explained onscreen. The quote shows up just before the film’s end credits, but fans who want to understand its significance will need to look further than the movie itself.

The quotation in question reads “where must we go… We who wander this wasteland in search of our better selves?” The line appears at the end of Fury Road and is attributed to the “First History Man.” That figure is one of Mad Max’s History Men, a group of in-universe historians who track the history of Max’s post-apocalyptic wasteland home via elaborate tattoos. The quote itself applies both to Furiosa, as it asks where she’ll go from here—will she be a benevolent leader or a despot?—and Max, who chooses against settling down at the end of the Mad Max sequel and instead forges on in search of himself, just as he has at the end of every adventure so far.

The question of where Max will go is one likely to form the basis of the next movie in the series, although it may be a while before viewers see Tom Hardy’s next Mad Max movie. The next sequel has already been titled The Wasteland, though, which is in keeping with the closing quote’s question about where Max will eventually find his better nature, if anywhere, in his eternal wanderings. However, the question is also a vital one for Furiosa and once again reaffirms that the Mad Max franchise doesn’t have an entirely positive perspective on the anti-heroine.

Before Mad Max: Fury Road’s action begins, Furiosa is firmly in service of the authoritarian fascist Immortan Joe, proving that she is not above being manipulated and misled. She later rebels against Joe, frees his captives, and eventually even kills him, but even this is not evidence that Fury Road’s heroine will be a morally upright figure forever. Beyond Thunderdome’s surprise villain Aunt Entity foreshadowed the possibility that Furiosa could become as evil as her predecessor, a theme that the Mad Max movies repeatedly return to and one which is encapsulated in the open-ended quotation that closes Fury Road’s action.

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Cathal Gunning
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Cathal Gunning has been writing about movies and TV online since 2020. His obsessions include The Simpsons, Stephen King, the Scream series, and the horror genre in general. He has spent more time thinking about Stranger Things than the writers of Stranger Things, and he has never seen a Star War.

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