Pollen (2023): Movie Ending and Themes Explained - Why do both Hera and Corey see the tree man? (2024)

Demi leaves Corey with Hera to go on a date. Hera falls asleep while watching over Corey. In her dream, she sees that Corey has become a tree. She wakes up to the sound of the doorbell. Demi arrives from the date to take back Corey. However, Corey is nowhere to be seen. They find a scared Corey hiding in the storeroom. Corey says she has seen the tree man, which leaves Hera stunned.

The next day at work, Zack and Vicky, one of Hera’s vicious co-workers, are seen making fun of Hera’s appearance. Hera makes attempts to talk to Zach. However, he still gives her the cold shoulder. She follows Zach to talk alone, but he leads her to the conference room and puts her in an embarrassing position.

When Zach comes out, he dismisses the conference room incident as a joke. It is clear that Zach is only interested in getting his sexual needs met and not in any romantic relationship. And to have his way, he is capable of gaslighting women. Suddenly, Hera sneezes, and her sneeze gives out yellow and green mucus, indicating the presence of pollen. She runs to the washroom and, much to her horror disgorges a flower from her mouth. She also spots the tree man in one of the stalls of the washroom, but when she bangs the door, she finds it occupied by Lori, her team lead. Lori grills Hera ruthlessly about her work and the manner in which she is showing up to work.

By now, Hera has developed an almost motherly obsession with the poppy plant. She talks to her, takes care of her, and feeds the plant human food. At night, Hera gets a visit from the tree man again. The tree man, which had previously only haunted her, at this point turns into a sexual aggressor.

The next day Hera goes to the office and stands near the announcement bell, perhaps with the desire to ring the bell someday–an office tradition of announcing the achievement of a top earner. But her co-worker, with the intention of causing more embarrassment, bullies her into ringing the bell and insults her for ringing the bell for nothing. Lori tells Hera that Gabe, their boss, recommended her for CFA training, at which Hera becomes a little confused. Hera has a little chat with Gabe and reveals her desire to lodge a complaint against Zach to the company. However, Gabe walks her out of the decision, pointing out that HR would never consider her over Zach.

Vicky leaves a message for Hera on her plant, which agitates the latter a great deal. Hera finds Vicky with the same plant, indicating the possibility that Zach has turned his interests from Hera to Vicky. Getting jealous, Hera pulls Vicky’s hair, and Vicky inflates the situation. With all the hullabaloo around, Heera sneezes again and spurts out the same pollen-laden mucus on Vicky.

Hera is distraught and returns home.

The same night Hera drives to the office and destroys Vicky’s new plant with salt. We also see the tree man following her. Hera sleeps at the office and wakes up at Lori’s frantic calls. When Vicky accuses Hera of destroying her plant and proceeds to destroy Hera’s, Hera stabs her with a pen. Hera is fired from the office. Gabe attempts to help her, but even the help is a sham as he, too, tries to make a pass at her.

Pollen (2023) Movie Ending, Explained:

Hera is shattered and begins to descend into insanity. She now starts loathing the plant. She screams at the plant and feeds it grass juice. She is seen lying in the grass in her backyard, completely delusional, and then getting inside a bathtub full of mud. Demi comes looking for Hera and finds Hera standing in her backyard with her arms stretched out, completely covered in mud as if imitating her plant. Demi brings her back by hosing water on Hera. While Demi is interrogating Hera, Corey breaks the plant, which results in Hera slapping her.

Hera cries and asks for help to save Grace, the plant. Looking for Zach, Hera reaches the office again and pleads with everyone to let her meet Zach to save their dying child. Hera is unable to deal with the condition of her plant and treats it the same way one would treat a baby. She reveals to her co-workers that Zach had made her take the morning-after contraceptives.

Demi comes to pick Hera up from the office. It is here that Hera finally reveals to her about what had gone wrong between Zach and her. She opens up to Demi and says that she never wanted to have sex with Zach, but he went on anyway and then made her have the contraceptives. The presence of the plant, which Hera calls Grace, makes her forget about the fateful turns the relationship took. Hera also shows a desire to apologize to Corey for hitting her. Demi feels sorry for her, and they drive back home. Hera buries the shriveled plant in her backyard and bids it goodbye.

After getting visits from the tree man again, who now seems less frightful than before, Hera decides to end her life by slitting her hand with the splinter of her plant pot. However, she is interrupted by the doorbell. She opens the door and finds Zach. Hera is not interested in meeting Zach and asks him to leave. Zach again tries to force himself on her and reveals that he wants to continue having sex with her. At this, Hera confronts Zach and states loudly that her present state is Zach’s doing. Zach gaslights her and insults her by calling her a ‘slu*t’ who is “trying to whor* her way to the top of the corporate ladder.” When Zach starts making fun of her inability to take care of the job, the relationship, and the plant, Hera fights back and punctures his chest with the splinter. Zach dies, and Hera buries his body in her backyard.

The next day both Hera and Corey apologize to each other. Hera gives Corey the support that she needs and also asks her that she should not allow anybody to touch her without her permission. Both of them go to the backyard, and Hera shows Corey the poppy plant that has grown, perhaps at the patch underneath which Zach is buried. Corey spots the tree man again and asks Hera if they are safe. However, Hera looks a lot more comfortable now, even with the tree man around. Demi joins them, and the film ends with them looking over the tree man who now looks pacified and a lot less malevolent.

Why is Hera so attached to the plant?

Hera’s obsession with the plant correlates with her obsession with the consumption of contraceptive pills. Perhaps Hera did not want to part ways with the possibility of having a child. Therefore, her psychological desire for mothering is displaced onto the poppy plant, which she names Grace.

As is readable from her conversation with Demi, the plant made her forget not only about the traumatic relationship with Zach but also about the abortion. She says, “She made me feel like nothing bad had ever happened.”

What is the tree man, actually?

The tree man is actually the metaphor for the trauma that the job and relationship embed in both Hera’s body and mind.

The first time Hera spots the tree man is also the night when Zach coerces her to have sex. Her anxiety, her inability to come to terms with what had happened, and her deep embarrassment to address the issue result in a deep trauma that she is unaware of. We see Hera sneezing the pollen-laden mucus every time the situation at her office gets tense.

Slowly, with the workplace turning more unbearable and Zach revealing his true colors, the tree man becomes her frequent tormentor.

Why do both Hera and Corey see the tree man?

While the tree man can indeed be seen as a figure standing for Hera’s mental decay, things become a little complex when Corey starts with her own experiences and encounters with the tree man. With this detail, mental images of Hera and immediate reality become inseparable.

However, given the fact that Corey herself was subjected to a problematic relationship with her father, with a possibility of him hitting her, as is revealed by Demi, a possible reading at this point for the tree man can be that it stands for the universal and pervasive traumas of women caused by the agents of patriarchy. Corey sees the tree man because she shares her aunt’s experience, although dissimilar in nature, with the patriarchy. Hera’s workplace harassment, ranging from the jibes from Vicky to the unhealthy relationship with Zach, indicates nothing but the far-reaching roots of patriarchy.

The explanation of the film ending with Hera, Demi, and Corey looking at the tree man can be the monstrous presence of patriarchy in the life of all women. The film ends with Corey’s words: “Are we safe?” that largely translates to–are the women safe from the presence of this tree man, aka patriarchy?

Pollen (2023) Movie Theme Explained:

The film Pollen is readily interpretable as an exploration of material rather than supernatural realities. The haunting tree man, more than a supernatural presence, resides in Hera’s head and is a sum of all parts of her traumas induced by her social life, more particularly the life at her unsafe workplace.

Traversing toxic workplaces as women

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a working woman will always be paid less than a man. Although international organizations like ILO have advocated for equal pay and made efforts to instrumentalize their demands, concerted results from all fronts have never been achieved. The ILO and WHO jointly published a report in 2022 titled ‘The Gender Pay Gap in the Health and Care Sector: A Global Analysis in the Time of COVID-19’ on the gender pay gap. Apart from the numerous findings related to the ever-increasing pay gap, the report also stated that the more ‘feminised’ the work is, the lesser the pay. That means the works which are traditionally associated with women are kept underpaid, and women are rarely allowed to rise above that tier.

To that ordeal, one can add the motherhood penalty. The dwindling pay of working mothers accounts for most of the area of the pay gap.

According to the report, after embracing motherhood, most women take a sabbatical from work, a sabbatical which should be their right but turns out to be the main reason behind men leaving them behind in terms of pay. When a woman takes a break, she is neither considered for promotions nor for pay raises, unlike her male colleagues. And this becomes an eternal cycle.

Adding to these is the routine physical, mental, and sexual harassment of women in workplaces. The demands for the redressal of harassment have only increased with time, with no parallel increase in sight of the mechanisms to redress them.

The film gains its thematic material from this issue. The poor state of Hera’s social life, a result of America’s toxic work culture, starts haunting her inner mental condition until it takes the form of a monster. Hera is punished not only for aiming higher than what she is traditionally bound for but also for her motherly desires.

Many such instances underline this. One of the instances can be the conversation between Hera and Zach after the latter deliberately causes embarrassment to the former in the conference room. In the conversation, Zach belittles Hera and suggests that she should take up more ‘womanly’ roles or, worse get married to a rich man.

Hera’s imaginary motherhood exemplifies the real-life motherhood of working women. The price she pays for showing her desire to be a mother is equated with the price that mothers have to pay at their workplace to embrace motherhood.

Read More: Baby Ruby (2022) Movie Ending Explained: What is the reason for Jo’s Paranoia?

Pollen (2023) Movie Trailer

Pollen (2023) Movie Links – IMDb
Pollen (2023) Movie Cast –Ava Rose Kinard, Tyler Buckingham, Leanna Adams

Where to watch Pollen