Laundry and Taxes--Why We Should be More Like Waymond Wang

When I first watched this movie, I was expecting to cry about the mother-daughter relationship. Not this.

I've seen Everything Everywhere All At Once two times now, and I've enjoyed everything about it. It's an absurdist sci-fi multiverse movie that somehow captures the immigrant experience while also being a metaphor for ADHD, depression, and an exploration of the depths of nihilism. Yet instead of making me want to walk into the Everything Bagel like the journal articles I read for uni, it somehow presents this in an engaging, funny, and poignant way.

The movie stars Evelyn, a middle-aged, burnt-out laundromat owner in a failing marriage with her husband Waymond, a goofball who seemingly has his head in the clouds. I'm not even gonna lie, Evelyn is kind of the villain of this movie as well as the protagonist. She beefs with Waymond for trying to add some light into their lives, even if it's by sticking googly eyes everywhere. And she asks her daughter Joy, a lesbian, to hide her relationship from her super old-fashioned father, Gong-Gong, while giving her snide comments about her appearance and lack of success every five seconds.

Yup, that's an immigrant parent for you.

But what makes Evelyn sympathetic despite her unlikability is the amount of stress she's under. Her laundromat is failing due to its messed-up taxes (partially caused by Evelyn writing off her fleeting hobbies as business expenses, which is the most neurodivergent-coded thing ever). When she was younger, she eloped with Waymond in China against the wishes of her father, who thought Waymond was a lowlife. Now struggling in America with a failing business and wayward daughter, Evelyn wonders whether her choice was a mistake, and what her life would have been like if she had chosen differently.

Good thing a hotter, more alpha version of her husband shows up to give her the key to the multiverse.

I'm not kidding, he's literally called Alpha Waymond.

According to Alpha Waymond, this is the worst timeline, a la Community. Because of that, she's the one most equipped to stop Jobu Tupaki, an alternate universe of Joy. In the universe that discovered timeline hopping, the Alpha universe, Alpha Evelyn pushed Alpha Joy so hard that her mind split across timelines like W.D. Gaster. Which, as an immigrant kid, is pretty relatable. I, too, have been pushed so hard academically that my mind almost split across time and space. Now calling herself Jobu Tupaki, she jumps between Joy's in different universes to wreak havoc. Turns out, when you see everything everywhere all at once, you stop caring about anything. Evelyn is tasked with stopping her.

Through universe hopping, Evelyn learns that she could have been a kung-fu movie star, a blind opera singer, or even in a lesbian relationship in a universe where people have hot-dogs for fingers, the latter of which is clearly the best reality. Through seeing all the possibilities of what her life could have been, Evelyn begins to grow increasingly apathetic about everything, including her marriage to Waymond. Each universe diverges from a different point, but one of the ones closest to Evelyn's current timeline is one where she never got married to Waymond at all.

This scene is a bit complicated to explain, so let me set up the different timelines that are going on. There's the main timeline, where Evelyn is fighting a bunch of time travel agents, including an Alpha timeline version of her father, who wants her to kill Joy/Jobu. She suddenly crashes out because Jobu Tupaki introduced her to ✨NIHILISM✨, and decides to stab Waymond, who did nothing wrong, mind you. Then there's the sub-timeline, a timeline almost identical to the main one, except Evelyn peacefully went home after her tax meeting instead of throwing hands. There she is also crashing out, ruining her laundromat's Chinese New Year Party by roasting Waymond, bringing down the mood by pointing out how pointless life is, and getting arrested for physically assaulting her tax agent (would not recommend). The third timeline is the kung-fu movie star timeline, which is a split-off timeline where Evelyn did not elope with Waymond and somehow got recruited by a kung-fu guru and chose to get that bag. Here, she meets Waymond, who is super successful in this timeline as well, and instead of crashing out, decides to make a move on him.

If that made no sense, give me a break. This movie is really convoluted.

In the movie star timeline, after getting rejected, Evelyn tells him it's probably for the best that they never got together in this timeline. She says to his face that if they had gotten married, they would have lived a boring life of doing laundry and taxes together. Which--wow, that's kind of crazy. But at least she didn't stab him this time.

In the sub-timeline, while Evelyn was dissociating, Waymond somehow talked the tax agent into dropping the charges and giving them one more chance to sort out their taxes. As the cops free her from her handcuffs, Evelyn, bewildered, asks how this is even possible. Waymond tearfully replies, “I don't know. I just talked to her.” She looks on in amazement as Waymond gently sweeps up the glass from the window she broke, singing a song to himself peacefully.

In the main timeline, despite being stabbed by his wife, he still stands in front of her as a shield and tearfully begs everyone to stop fighting. This universe's Waymond has just been dragged from fight scene to fight scene with no clue what the hell is going on, except for the fact that his wife claims she's been seeing different timelines and that she'd be better off if they had never gotten married. Ouch. He reasons that everyone else must also be fighting because they're also scared and don't know what's going on or what to do. But he insists they must all be kind.

Going back to the movie star timeline, Waymond asks Evelyn if she thinks he's weak as he lights a cigarette, which is more of a rhetorical question if anything. Evelyn has made her contempt for Waymond's soft, happy-go-lucky ways no secret. She feels like, because of his incompetence, she has to be the ‘hard’ one who fixes everything, and resents this. Waymond shares that when they were first dating, her father thought he was too sweet to be of any good. He doesn't deny this. He points out that Evelyn says they live in a cruel world, and that she's the one who has to fight for them. He knows that; he's not naive. But he insists that his way of seeing the world, optimism, is his way of fighting. When Waymond chooses to see the bright side of things and chooses to be kind, this is not born of naivete, but a strategic choice. The world is cruel, so it would be easier for him to lean into despair. But instead, every day he makes the hard choice to put out light into the world, even if it's seen as silly by others. That is how he survives.

In the main timeline, Evelyn deems that it is too late to be kind, but Waymond insists she shouldn't say that. Hesitantly, she holds his hand, and gets flooded by memories of Waymond: when they first dated, when they first opened up the laundromat, and just him goofing around. Love floods Evelyn's expression (and tears flood my eyes). Waymond is so shocked by her expression that he looks behind him, before coming to the realization that his prickly wife is falling in love with him all over again.

Finally, in the movie star timeline, before leaving, Waymond says the famous lines that are the most quoted out of this movie:

“So, even though you've broken my heart yet again…in another life I would have really liked just doing laundry and taxes with you.”

Cue the waterworks.

Lastly, in the sub-timeline, Evelyn looks lovingly at Waymond sweeping the glass. She gets up and gives him a big hug, which makes him burst into tears.

I confess, every time I've seen this scene, I've cried. Which is a problem because both times I've watched this movie, I've been on a plane. Even rewatching the scene by itself for writing this article had me crying. But why this scene? Why not the scene where Evelyn reconciles with Joy, which resonates way more with my experiences? It turns out, this scene resonated with me emotionally in a way I didn't expect.

I'm sure a lot of us, growing up, were seen as overly sensitive like Waymond is, especially if we grew up in cultures where people are expected to be more stoic or only show one set of emotions. Growing up, everyone seemed to treat my sensitivity as purely a weakness, and it was seen as my responsibility to toughen up and harden myself to survive like everyone else. Emotions were something that you had to put aside in order to do real, important things. Getting too happy or too sad about things was just a liability.

But this belief is profoundly unfair. If you think about it, sensitive people have to wake up every day feeling everything everywhere all at once, and still have to function like regular people. With all the bad in the world, it is even easier for sensitive folks to fall into despair and nihilism. Like Jobu Tupaki, when you're experiencing everything everywhere all at once, it's too easy to get overwhelmed by all the darkness of the world and to just want all the pain to end. But so many sensitive people, like Waymond Wang, still get up every day and deliberately fight for the little good they see in the world. They may cry, glue googly eyes everywhere, or act in ways others may see as silly or unimportant. But people like Waymond Wang are what make the world go round. Waymond was the one who stopped the big fight, and he was the one who ultimately saved the laundromat. He was the one who got Evelyn to care again, which enabled her to save Joy from herself. This isn't as flashy as Evelyn's kung-fu fighting, but these small, mundane, loving kindnesses are what ultimately save everyone. And if you think that's a weakness, you need to rewatch the movie.

This scene, and Waymond's character as a whole, was what really sold the emotional core of the movie to me. It's important for us to see characters like Waymond, especially male characters, because they remind us that in a world that wants us to be harsh and cutthroat, kindness and gentleness are still strengths, not weaknesses. In a world where nearly everything's awful and makes no sense, if nothing truly matters, then there's no point in being unkind.