Want To Understand The Daybreak Finale’s Huge Twist? Read This

Warning: Major spoilers ahead for Netflix’s Daybreak finale, “FWASH-BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!.” 

Daybreak’s extravagantly-titled season 1 finale has everything: a nuclear detonation, a creepy gray arm exploding out of Matthew Broderick’s cannibal madman Baron Von Triumph, and even what appears to be a happy ending. Josh Wheeler (Colin Ford) and Sam Dean (Sophie Simnett) did it — they saved the world. Or at least they saved Glendale. Then the final two minutes of “Boom” come to knock all the air out of your Josh-Sam shipping sails. 

Sam and Josh aren’t meant to ride off into the Daybreak sunset together on the way to a craftsman-style home in Montrose, CA. Instead, they may just be destined to be apocalypse enemies. If you look back over the season, it's a twist that makes perfect sense.

After Josh and Sam defeat Baron and stop his plan to eviscerate Glendale via nuke, Josh assumes he should lay out his plan for a “happily ever after” with Sam. Even Wesley Fists (Austin Crute) agrees, telling Josh, “Stop playing — go get her.” When Josh approaches Sam with his dream, she simply says, “No.” He professes his love for Sam, the girl he fought the apocalypse for, and she shoots him down. “You love this antiquated notion that I’m a damsel needing to be rescued but… that’s not my story,” Sam counters. 

Sam’s story, she says, is taking the power left in the vacuum of Baron’s death, Turbo Bro Jock’s (Cody Kearsley) instability, and her own status as Glendale’s most beloved figure. This is a tale that started the second Josh made Sam a viral do-gooder by posting her compliments video earlier in the school year. If Sam could turn that admiration into social media infamy and a seat as prom queen when the pre-apocalypse world was full of competing distractions, what can she accomplish now in a barren dystopia? 

These are the questions Sam is obviously pondering when she hops up onto a homecoming float to share her vision with the remaining Glendale High School survivors. “These are my people and they need a leader. They need me,” Sam announces. “The apocalypse wasn’t the best thing to happen to you, Josh. It was the best thing to happen to me.” 

Josh is visibly destroyed to see the object of his affection reject him and his short-time grasp on Armageddon leadership so publicly. As half of Glendale bows to Sam and the other half stands with Josh, yet another war seems promised for a prospective season 2.

Multiple scenes over Daybreak’s season 1 run warn this outcome is inevitable. When we first meet Sam, we’re shown how much every student at Glendale High respects her. When Mona Lisa (Jeanté Godlock) needs to perform a political coup, she goes to Sam for help. In the final battle, when the directionless jocks are seconds away from killing Turbo and Wesley, they switch sides just because Sam casually tells them to. Sam holds massive sway over the people of Daybreak. 

While the complexity of Sam may be obvious to viewers, it isn’t so clear to Josh. When Josh and Baron/Barr have their first showdown, Josh criticizes his ex-principal for murdering “decent and kind” Sam (he didn’t, but Josh doesn't know that yet). “Sam Dean was the worst,” Barr says, reminding Josh that Sam would have become an annoyingly persistent life coach in the old world. Daybreak started to try to disabuse Josh of his delusions about Sam as early as its fourth episode. 

The series then spends the entire eighth episode, “Post Mates,” juxtaposing Josh’s naive understanding of Sam with her very evident unbridled desires. The cracks begin to show after Josh and Sam have a disastrous experience in bed for the first time together. Josh believes the awkward encounter is both of their first times having sex. In a subsequent conversation, he learns that isn’t true — Sam has had sex before. Many times, in fact. Josh is heartbroken and upset, demanding to know how many guys Sam slept with before him. Sam is rightly enraged that Josh has such a narrow perception of who she can be. 

Although the teens reconcile, they have one more gigantic argument before “Post Mates” ends. Josh's dad died during the episode's sexy hijinks. Josh missed the calls about the family emergency because he was too busy staring at Sam. When Josh finds out about the tragedy, he blames Sam for distracting him and calls her a slut. Sam leaves heartbroken and heads to school to prepare for her homecoming duties. There, she cries over the fact the one person she believed actually knew her doesn’t know her at all — and he called her a horrible name to boot. 

After Sam wipes her tears away, she busies herself by creating the Sam Dean everyone expects. She quickly becomes the girl with perfect blonde waves, dry eyes, and curled lashes. As a finishing touch, Sam puts on the homecoming crown that the world so wants her to wear. When Sam takes in her regal reflection, she smiles — not for her adoring public or to hide her sadness, but because she likes what she sees. Sam likes being queen and the power that position holds.

We later see Sam beaming beneath a cardboard homecoming float crown in the finale shot of Daybreak season 1. The scene is a precise echo of her “Post Mates”-ending smirk. Sam Dean was always going to be queen of Daybreak. Josh Wheeler is the only one who didn’t get the memo.