When it comes down to it there’s actually a very simple structure the movie presents to us about what’s going on. I’ll get into more comprehensive discussion later on, but the core events can be stated as the following:

1.) Cage enters the Mimic hive "nervous system" and becomes a reset trigger, “replacing” the Alpha he kills. His past self of 24 hours earlier has his memories “restored” (which he recalls once he wakes up from sleep instead of the Mimic Brain). This continues as long as the loop chain he triggered continues undisrupted.

2.) Cage loses control of the ability to trigger “resets” due to blood transfusion.

3.) Cage kills the Omega and absorbs its blood, “replacing” it in the “network”. His past self of 24 hours earlier is “restored” with future memories (which he recalls once he wakes up from sleep). This disruption incapacitates or kills the Omega and/or Brain, in some way inducing an “energy surge”, which as General Brigham describes, collapses “the enemy’s capacity to fight “, allowing troops to advance “without resistance”.

In essence, like he did with the Alpha, at the end of the movie Cage “replaces” the Brain/Omega in the Mimic “nervous system”, which is rendered incapacitated or dead at the point of reset in the past (which is 24 hours earlier than the moment of Alpha death), resulting in the ending we see. This occurs with an Alpha because it gets disconnected from the “network”, blocked by the hijacking human, and at the very least is incapacitated (but without the flow of energy from the Omega through the Mimic’s “Wi-Fi-like” connection, perhaps an Alpha quickly dies). Likewise, if the blocked connection happens at the Omega connection point, the entire hoard suffers this fate since the Omega is in a way the “heart” or power source of the Mimic hive organism.

To expound on this further, there are some basic rules that can be derived from what we see in the film, along with descriptions of the organisms that we can glean, and a timeline that can be established. After addressing those items I’ll then get into more detailed, and at times speculative, exposition, but the next few sections are direct observations and conclusions about the movie, which may or may not be disputable.

Rules Established Or Hinted At By The Movie

1. A “reset” is really just the transmission of information about previous “loops” in a chain via Mimic blood
2. A “looper’s” place in the Omega’s “nervous system” is maintained after each “reset” via Mimic blood
3. The Omega’s initial reset anchor point is approximately 24 hours into the past
4. A “reset” requires an active Omega (or hijacker) as well as its past version of 24 hours earlier
5. As long as loops are chained for the same Alpha entity the initial reset point is fixed
6. If a new Alpha dies a new reset anchor point is established
7. Humans enter the Mimic “nervous system” if they die while saturated in Mimic blood
8. Once a human hijacks the Omega’s reset ability a new loop chain cannot be started
9. Humans can only process the memory transmission while in an unconscious or sleeping state
10. Humans exit the Mimic “nervous system” if they bleed out or receive a blood transfusion

A note about item 2 above: clearly human loopers retain the ability to trigger temporal “resets” even after waking up in the past, and yet we’re also clearly shown that they do not physically time travel to the past. The movie doesn’t explain this, but if we take a cue from the book All You Need Is Kill (which describes the “reset” as a tachyon beam to the past) we could posit that Mimic blood is comprised of tachyons (or some other magical sci-fi component that allow a connection to the Omega), and that upon death these tachyons blip 24 hours into the past version of the same host, which allows a connection to the Omega of 24 hours earlier. This process produces two outcomes: 1. it’s the mechanism of transport for the memories that are received, and 2. it sustains the host’s connection to the Brain/Omega as well as the ability to trigger temporal resets.

Mimic Organism Types

Drones: the standard Mimic, acting like the “claws”, hands, eyes, etc. or in other words the extremities of the Mimic organism. The grunts of the hive, each one routes through an Alpha, then to the Brain.

Tech Equivalent: peripherals connected to the CPU via Wi-Fi that manipulate the environment.

Alphas: more powerful claws that also act as the Brain’s “central nervous system”, i.e. its sense of touch, relaying input from all Drones that route through it to the Brain. When an Alpha dies the Brain feels it via an impulse, which triggers a “reset” by the Omega. There is 1 Alpha per 6.18 million Drones.

Tech Equivalent: more powerful peripherals with environment sensors.

Brain: the mind of the hive. Not sentient, but the cognitive function controlling the hive, a “highly evolved virus-like world-conquering organism”. The Brain controls all facets of the Mimic hive and stores its memories. When a reset is initiated by the Omega, the Tachyon Blood in the Brain is sent back to itself 24 hours earlier. The Brain also exists as an outer structure that houses and protects the Omega within it.

Tech Equivalent: CPU, RAM and hard drive on a distributed network interfacing with peripherals.

Omega: the heart. The source of Tachyon Blood, the Mimic life force, the power source. The Omega is not itself cognizant, but it facilitates a temporal restore of the Brain when an Alpha death alarm occurs. It does this by transporting the Tachyon Blood in the Brain to the past, bringing its memories along with it.

Note: I suspect the Omega of the past facilitates the resets, pulling the Brain’s Tachyon Blood to the past (and memories with it), doing so through the Omega of the present (which relays the reset alarm). Like a time travel device, the Omega exists at both ends of the temporal stream (although a Trojan can intervene).

Tech Equivalent: power supply with self-sustaining battery backup, with an automated recovery system hard-coded into it that kicks off programmatically when an alarm is triggered.

Other Terminology

The next two terms are not found in the movie, but are what I’m using to establish common references.

Tachyon Blood: the medium with which communication occurs between Mimics on the same hive “network”, and how memories are transported back in time to the past Brain when an Alpha dies. This substance can move backwards in time due to its tachyon component, effectively implementing a temporal reset.

Tech Equivalent: wiring, circuitry, LAN/WAN, internet, Wi-Fi, etc.

Trojan: a foreign interloper who kills an Alpha or the Omega and absorbs its Tachyon Blood. In doing so, the Trojan is confused for the Brain and an Alpha by the Omega, effectively controlling the reset ability. Because the Trojan has its own human brain, the Tachyon Blood in his/her system creates a connection to the Mimic “nervous system” that bypasses the Mimic Brain and directly connects to the Omega in a way that also intercepts Alpha death alerts, meaning the Omega will reset only the Trojan for as long he/she remains in control.

Tech Equivalent: a trojan virus that hijacks communications and redirects it for purposes of identity theft

Basic Timeline

The below outline merges events from the first and intermediary loops alongside the final timeline to provide correlation. Notice the 5:40am 24-hour correlation between the Omega death both on Day 1 and 2.

Day 1

• 05:40am – The Omega dies, having been killed 24 hours in the future on Day 2
• 08:40am - Cage arrives in London on the helicopter/wakes up after killing Omega
• 08:57am - The General describes the energy surge and how the enemy’s capacity to fight collapsed
• 09:00am - Cage talks to the General, ticks him off, gets demoted
• 10:00am - Cage wakes up on the duffle bags
• XX:XXxm - A variety of things happen during the afternoon of the first day

Day 2

• 05:40am - Cage kills the Omega (just before dawn of Day 2)
• 09:00am - Beach battle/Cage kills Alpha and dies
• XX:XXxm - Other events occur after/instead of the beach battle

Note that we see Big Ben when the helicopter flies by and it displays 8:40am as the time. We also see 8:57am on the large screen when the General is describing the events of that morning after the Omega dies. The General later tells Cage that he’s to report in an hour for Operation Downfall, which puts that time at around 10am. When Cage kills the Omega at the end its just before dawn, and the energy signature the General mentions in the newscast at the end occurred “just before dawn”, so I estimate these events at around 5:40am.

This timeline establishes the furthest back in time the Omega can “reset” as about 24 hours, both events being “just before dawn”. The sergeant mentions that Cage is to be “combat ready” at 6am the next day, and we see that it’s 6am as they go through a period of equipment checks. The soldiers then fall into formation and start staging, then load up on the helicopters. It’d take about an hour and a half to fly to France’s beaches, so by the time they get to the drop point I’d estimate the time at around 9am U.K. time (10am France time).

Along with humans only being able to process the data transmission to the past while unconscious, this suggests that for the Mimic organism a reset occurs 24 hours into the past each time an Alpha is killed. This in turn suggests that this is how it works for humans as well. However, because humans can’t become aware of the transmission until they’re in an unconscious state, their “reset” point is delayed until they wake up from that state, at which time they remember the previous loops as if they’d seen them in a precognitive dream.

End Sequence

There’s been questions about the sequence of events surrounding the Omega’s death. Here they are:

1. Alpha impales Cage
2. Grenade cluster floats into an opening in the Omega
3. Cage opens hand and grenade pins float out
4. Grenade cluster explodes, causing the Omega to produce an energy surge that fries the Alpha
5. Omega then vibrates, convulses and flashes until it explodes with a massive energy burst
6. The Mimics above ground are fried in the Omega's shock wave, along with the Brain
7. Omega blood saturates Cage, glowing as it touches him, his eyes open (pitch black)
8. Cage wakes up on the helicopter, the Omega of Day 1 having died several hours earlier

The initial grenade blast disrupts the Omega, preventing a reset when the smaller energy burst it gives off fries the nearby Alpha, and initiating an internal chain reaction that causes the Omega to convulse, produce several rapid pulses, and blow up. Cage, still barely alive, absorbs the Omega’s blood. The blood appears to move under its own volition, attracted to Cage. This invokes the idea that perhaps the Mimic “life force”, so to speak, is as much in the blood as the body, but that’s speculative conjecture (an interesting side note).

Brief Explanation Of Ending

Since when an Alpha is hijacked it gets “blocked” from the "network", the same happens with the Omega, except the Omega being "disconnected" is bad news for the whole organism (since it's the central power source and method of communication), which is why they all go "brain-dead" (i.e. they can no longer communicate, and since the Alphas and drones are merely the hands, eyes and nervous system controlled by the Brain everything goes dark for the Mimic organism without its power source, it's heart, i.e. the Omega).

So the Omega (of Cage's past) initiates a reset, and like with an Alpha hijacking Cage's brain gets restored to his past self. The Omega, however, is screwed. It's now cut off from its entire hoard (just like an Alpha is when Cage hijacks an Alpha). Therefore, 24 hours prior to Cage killing the Omega the hive's network crashes (since it's power source in effect gets unplugged) and all the Mimics become paperweights, easy pickin's. Basically, the Mimic Brain goes brain-dead since the Omega, the heart, is no longer powering it with Mimic blood.

There's no reason to think there's an actual explosion in the past, although it's possible. The energy surge could just be the Omega freaking out that it's lost its connection to everything, or perhaps it's some kind of feedback loop that occurs when the Mimic blood in Cage is pulled back to the past. We can't know for sure, but it really doesn't matter. The Omega and/or Brain of the past may not blow up. It may simply lose its connection to the "network" just like an Alpha does during a hijacking (although, we could posit that losing that connection causes it to freak out and explode, but again that's speculation and ultimately isn't an important detail).

Detailed Explanation

Tachyon blood, which “flows” from the Omega (the heart) links everything in the Mimic “network”. Tachyon blood is like Mimic Wi-Fi (Wi-Fi that fills Mimics as “blood”), carrying information in the form of experiential memories from the peripherals back through the Omega and into the Brain (and vice versa). When a human kills an Alpha and is saturated with its Tachyon Blood, he/she gets infused with it and becomes a Trojan on the Mimic hive’s “network”, impersonating an Alpha. The Alpha that died can no longer connect back at the reset point (24 hours earlier than when it was killed and “hijacked” by the Trojan), incapacitating or killing it.

The Omega confuses a Trojan brain with the Mimic Brain, and the human body as an Alpha. When the human body dies, an Alpha death alert is triggered. The Omega, the “organ” that controls Tachyon Blood, sends the blood (and the memories/data stored in the Brain/brain it flows through) to the Brain/brain of the same host 24 hours earlier. Because of this, once hijacked, the Omega (which can’t think for itself) restores the human brain instead of the Mimic Brain. The initial hijacking process requires the human to have some semblance of brain function during the infusion, moments before death, a very specific and rarely occurring circumstance.

In addition, once hijacked by a Trojan another Alpha dying won’t initiate a new reset chain, where under normal circumstances it would (meaning normally if another Alpha dies while one Alpha’s series of resets is occurring, a new series is started). But the Trojan (if human) has the unique ability to fully take control of the process (maybe it has something to do with the human brain), intercepting death alerts from other Alphas (i.e. for purposes of receiving reset alerts, the human brain takes full control and the Mimic Brain stops receiving them). The Brain knows the Omega issues a reset but doesn’t retain this knowledge (since it’s not restored).

Eventually, however, it becomes obvious to the Mimic Brain that it doesn’t have control when it detects that the enemy is winning with consecutive improbable actions within a single loop (meaning when it’s apparent that the enemy is suddenly getting VERY lucky with nearly every action it takes). Additionally, since the Trojan blocks resets by other Alphas, eventually an Alpha might die without a reset, which would also let the Mimic Brain know that it’s no longer in control. It’s evolved a response for this that it can take advantage of (by luring the enemy into a false sense of confidence) and starts sending false location signals in the hopes that the Trojan will go to that location and try to kill the Brain/Omega. Once the false Brain/Alpha Trojan is bled out, the Mimic hive can then proceed to wipe out the enemy, having tricked them into one big confrontation.

So why does the Day 1 Omega die (or become incapacitated) when Day 2 version dies?

The simple answer is that whenever a Mimic is hijacked, Alpha or Brain/Omega, it’s rendered incapacitated or dead at the point of reset (meaning 24 hours prior to the initial hijacking event). The movie doesn’t specifically explain this, but the ending itself along with everything else we see implies it. We never see the Alpha again on the beach once Cage hijacks it (however, we could also conclude that it’s just never shown again since the movie doesn’t specifically make a point to tell us the Alpha should be somewhere and isn’t in subsequent pass-throughs). However, if Cage hijacks the Omega in similar fashion it’s consistent with this rule, and fully explains the ending (we still need to concoct a reason for the energy surge if we want something specific, but suffice it to say it’s the result of the Brain/Omega being hijacked and disconnected from the “network”).

Basically, the Brain/Omega of Day 1 becomes incapacitated or dead at the point of reset due to the Brain/Omega of Day 2 being hijacked, with the reset triggered by Cage’s death and processed by the Day 1 Omega.

Additional Thoughts

Every time an Alpha death alert is detected by the Mimic Brain the present-day Omega relays the signal to the Omega of 24 hours earlier, which facilitates a reset. If an Alpha is hijacked by a Trojan the death alert bypasses the Mimic Brain (the present-day Omega confuses the Trojan’s brain for the Mimic Brain). Likewise, if the Omega is hijacked the Omega of the past confuses the Trojan with the present-day Omega (which is dead).

This is good news for the human Trojan because he/she then resets (since the Omega of the past confused him/her as an Alpha, as well as the Brain). In the movie this might explain why Cage appears to be suddenly revived right before he resets (perhaps after just dying). The Omega is connecting to the Tachyon Blood in his system, in his brain, etc. which produces an involuntary physiological response in the body.

Normally (without a hijacking), with its connection to the future Omega severed, no further resets would occur and the Omega would be dead (in the present). But unlike with an Alpha hijacking, there now is no Omega of the future, and the imposter, whose brain it just downloaded to the past, is dead as well. The Omega of the past in essence just sent the future Omega’s active blood into the past, and its signature along with it. Perhaps this circumstance creates a kind of feedback loop for the Omega of the past (now present) that culminates in the energy burst General Brigham states was detected in Paris just before dawn.

Like with an Alpha hijacking, the hijacked Omega of the past at the point of reset 24 hours earlier is rendered incapacitated or dead. We can only speculate as to the exact mechanism that results in this, but if Alphas are incapacitated due to losing their connection to the Brain/Omega, it stands to reason the same thing would happen with the Omega of the past losing its ability to connect to its future self, and just as importantly to the Brain and Mimics of its present (i.e. the entire hive is cut off from its blood/power source).

Because a final reset occurs with the Trojan, this is now the new present and the next 24 hours will be rewritten just like any other “loop” or “reset”. In addition, with the Brain/Omega incapacitated or dead, the Mimic hoard experiences “a total collapse” of its “capacity to fight “, as the General conveys in the newscast which allows troops to advance “without resistance”. Humans win easily, and Cage remembers everything.

Is Cage Now An Omega?

So can Cage still reset at the end of the movie? When he dies of old age 50 years from now will he yet again wake up in the helicopter and relive the next 50 years over again (unless he decides to end it early)? No.

The Omega is incapacitated or dead, and resets can only occur when there’s an Omega (or Trojan), which exists in both past and present (that’s how it “time-jumps” the memories). Think of it like a teleportation device designed to beam information back in time. That same device must exist at each end, with a present version and a past version that can temporally entangle. Additionally, Tachyon Blood is like Mimic Wi-Fi, each Omega like a device on a network. Although the Omega of the past confuses a Trojan with the Omega of its future (the Trojan’s present) when he/she hijacks its blood, a human cannot directly facilitate resets. A “reset” (i.e. the transmission of memories) requires an available Omega connection between past and present.

In other words, the Omega “heart” is the power source for the hive. Humans cannot serve that function.

Are “Resets” Instantaneous?

With the exception of when the nearby Alpha dies shortly before the Omega is killed we can presume that the looper isn’t quite dead yet in other scenes in the movie (e.g. when the initial Alpha dies, when Cage rolls under the jeep and gets run over, etc.) to explain the slight delay we observe. With the Omega death scene we can also speculate that the grenades scramble its ability to facilitate resets (i.e. send information to the past) and so a reset doesn’t happen when the nearby Alpha gets fried. But even in general there’s probably a delay.

We must consider the possibility that it takes a few seconds for the “reset” process to complete to fruition. The process requires a signal to be sent to the Brain, which then activates the Omega to perform and complete it's time warp function, which sends the blood, or whatever mechanism "beams" memories/information, 24 hours to the past (from the Brain back to its earlier self in the case of an Alpha death, from a human back to his/herself in the case of a hijacker since they’ve intercepted the Brain), thus creating a brief window of opportunity.

Does Time Continue On After A “Reset”?

For movie purposes, no. As far as the movie cares once Cage loops to the past the future he was in ceases to exist. In one school of thought the future is always already there (e.g. Google "block universe" for details on this). In a variation of this concept that allows for free will that future is in a constant state of flux, detected as probability waves, changing states based on what happens in its relative past (with the most probable future taking shape as decisions are made). The future from the perspective of an observer “travelling normally” along Time’s Arrow only appears as if it’s not there yet simply because he/she hasn’t experienced it yet and recorded it as a memory. But it is in fact already there, like a train track the observer is travelling down for the first time, time’s “track” (i.e. the events within it) already exists. If the observer hits a loop in the track and decides to loop around again, the relative future is familiar because he/she has experienced it before.

In addition, time is relative between observers, not absolute. To everyone but Cage only the final version of the event string in the loop occurs. They never experience the other versions of the loop. Only Cage does. So as Cage receives memories from the future each time (kind of like a premonition), he tries different actions. Only as he alters his actions does the relative future change, and only events his actions specifically affect are changed. In this way, there is not an instantaneous "reset". There isn't truly a "reset" at all. It just appears to be a "reset" for the person looping. From a "god's-eye" view, it's merely a loop-de-loop on the timeline that circles around a few hundred times sequentially before continuing on in linear time.

Multiverse vs. Single Linear Timeline

Does what we observe in the film denote or even require a multiverse or multi-timeline structure or model? It does not based on what we we’re shown. Each time Cage wakes up in the past he does so in an identical past. It's never different, meaning the past he wakes up in has an entire history that's identical each and every time. And he experiences these sequentially. This sequential accumulation of loops by Cage all sharing identical histories leads us to the irrefutable conclusion that what we’re looking at in the movie is a linear timeline with looping branches that are only created as the result of changes to the past, i.e. this is not a multiverse.

If a multiverse or universal branching multi-timeline were being portrayed (meaning with every array of probabilities starting at the beginning of time with the big bang, everything that can happen does happen, each in their separate branch throughout all of time), each time Cage woke up in the past circumstances would be arbitrarily and randomly different. He might wake up on the duffle bags to find that the Alphas glowed orange instead of blue. He might wake up to find that his mother’s name was Norma instead of Lucy. Or he might wake up in an entirely different situation altogether. He might even wake up as a 10 year old girl in China.

Furthermore, the very theories that posit multiverses require that nothing pass between them, obliterating the concept of preventing paradoxes by travelling to the past of a parallel universe. In the Hugh Everett Many Worlds conception, for example, once a universe splits they can never interact. In fact, no Many Worlds interpretation of quantum uncertainty allows universes to interact. Any scenario that depicts a person or information going back in time into a different universe violates this fundamental principle, even though it’s been used in science fiction many times. Only the recent Many Interacting Worlds concept would allow information exchange.

The fact that the Omega’s ability is wholly dependent upon a consistent accumulation of knowledge of identical past event strings tells us that we're looking at a single linear timeline that only branches as the result of a loop, that those loops are finite, and that they overlay each other sequentially, with the most “recent” one in the relative flow of time (since all loops are chained together) becoming the current state every observer recognizes as the only state of the event string, other than the looper who recalls all event strings in the various causal loops he/she has participated in, and who remembers them in the sequential order that they occurred for him/her. There’s no doubt it’s a linear timeline, just one that can loop back around onto itself.

Does this mean that each of those branches has their own future stretching forward into eternity? No. Beyond a closed loop there is only a single linear timeline. An abandoned loop has a future that only spans forward as far as the difference between its starting point and the amount of time that’s passed for a given looper. And this “extra” amount of time on the timeline has a finite existence since it’s not experienced by the looper. Meaning, certain details of the future that exist beyond the moment information is transported into the past are replaced and are gone forever for all observers, including the looper, once the looper traverses the span of time that meets the previous point of departure into the past. Altered details from prior loops get overwritten permanently for all observers when the looper lives back up to that same point in time, changed or otherwise, and beyond.

In other words, the future doesn’t change to accommodate alterations to dependent events in the past until the previous loop is closed (i.e. once the looper returns to his/her loopback starting point). Additionally, the future beyond a given loop chain isn’t set until all loops in that chain are closed (i.e. the looper stops looping), which means that once information is sent to the past, instigating the possibility of changes, all possible futures open back up again and only solidify as decisions are made as Time’s Arrow marches along again.

It’s Just A Game

Despite all the pseudo-scientific speculation on how “Edge Of Tomorrow” might translate into reality, the filmmakers have stated that the concept actually loosely revolves around how a video game functions, with a save point reloading upon the death of the character. In this light we can look at the Omega’s operating procedure as a brute-force code-cracking algorithm that responds to certain trigger events. If an Alpha dies, the save data is sent back 24 hours and the “game” is reloaded back to the state of things at that previous point in time.

Although this computer algorithm isn’t sentient, it does have a set of programmed triggered responses and can see all possible combinations (sets of actions) required to crack the code, so it tries a slightly different combination again and again until it moves forward in time. In this way it cannot fail because it quite literally has all the time in the world to get it right. Enter: the human factor. Humans have a biology that are uniquely capable of interfering with the Omega’s operating procedure, or algorithm. Ironically, they can “mimic” an Alpha and the Brain on the Mimic “network”, effectively taking over as the “player” of the “game”.

The Mimic organism has evolved a defense even for this. If the successful forward progression of previous loops is undermined and/or an Alpha death alert is triggered without the Omega initiating a reset, this indicates to the programming of the Mimic Brain that something is wrong and that the current imposter “Alpha” must be neutralized. It cannot be killed, however, because that would merely initiate another reset, so this triggers the Brain to send a false memory to the imposter about the location of the Omega with a subsequent set of actions designed to bleed the false Alpha out, allowing it to regain control of the “game controller”.

It’s implied in the movie that this mechanism is utilized by the Omega to lure the hijacker of the “game controller”, so to speak, into a false sense of hope, and that this is what it did with Rita (she says they were “allowed to win” at Verdun), providing her control so that humanity would get a taste of some victory so that they would be bolstered into mounting a major offensive under the impression that they could succeed. The intent of this evolved programming is to bait the enemy into gathering all its forces into one location so that they can then be slaughtered. Of course, this requires the Brain/Omega to regain control of its ability.

This seems risky. Why would it attempt to expedite the inevitable success it would achieve using its normal reset procedure with such a risky move? Why does it need to win in 100,000 loops instead of 1 million? Perhaps this is false speculation by the characters, but the film presents this information to us with confidence. We can only theorize, but it implies that the Mimic organism is operating within the parameters of a limited timeframe and must therefore bring the battle to a close. In other words, although it could conceivably take all of eternity to win the war, for some reason it needs, or has evolved or is programmed to attempt victory sooner. That reason could involve some form of storage capacity limitation of the Brain (i.e. how long it can sustain a single loop thread before data starts to get overwritten, or before fatigue and/or confusion sets in.