This article contains major spoilers for the Bigfoot Family ending.
Bigfoot Family, the three-years-in-the-making sequel to 2017’s Son of Bigfoot, is a decent animated family film that is unfortunately mired by a second-half that descends into non-stop action territory, muddying some of the film’s earlier ideas and themes. But there’s still some plot going on in all that chaos, so it’s worth unpacking what happened all the same.
The plot of this sequel revolves around Bigfoot trying to use his sudden celebrity to fight the good fight in Alaska’s Rocky Valley, which unfortunately sits on a rich vein of crude oil that the nefarious and aptly-named energy company Xtract are hoping to… well, extract, without any thought spared for the people or animals of the valley itself. In fact, the big extraction plan involves the detonation of a giant bomb dubbed “Big Daddy”, which will crack open the valley itself and allow a river of oil to flow freely through it.
The Bigfoot Family ending begins, really, with Adam, his mother Shelly, and his father Bigfoot all finally being reunited after spending most of the movie apart. The stakes are clear. Mandrake and his duplicitous henchman Arlo are waiting for Big Daddy’s detonation, and Adam hasn’t yet managed to upload his documented evidence to the news networks, letting them know what Xtract are up to in the valley. By the time our heroes are able to escape via mine cart and plunge into a raging river, Adam has lost his phone right on the cusp of an upload, and while Bigfoot managed to destroy Arlo’s fleet of drones, they scarcely have time to escape the valley before the bomb goes off.
But Adam isn’t having that. Using his own superpowers, which seem to be primarily big, hairy feet, somehow ideal for running, he sprints to Big Daddy and is able to disarm it with a second remaining. But that isn’t enough. Mandrake and Arlo plan to trigger the detonation by tossing a smaller fracking bomb — topical! — into the shaft, but that scheme is thwarted by Wilbur and Trapper, who arrive in the camper in the nick of time to intercept their golf cart. Bigfoot is able to swipe the smaller bomb out of midair and toss it high enough that its detonation doesn’t harm the environment, though it is visible to the news crews who are at that moment arriving via helicopter.
After Mandrake and Arlo are left drowning in the very same oil they coveted so much by the local wildlife, Bigfoot’s celebrity pull gets the valley enough attention that the government takes action to protect it, ensuring there will be no more drilling there in the future. Bigfoot, obviously, gives all the credit to Adam, who is finally able to get his girl. Perhaps his teenage years are looking up after all.
