Explaining the ending of Paw Patrol: The Movie

With huge spoilers, we dissect what happens in Paw Patrol: The Movie, and explain some of the film’s many mysteries.

Whilst our website numbers have been doing okay over the past few months, we’ve had the pesky consultants back in, and they’ve told us we’re simply not playing the game. “Clickbait”, they spat at us whilst sipping their posh coffees, the remnants of their morning croissant spilling down their front.

We don’t do that, we patiently explained.

“Then do more of those articles”, they insisted, gesturing at the screen as they prepared their invoice in front of us. We groaned. We knew which they meant. The Powerpoint slide whirred into ghoulish action, as a kaleidoscope of ‘ending explained’ ideas and ‘trailer breakdowns’ and exclusives based on movie spoilers danced before our eyes.

The next slide showed the graph of the potential web traffic we could get. The one after a slide of a nice caravan in Devon we could afford to visit if we played the game a bit more.

As they made their way out to their posh cars, plotting their next website to ‘improve’, we bit the bullet and bought a ticket for the first film we could find. If that’s what people really want, we sighed, then that’s what we have to do.

Here, then, is an explanation of what happens in The Paw Patrol Movie – which, genuinely, is a better film than you might think – and just what its complex plot points and finale actually mean.

Spoilers lie ahead for Paw Patrol: The Movie. Scroll below Barry The Spoiler Puppy at your peril.

The setup:
A bunch of dogs who live by the seaside head to the big city.

What it means:
Paying no heed to the era where British sitcoms routinely used to decamp from their traditional setting to loftier climes for special episodes (One Foot In The Algarve, Only Fools & Horses: Miami Twice), the underlying subtext of The Paw Patrol Movie is to be happy with your lot. That if you’re a dog that elects to wear clothes, with no sign of an actual owner, nobody will bat an eyelid if you’re by the seaside. If you go to the big city, things will start to fall apart, and somebody will build a sort of rollercoaster thing that’ll go wrong. An important life lesson to ground the film with. Moving on.

 

What happens:
Mayor Humdinger, who has just been returned to office, declares “I’m an unqualified elected official”, and wears a hat.

What it means:
We have to accept that some films exist on the surface only. That there are moments in movies that academics pore over, looking for some subtle subtext as to just what a film is getting at. But try as we might, we could see no such underlying message with the character of Mayor Humdinger, and we really think people need to stop trying to read things into characters, when there’s clearly nothing extra there.

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What happens:
Mayor Humdinger is captured by a small drone, that in turn rips his trousers.

What it means:
We’re in an era where automation is taking over, and where machines are being brought in to take on jobs that human beings ordinarily used to do. The animation industry to a degree has been hit by this, and thus we can but assume that the filmmakers were looking to plant a little Easter egg to get the point across.

In more normal times, the Mayor could expect to be picked up and transported in a car. But no. That’s not enough. Just like one of the children who made their way around Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory found, if you keep wanting more, you’ll soon get your comeuppance.

As such, what Mayor Humdinger finds to his sartorial cost is that people matter, and that if you don’t treat them correctly, you have no divine right to your trousers. Furthermore, we learn from the reliance on automation and machines that Mayor Humdinger is not a student of the Terminator movies, and thus we must judge him for that.

What happens:
The one time the dogs urgently need to get somewhere, they’re caught up in a traffic jam. At no other time in the film does this happen.

What it means:
If we overlook the clear talking point the film wisely swerves given the current culture wars taking place in the real world – that of whether dogs should even be allowed to drive in the first place – here’s something we can all relate to. Sure, most of us don’t have tails, wet noses, and a bespoke vehicle that even a top-end footballer couldn’t afford, but that’s not what the film is saying. Instead, it’s putting across the importance of getting a satnav for the car that’s capable of calculating an alternate route in a hurry. Simple. They’ll be dirt cheap on Black Friday, and any self-respecting Paw Patrol member should know that.

 

What happens:
One of the dogs is given a toupee to wear.

What it means:
Honestly no idea.

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What happens:
HUGE SPOILER! There’s a new member of the Paw Patrol by the end of the film, as Liberty is hired for the team. She is given a collar and dog tag as her induction.

What it means:
This is an allegory for ridiculous expectations in job advertisements. How many times have you read a job ad, requiring many years experience and an ability to jump through hoops that no human being – nor canine – could be expected to leap through? What Paw Patrol: The Movie teaches us is something to cherish: sometimes, it doesn’t matter how well you did in your GCSEs. You just need to be able to get a dog out of a traffic jam, and remind them of valuable life lessons.

The collar and dog tag stuff is just a bit odd, though. It’s a bloody kids film FFS.

What happens:
For the big finale of the movie, a bunch of dogs rescue each other as a huge building is destroyed.

What it means:
Well, it’s perfectly obvious what the message is here. Keep your sodding dogs on their lead.

It’s a valid and important issue that The Paw Patrol Movie is exploring here. That if you let your dog wander free, wear silly outfits and drive outlandish vehicles – when the law of the land strictly states you have to keep your hound under control – then woe betide you.

Whoever owns these dogs – that never seem to stop for a shit, or sniff another pooch’s bottom, disappointingly not even in a post-credits sting – is going to have a hefty damages bill to pay. A stark, cautionary tail – arf – for our times.

What happens:
The dogs from Adventure Bay are rewarded for saving each other from burning buildings, by being given the key to Adventure City.

What it means:
This is political correctness gone mad. Here’s a film putting across the message that we should all be rewarded for finishing second! Where characters are rewarded for failure! What a savage satire this film clearly is. Piers is going to be FURIOUS.

Furthermore, the dogs have clearly done a lot more damage than good come the end of the film, like Superman in that film. On top of that, an elected official has had to face the consequences of their actions, considerably distancing Paw Patrol: The Movie from any kind of reality. A very welcome reminder, for those who take these films seriously, that ultimately they’re a work of fiction.

Honestly, we could wrap our heads around the talking mutts, about the film having a device that sucks up clouds, and even accept a huge tanker could hang from a suspension bridge for as long as it took for everyone to get their arse in gear to save it.

But praising someone for trying hard, and not quite achieving their goal? Bullshit. What’s the world coming to.

 

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What happens:
Mayor Humdinger ultimately is arrested and faces charges for his crimes, and will face the consequences of his corrupt actions.

What it means:
It’s fiction, m8.

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Hopefully that’s cleared up the many mysteries of this film. For the upcoming and announced Paw Patrol 2, perhaps the pups can save us from the size of this consultancy bill…

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