Rhoda 2 traveled to the Other Earth because there was no John to give her ticket to. Meaning The wife and child survived the crash, but not the husband.
Rhoda 2 never went to MIT, she was also convicted of vehicular manslaughter. She appears more "cleaned up" because she's an international celebrity from another planet.
How do I know she never went to MIT? Because that would not serve the narrative. Ask yourself, what's the point of seeing Rhoda 2, what's it tell us that could be important?
It's even simpler. Rhoda 2 DID go to MIT. The vehicular manslaughter on Earth 2 never happened. And seeing Rhoda 2 at the end is what brings the entire message of this film home.
From my post:
Just think of Earth 1 (what we see in the film) as Earth 2, and Earth 2 as Earth 1. If you prioritize THAT Earth, and consider the one depicted as the alternate reality, then the ending makes sense.
Now, consider the monologue that occurs about 30 minutes into the film, right after we discover that the Earths are in synchronicity:
"It would be very hard to think, 'I am over there, and can I go meet me?' And is that me better than this me? Can I learn from the other me? Has the other me made the same mistakes I made? Or can I sit down and have a conversation with me? Wouldn't that be an interesting thing..."
While this monologue is occurring, we see what looks like a businessman smoking weed on a park bench, women with shopping carts filled with gallons of water, and people descending church steps while others look to the heavens, and the words "SPARE US" written in snow on the ground. These are all reactions to the realization that our reality is not singular: the businessman flouting societal conventions; the women with the shopping carts and the message on the ground responding fearfully; some turning to religion; and some just wondering in awe.
And now think of the opening lines by Rhoda when speaking of Jupiter: "I was seventeen when I got my acceptance letter to MIT. I felt like anything was possible. And it was." There are images of her dancing carefree, getting wasted. She has a whole life of promise and prosperity ahead of her. During the party, she says, "I don't want to eat the apple of cynicism."
***
So, what happened?
In Earth 2, everything for Rhoda IS possible. She becomes a successful astrophysicist (echoing the phone conversation in Earth 1 where the man says his headmaster predicted he would have either been a convict or a millionaire), and she wins a spot to travel to Earth 1. She never has the car accident, and John Burrows' family never dies.
Rhoda from Earth 2 travels to Earth 1, just like anyone else would, to meet herself, to see if that version of her was better than her, to learn from the other her, to ask if she had made the same mistakes she made, to sit down to have a conversation with her.
(When John from Earth 1 visits his family, there will be a John from Earth 2 there as well. But this is really irrelevant to the message of the film.)
The end, when she encounters herself, is meant to shift our perspective, to see the Earth we've been following in this story (and even the one we live in) as the alternate reality we so often dream about. So often, we think the grass is greener; we think that if there were another reality, than it would somehow be better than ours. But what if it's in this one, the one we're in right now, where we truly have a chance not to eat the apple of cynicism (despite our gravest mistakes), and to accept our hardships and live heroically?
***
"The truth is, we do that all day long, every day. People don't admit it, and they don't think about it too much, but they do. Every day, they're talking in their own head: 'What's he doing? Why'd he do that? What does she think? Did I say the right thing?' In this case, there's another you out there."
Perhaps it's true that the Rhoda on Earth 2 is better off, but she's also the one who needed to do the traveling to learn from Rhoda on Earth 1.
And for us, do we really need to travel to Another Earth when the improvements we can make on ourselves and in the lives of those around us can be done at any moment, all day long, every day, on this one?
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