Neville realizes he is now the outsider, the abnormal one. The creatures fear him and hate him. Rightfully so, since he’s been hunting and killing them every day since the world ended. He accepts that he has become a legend, and that they must kill him, because he is no longer the way humans are supposed to be. This is a new species, one where he is the one that’s out of the ordinary.

When Neville, Anna, and Ethan barricade themselves behind the Plexiglass in Neville’s lab, we see the alternate ending. After realizing the creature has been cured, Neville doesn’t send Anna and Ethan away with the cure to find the colony of healthy people in Vermont, nor does he grab an old Army grenade and take as many creatures with him as he goes.

While watching the Alpha Male creature’s actions, he realizes that in taking a creature for his studies, he was intruding on their society. It’s a similar concept to that from the book – that the creatures are existing as they should, and Neville is interfering. The Alpha Male (played by Dash Mihok of Romeo & Juliet) hunted Neville down, not to kill him and satisfy his basic instincts, but to rescue one of his own. Contrary to Neville’s assumptions, the creatures have not completely devolved and lost all human traits.

Neville calmly opens the Plexiglass doors and rolls the subject out into the destroyed lab full of creatures. The Alpha Male screams at his subordinates, and while they hiss and growl at Neville, they do not harm him as he retrieves the injection to revive his subject. After reviving her, the test creature and the Alpha Male have a tender moment, showing that the creatures are still capable of love. The creatures take their rescued hive member back, and leave Neville, Anna, and Ethan unharmed.

The creatures weren’t after Neville to kill him and eat him. All they wanted was to take back what he stole from them. They go back to their existence as a new kind of society, a variety of the human species, while Neville, Anna, and Ethan start out on the road to Vermont.

The alternate ending has points that I prefer to the original, such as the fact that the creatures can still think, plan, and love. I also enjoy the open-ended feel to it. Rather than show the viewers that Anna and Ethan arrive at a colony in Vermont, and that the world will eventually be okay, all we know is that Neville and his new friends head towards Vermont, leaving the creatures behind to live their lives.