CARRY-ON

*CUT TO THE CHASE*

NOTE: This spoiler was submitted by Jeremy

The film opens in the early hours of Christmas Eve. A mysterious Traveler (Jason Bateman) meets with Russian mobsters at their Christmas tree farm. The Traveler hands the boss, Olek (Jeff Pope), money, but after Olek touches it, he starts to cough blood after being poisoned. Olek’s nephew Yuri (Raymond Rehage) comes in, and the Traveler shoots him dead before setting the farm on fire.

TSA agent Ethan Kopek (Taron Egerton) is with his pregnant girlfriend Nora Parisi (Sofia Carson). They head to work at LAX, discussing their future as parents. Nora also asks Ethan to consider reapplying for the police academy, as he failed his first chance to become an officer.

Ethan shows up late to a meeting with boss Phil Sarkowski (Dean Norris). He tries to ask for a promotion, but Sarkowski denies him since he tells Ethan that he doesn’t apply himself. Ethan gives an impassioned speech about how he wants to prove himself, so Sarkowski relents and has Ethan go to the scanners.

The Traveler and his associate, “The Watcher” (Theo Rossi), plus a third man, are trying to get intel on Ethan’s friend and coworker, Jason Noble (Sinqua Walls), stalking his wife Lorraine and their twins. When they find that Ethan is working the scanners instead of Jason, they pivot to have the third man break into Ethan’s home while The Watcher observes from surveillance cameras in his van. He is keeping a man, Jesse (Adam Stephenson), hostage. The Traveler then has their plans fall on Ethan.

A blue-haired woman (Nico Bucher) hands Ethan a seemingly discarded earbud. He then gets a message on his phone ordering to put the earbud in. The Traveler starts speaking to Ethan to inform him that he is going to follow his rules, or else. Ethan thinks it’s Jason playing a prank call, until The Traveler explicitly threatens to have Nora killed when Ethan starts to dial 911, forcing him to hang up. He then makes Ethan lock his phone up and continue to go along with his plans to have his guy arrive with a carry-on that he needs passed through security.

LAPD Detective Elena Cole (Danielle Deadwyler) arrives at the Christmas tree farm. She discovers a bug in a broken watch that she figures could connect her to whoever killed the Russians. She works with her associate Herschel (Josh Brener) to try and decode the bug.

The Traveler continues to talk to Ethan while keeping an eye on him. He spots Ethan attempting to use his watch to send a voice text and orders him to stop. Ethan then hears The Traveler eating and figures he is at the bar next to the arcade after hearing other nearby sounds over the earbud. Ethan tries to use another passenger’s boarding pass to write a message with invisible ink to show to his coworker Lionel (Curtiss Cook). After Lionel finds what the message says, The Traveler starts moving towards him and jabs his hand with something that causes Lionel to drop dead to the floor from a heart attack.

Ethan feels immense guilt for Lionel’s death before The Traveler approaches him in person. He blames Ethan for causing Lionel’s death for not listening to his rules, and then informs him that Jason was the original target for the job, and that if it came to it, The Traveler would have had Jason’s wife and kids executed.

Sarkowski puts Jason on the scanners and has Ethan go to metal detectors. With The Traveler’s guy coming in, he orders Ethan to fix this and get back on scanners. Ethan plants coffee with liquor by Jason’s side, while The Traveler tells Sarkowski and gets Jason sent home, his trust in Ethan now shattered. The Traveler makes things worse by trying to drive a wedge between Ethan and Nora when she is trying to talk to him over lunch.

The Traveler’s guy, Mateo Flores (Tonatiuh), arrives with the package. Meanwhile, Elena is looking up words she heard in the bug’s message, where she learns about a lethal nerve agent called Novichok. Ethan sees Mateo’s carry-on and spots the Novichok but lets him pass. He then runs to the bathroom to vomit, where The Traveler goes to confirm that he intends to use the Novichok on a flight with 250 people onboard, purely at the behest at those that employed him. He promises to let Ethan and Nora go once the plane takes off.

Herschel informs Elena of Ethan’s 911 call, just as Department of Homeland Security Agent John Alcott (Logan Marshall-Green) arrives after she made a call to DHS. After going over her info, she is accompanied by Alcott to go to LAX and investigate a potential threat.

Sarkowski has his team conduct random searches. Ethan sneaks past the camera’s and uses someone else’s clearance to put Mateo in the search list, which The Traveler becomes aware of. When Ethan tries to get Nora out of there, The Traveler has The Watcher park his van close to their proximity and aim a sniper rifle at Nora’s head, forcing Ethan to silently leave her alone with no explanation. The Traveler then attacks Ethan in the bathroom before Ethan disarms him and takes his plastic gun. Ethan orders him to call off The Watcher, but The Traveler instead uses his phone to arm the bomb, with ten minutes until it goes off and takes out the entire airport.

Ethan runs to the office where Sarkowski is searching Mateo. The Traveler orders Ethan to shoot and kill Sarkowski, but Ethan cannot bring himself to do it, so Mateo kills Sarkowski with a pen to the throat. Ethan goes after Mateo until he tells Ethan that The Traveler forced him into doing this because Jesse, who is his husband, is being held captive. With just a few minutes left, The Traveler instructs Ethan on how to disarm the bomb, with two seconds to spare.

En route to the airport, Alcott tells Elena that his people have told him there are no flagged passengers. Herschel calls her and says that there are actually four passengers flagged, and that the real John Alcott is already headed to LAX. The man she is with is Ryan Mercer, a former mercenary and the guy who was gathering info on Ethan. Elena points her gun at Mercer, who speeds the car up and causes them to veer off-road and crash. He tries to strangle Elena, but she shoots him in the head before commandeering another vehicle to rush to LAX.

Ethan and Mateo start to move Sarkowski’s body into the baggage-sorting area, but The Traveler orders Mateo to kill Ethan. He catches the threat in time and the two end up in a fight while the bomb gets tossed around the other luggage going through the conveyor belts. Mateo gets the gun and tries to shoot at Ethan, but the gun overheats and explodes, hitting Mateo in the throat. Before dying, he apologizes to Ethan. He takes Mateo’s phone and uses it to text his other coworker, Eddie (Gil Perez-Abraham), to warn him about the threat and to get Nora out safely.

Elena arrives at LAX and tries to get the situation under control. The Traveler kills an officer and takes his gun, pursuing Ethan and grazing his arm with a bullet. The Traveler then orders The Watcher to go ahead and kill Nora. He pulls the van up before her and Eddie, just as they figure out Ethan’s warning. The Watcher stabs Eddie in the side (but he survives) while Nora makes a run for it. Elena then catches Ethan and tries to bring him in, but he punches her and makes a run for it to get to Nora.

The Watcher chases Nora through the parking lot until he crashes his van into another car. She smashes a bottle over his head before running towards the cops. Ethan finds her, just as The Watcher prepares to kill them both, but he is shot dead by Jesse, who managed to free himself. Ethan goes to inform Jesse that Mateo unfortunately did not make it, while also finding out that Mateo was given two tickets, one for New York and the other for DC. This happens as Herschel informs Elena that the primary target of the attack is Congresswoman Grace Turner (Jill Flint), who unsuccessfully lobbied for a bill that would help private contractors. The Traveler staged the attack on the Russians in the hopes that they would be blamed for the nerve gas attack, thereby ensuring the bill gets passed.

Ethan and Nora are able to track the package and the flight since it was flagged, but Ethan knows that if they stop the plane from taking off, The Traveler will set the bomb off anyway. He knows he has to disarm the bomb again while in flight. Nora finds Elena and convinces her to let the plane take off while Ethan makes his way into the cargo hold. The Traveler, meanwhile, is spotted by the blue-haired woman, who gives him a parachute for escaping the plane.

Midair, Ethan manages to disarm the bomb, but it triggers an alert to The Traveler’s phone. He goes down into the cargo hold to confront Ethan and kill him. Ethan then reveals he removed the canister containing the gas, and he shoves The Traveler into a vacuum-sealed fridge with the nerve agent, causing him to die an excruciating death. The pilots then go back to LAX after seeing the two men in the cargo hold. Elena allows Ethan to go free, while he goes back to Nora.

Sometime later, Ethan and Nora have had their kid, and he has reconciled with Jason. The two couples and their kids are going to Tahiti like Nora always wanted. Ethan also defends another TSA agent after a passenger is rude to her. Before passing through the scanner, he tosses in his LAPD badge.

On Christmas Eve, TSA agent Ethan Kopek is forced by a mysterious Traveler to pass a suitcase through security, or he and his men will execute Ethan's pregnant girlfriend Nora, who also works at LAX with him. The suitcase contains Novichok, a deadly nerve agent that is set to go off on a flight to DC. When Ethan attempts to alert a senior agent for help, The Traveler kills the man and forces Ethan to take him seriously.

After the suitcase passes through, Ethan has The Traveler's guy, Mateo, flagged for a bag check. The Traveler then arms the bomb, forcing Ethan to run and disarm it. Mateo kills Ethan's boss, Sarkowski, per The Traveler's orders. Ethan learns that Mateo was forced into the deed as well since The Traveler and his sniper, The Watcher, are holding Mateo's husband Jesse hostage. The Traveler instructs Ethan on how to disarm the bomb. When they attempt to move Sarkowski's body, Mateo is instructed to kill Ethan. He tries but fires too many shots from his plastic gun, causing it to overheat and explode, killing him.

The Traveler then has The Watcher go after Nora, but he gets killed by Jesse after freeing himself. Ethan learns about the bomb going to DC, and LAPD Detective Elena Cole, who was investigating the events that led to the threat, finds out that the target is Congresswoman Grace Turner, who unsuccessfully lobbied for a bill that would benefit private contractors. The Traveler planned to stage this as a retaliatory attack from the Russians after he killed two mobsters, and the bomb going off would pass the bill. Ethan sneaks into the plane's cargo hold as Nora convinces Elena to let the plane take off. Ethan disarms the bomb and is confronted by The Traveler, but Ethan traps him in a vacuum-sealed fridge with the nerve agent, killing him.

Ethan and Nora later welcome their child, and Ethan becomes an officer with the LAPD.