Evelyn and Waymond are Chinese immigrants who moved to the United States two decades ago and married one another. The two now run a laundromat together. Recently, Evelyn has grown distant from Waymond and has refused to discuss Waymond’s concerns about their marriage. Instead, Evelyn is preoccupied with fighting with her teenage daughter and resents Waymond for his kindness and contentedness with life.
One day, time in Evelyn’s current universe freezes. Evelyn learns that she lives in a multiverse, where a new universe is created for every life choice one makes. She also discovers that in an alternate universe, she developed “verse-jumping” technology, which allows her to travel across different universes. She must now use that technology to save the multiverse.
Evelyn fails in her efforts to save the multiverse and soon realizes she can only save one universe—where she will also live. The multiverses are slowly disappearing. Evelyn sees an alternate universe where she didn’t marry Waymond and instead became a wealthy film star. Intrigued, she enters that universe to speak to Waymond, who is also financially prosperous but filled with regret. Waymond tells Evelyn that, in another life, he would have liked to just do laundry and taxes with her. In that universe, they cannot be together, and Evelyn knows she will never find love there. After Evelyn’s decision, she will not have memories of any alternate timelines, though she will remember her conversation with Waymond and the love she felt for him in it.