The Biggest Questions We Have About Contagion

One of the most opaque plot lines Contagion is that of WHO epidemiologist Dr. Leonora Orantes, played by Marion Cotillard. At first, her story seems quite clear as she travels to Hong Kong and Macau in an attempt to pinpoint exactly where the MEV-1 virus originated from and how it spread. Things take a big turn for Dr. Orantes about halfway through the film, when she's kidnapped by her Chinese liaison and brought to his village where most of the adults have already died of the virus, leaving only the children left. Dr. Orantes is told that she's going to be held hostage until a vaccine is produced, so that she can then be ransomed off for enough doses to inoculate the surviving children.

After she's successfully ransomed for doses of the MEV-1 vaccine, Dr. Orantes is at the airport with her rescuer preparing to fly home. However, when he reveals to her that the doses they traded her for were placebos, she gets up silently and runs through the airport.

That's the last we see of Dr. Orantes, and it left us wondering where exactly she was hurrying off to. Although Contagion doesn't spend much time on it, we do see her bonding with the children in the village after living there for several months. So, for lack of any other stated motivation, it seems that she was running to try and warn them that they aren't actually protected from the virus.