Monday didn’t lose her finger tip in the “skateboard accident.” Her grandfather took it from her in his ever-more twisted scheme to protect all the girls, who oddly all bear his deceased daughter’s identity. By extension, it could be inferred that as kindly as he seemed toward his grandchildren, he was really recreating his daughter through them.

The flashback shows him taking Monday aside privately to cut off her finger tip before sending her out to fake the “skateboard accident” at his behest, to teach the other girls a lesson so they wouldn’t do anything risky while outside.

Monday’s actions then were partly on behalf of her unborn twins, and partly as a result of a personality disorder rooted in her early trauma at the hands of a beloved authority figure, her one and only surviving ancestor upon whom she was entirely dependent at the young age at which she was needlessly maimed by him.

For me, strangely enough, it is Sunday who voices what this movie is truly about. When she is dying, she candidly admits that she has lost her faith and that she does not know who she is. For me, her words raised the following question to mind while I watched the rest of the movie: Does any of the seven sisters truly know who she is?

Another example of this lack of genuine identity is presented by Saturday. She spent her entire life boasting about her sexual experiences to her sisters, only for Thursday and Friday to discover that she is still a virgin in reality when Adrian comes knocking on their door. Yet, despite her lack of sexual experience, she still manages to keep her wits about her when she links her bracelet to that of Adrian. We also see the same levelheadedness in her again when she is discovered by CAB agents. She doesn’t scream her head off like she did during her first fight scene (when she swung around an iron). Instead she stays calm while she swivels around her chair and focuses on what’s most important to her in that dreadful moment. The fact that she dies before she can finish telling her sisters that she loves them doesn’t diminish her strength of character in that particular scene. On the contrary, it enhances it.

Most of the seven sisters hadn’t discovered yet what they were truly capable of until external circumstances forced them to break with their lifelong routine. Even though their grandfather did his best to encourage them to be themselves when they were at home, the simple fact that they were septuplets made it quite difficult for them to discover who they were as individuals. Instead they took on roles to differentiate themselves from each other. Yet for most of them these roles did not reflect their true identity as an individual person. Even Wednesday who is clearly a tough fighter, still lacked self-confidence in her own physical abilities which is why Thursday needed to remind her that she had been training all of her life.

Despite this, it seems Friday had the most developed sense of a genuine individual identity. She knew who she truly was, what she was truly capable of, and especially what was truly most important to her in her life so she was able to act accordingly. People can’t truly know what’s most important to them if they don’t know who they truly are. Initially Thursday thinks that she wants to be free to be her own person and to lead her own life, yet in the end she is the one who adopts the identity of Karen Settman, which can be considered a tribute to her mother but probably even more to all of her sisters and to the life that she led with them. Furthermore, she is the one who pointed out to Monday that all of them together were Karen Settman. And while Monday herself initially played to role of leading her sisters, she eventually realized and decided that she wanted to have her own life with Adrian and their twins. Her claim to have the right to assume the identity of Karen Settman just because she is the eldest daughter is a rationalization on her part to which she resorted in order to overcome her true emotional attachment to her younger sisters. Needless to say her personal situation was also exceedingly difficult. As an expecting mother, she would do anything to protect her unborn children. In her mind, she was protecting her own family, even if it meant sacrificing the family that she had with her sisters.

Finally, in Tuesday we also sense her lack of identity when it’s her turn to go outside after Monday has disappeared. While at first she doesn’t seem to have any inner sense of direction, she still manages to handle herself in the most uncertain and difficult situations when they present itself. She also possesses enough self-discipline not to betray her sisters. When Cayman confronts her with the existence of her sisters, Tuesday doesn’t resort to sacrificing them just to save herself which tells us much about who she truly is as a person.

While the movie hints at many controversial topics like climate change, overpopulation and oppressive political regimes, it’s really about how these seven sisters manage to lead their lives under such difficult circumstances and how they discover who they truly are aside from the roles that society expects them to play or even the roles that they chose to adopt for themselves.