Ooh. I have to confess, I did think it was a positive ending, if only because my expectation for the ending was Total Annihilation of Everything, maybe a few refugees taking off in a spaceship, and so the fact that they found another way at all was more a optimistic ending than I'd hoped for. I can definitely see the parallels to colonialism, though.

I'm not sure if I'd go so far as to say that her ex (Scile?) was right, given the whole cult thing; I think it might be a case of two extremes, and the truth is somewhere in the middle.