After Jean’s funeral, Russell and Amanda offer Kamau and Makena the Salisbury orphanage—Russell reveals that Jean predicted this. Kamau accepts, finding fulfillment in caring for the orphanage and its animals. Russell returns to England, moves in with wealthy widow Leslie Woodhead-Spikings, and resumes painting successfully. He visits Ishi at Sheffield Zoo annually, struggling with guilt over placing him there.

At Sheffield, Ishi emerges from his melancholy when Tatiana, a female from a Russian circus, arrives. Two years later, Tatiana gives birth to the first elephant born in a British zoo. When the calf falls into the moat and is rescued limping, the head keeper enters the enclosure with a bull hook. Tatiana, remembering circus abuse, charges. Ishi intercepts, grabs the keeper, and drops him into the moat. Footage and witness testimony cast doubt on the keeper’s claim that the elephants tried to kill him, and the zoo separates the elephants rather than euthanizing them, sending Tatiana and her calf to the Berlin Zoo in Germany. Before their transfer, Ishi and Tatiana spend their final weeks standing beside the fence separating their enclosures.

After seeing news coverage of the incident, Amanda visits with her twin daughters. Ishi recognizes her, and she identifies him by his forehead scar. Amanda, a writer for The Guardian, proposes filming a story to place Ishi elsewhere. She visits him through a fence and promises to find him a new home without cages or enemies. She then confronts Russell, who admits to telling Jean before she died. Amanda forgives him, and they agree to work toward finding Ishi a better home.

Kamau accompanies Ishi on a cargo jet to Africa. Although plans are initially made to transfer Ishi to a preserve in Florida, Werner Brandeis offers his 90-square-mile Zambian preserve, which contains a bachelor herd that has recently lost its leader, and Russell, Amanda, and the zoo agree. Kamau is overjoyed to learn that Ishi is alive and returning to Africa.

Ishi joins the young bulls and begins guiding them, often thinking of Big Black. Although he enjoys his new freedom and environment and also misses Tatiana, he discovers the electrified perimeter fence and realizes that he still longs for his original home, family, and memories and may one day move on.

Gichinga Kimathi walks out of a government meeting over his high collection rates. His son Mutegi, a poacher, is arrested and jailed for three weeks. After his release, they partner to sell ivory directly to Chinese buyers, eliminating middlemen and accepting the risk of operating without government protection.

Beyond Lake Tanganyika, Westbrook tracks Ishi using GoPro mini-drones. One evening, Ishi encounters two extended elephant families led by Matriarch Deep Waters, who approaches, senses Ishi’s wound, and asks about his journey. After hearing his story, the herd befriends him, and she invites him to travel with them as they head in the same direction. Overwhelmed, Ishi accepts, and the females comfort him. Westbrook recognizes this as a new development in Ishi’s journey.

Amanda, still grieving Terence, reduces her work at The Guardian to raise her daughters. After 9/11 and after learning that her US ban is lifted, she visits Manhattan and writes a best-selling book about the growing conflict between radical Islam and the West. During her tour, Ariel Levine appears, now a Buddhist horse trainer. He apologizes, saying that her testimony saved him by prompting his transformation in prison. They spend one night together before parting and never seeing each other again, though they later reconnect on Facebook. The encounter allows Amanda to finally forgive herself for her role in his imprisonment.

At age 75, Russell suffers a stroke while painting. Unable to drive, he sounds an SOS in Morse code on his Land Rover’s horn. A neighboring farmer rushes him to a clinic, where quick treatment prevents severe impairment. Leslie donates £10,000 to a college fund for each of the farmer’s and doctor’s children.

In Zambia, Ishi feels increasingly compelled to leave the preserve. In Kenya, Somali-fueled poaching reaches epidemic levels, filling Salisbury with increasing numbers of orphaned elephants and distressing Kamau. Gichinga, now 60 and facing the increasingly violent poaching trade, decides to hand the business over to Mutegi.

Nine weeks earlier, Ishi escapes the preserve with the young bulls’ help, uprooting a tree that crushes the electrified fence. Three weeks later, he narrowly avoids a collision with a vehicle and realizes that humans may learn he has escaped. Amanda informs Russell that Salisbury expects Ishi within a week and that Brandeis will fly them to Africa on his jet.

While traveling with Deep Waters’s clan, Ishi’s pace slows to 10 miles daily before Deep Waters announces that her clan must return home. After emotional farewells, they depart.

Two evenings later, a scent triggers Ishi’s repressed memory of his mother’s slaughter 50 years ago. He recognizes the poacher’s smell and finds Gichinga’s camp—Gichinga is hunting in place of an injured Mutegi. Ishi kills the sleeping poachers, flings Gichinga into a lava field, and crushes him to death. He walks away calmly, feeling that he has righted an old wrong. The crew learns days later of poachers killed by a rogue elephant, never suspecting Ishi.

At Salisbury Farm, Brandeis, Russell, Amanda, and the crew settle in. Brandeis decides to fund the orphanage. Kamau and Amanda share port, catching up; Kamau describes his friend Ndegwa, now a tribal chief, inviting Kamau’s son to traditional rites. Scouts report that Ishi is four to five days away.

A white egret befriends Ishi and warns him that the infection in his wound is worsening. The bird speaks, which Ishi attributes to the effects of age and infection on his memory and concentration. The egret helps him locate five bachelor elephants, among them brothers Big Feet and Whispers, whom Ishi recognizes from 30 years ago as friends from the last clan he knew before his capture. The brothers reveal that they searched for him for several seasons after his disappearance and offer to accompany him to Salisbury. Heavy rain turns the Tsavo River into a raging torrent.

The bachelor clan is stranded by flooding. Ishi decides to cross alone, targeting a midstream island, and reaches it exhausted. That night, his old friend Little Stream appears in a dream and promises that he will complete his journey.

Morning brings Kamau in a motorized skiff with scouts, whom Ishi recognizes as the unseen helpers who have been leaving him food, while he sees Russell and Amanda waiting on the opposite shore. With the skiff guiding, Ishi enters the current again but is swept toward dangerous rapids. A worldwide audience watches as Amanda runs along the bank calling encouragement. Ishi slams into a boulder at the rapids’ entrance, lunges forward at Kamau’s panicked voice, barely finds footing, and reaches shore before collapsing. Kamau and Amanda embrace him.

After rest, Ishi walks the final half-day to Salisbury with them, arriving at sunset.

Ishi is too large for the orphanage compound. He’s exhausted and has stopped eating. Russell bids farewell before flying to London. Amanda asks the crew not to film Ishi’s death; they agree.

Elephants from Ishi’s past arrive to bid him farewell: Mother Blue, a matriarch from his youth; Sad Eyes, his former mate; two ancient females who knew him as a calf; and Big Feet and Whispers. Ishi shares an emotional reunion with Mother Blue, one of the most important figures in his life after the loss of his birth family. The procession is filmed and broadcast. On his third night, visitors depart, and by dawn, Ishi is gone.

Ishi walks to the meadow where his family died and where Kamau first found him as an orphaned calf. Big Black, a mentor from his youth, appears beside him, and at the meadow, Ishi is reunited with his mother and birth family.

Kamau and Amanda find Ishi lying in the same spot where Kamau had discovered him as a calf 50 years earlier. Though blind, Ishi opens his eye at Kamau’s voice and recognizes his and Amanda’s scents. They say goodbye through tears and withdraw. Ishi reflects that he has completed his journey and is ready for death.

Kamau visits Ishi’s resting place annually. Brandeis keeps his promise to fund the Salisbury orphanage and visits when in Africa. Three years later, Russell dies at age 90 and is buried beside Jean and Terence overlooking Salisbury and Tsavo. After her daughters marry, Amanda accepts Leslie’s invitation to live on the estate in a guest cottage and begins writing her first novel, The Memory of an Elephant.