The Ending of Longlegs, Explained

Longlegs is the latest feature film from horror director Oz Perkins. It focuses on an FBI agent and her efforts to catch the serial killer known as Longlegs. Here’s the ending of Longlegs, explained

What Happened At the End of Longlegs?

The ending of Longlegs ties together a truly evil story. Throughout the film, FBI Agent Lee Harker is shown making awkward contact with her mother, Ruth, while trying to track down Longlegs. Their conversations are brief and ominous, and the relationship is obviously strained. As Lee makes impressive strides in what was originally an unsolvable case for the FBI, viewers begin to understand that the titular Longlegs (played monstrously by Nicolas Cage) is letting Lee make her discoveries, such as when he leaves a cipher translator in her house in a truly unsettling sequence. The film sets up an interesting relationship between Lee and the killer, as the ominous opening of the film hints at a deeper connection than Lee initially realizes.

It’s no surprise that Perkins dedicated this film to “moms who lie.” It is revealed during the ending of Longlegs that although Longlegs is using what might be a form of satanic magic to carry out his murders without being at the scene of a crime, it was Lee’s mother who acted as a disciple of his work. Dressed as a nun, Ruth would place the satanic dolls created by Longlegs in people’s homes under the guise of mainstream Religious charity. The automatic trust these families showed in what they thought was someone after their own faith leaving them a gift would be their downfall. The dolls would, in some ambiguous way or another, influence the father of the family to brutally murder his own children and wife before eventually ending his own.

Ruth worked with Longlegs to supposedly spare her daughter’s life, as the killer originally had the young Lee in his sights. Unfortunately, this past connection was seemingly wiped from the agent’s mind until her investigation. Eventually, Cage’s Longlegs is captured and comes face to face with Lee. It’s in this interrogation scene that most of what was hidden before comes to light: Ruth made a literal deal with the devil to ensure that she and her daughter were not the next victims. She lied to Lee repeatedly about knowing Longlegs before. Then, in a petrifying monologue performed by Cage, it’s revealed that Lee is expected to take on the mantle of Longlegs.

Longlegs kills himself right then and there in front of Lee, all but confirming his belief that he is done and the mantle is now her’s. Lee proceeds to attempt to bring her mother in for questioning, only for Ruth, once again in nun attire, to kill an FBI agent as well as shoot the head of the doll that resembles a young Lee. The dolls were revealed earlier in the film to be carrying a seemingly empty black ball inside their heads, transmitting some sort of wavelengths that influence violence.

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.In the final sequence of the film, Lee attempts to stop her mother from delivering a doll to her boss’ house as they are celebrating their daughter’s birthday. After this terrible discovery, she is even shown waking up in Longleg’s hiding spot, which turned out to be in the basement of her childhood home this entire time. Unfortunately, Lee is too late, as Detective Carter butchers his own wife and is killed by Lee before he can hurt his daughter. Ruth attempts to kill the daughter as well, forcing Lee to shoot her in self-defense. In the final scene, Lee stares down the doll version of Carter’s daughter and attempts to shoot it, only to have seemingly run out of bullets.

Ending with a “hail satan” from Cage’s Longlegs before the credits roll, Harker’s fate is left ambiguous. Not only that but the methods of the murders and Lee’s own supposed “psychic” abilities are left unanswered. Director Perkins is less interested in confirming the exact nature of evil than he is in showing how it can spawn from the most noble of intentions. While Ruth may have started her evil and sickening partnership with Longlegs out of the wish to protect her daughter, the fact that she goes out of her way to try and kill again even after Longlegs is dead speaks to how wicked she has become herself.

In the end, it may very well be that Lee is unable to shoot the doll at the end because she is now trapped in some satanic ritual. Or, she simply ran out of bullets, and the cycle of evil begetting evil stops with the death of her mother. Either way, Longlegs is an exercise that demonstrates our capacity for darkness and cruelty and the nature of evil as something that we all have the potential for. It is, without a doubt, one of the darkest films of the year.

And that’s the ending of Longlegs, explained.