The Ending Of Poor Things Explained

This article contains spoilers for "Poor Things" and some discussion of disturbing content.

One of the best films of 2023, "Poor Things" is an adaptation of Alasdair Gray's novel of the same name from director Yorgos Lanthimos and writer Tony McNamara. This darkly comedic, sexually explicit, surrealist steampunk fantasy delivers both a thoughtful feminist spin on the story of "Frankenstein" and loads of entertainment along the way. In many ways, it's a work of excess, filled with sex, violence, and dark humor. That excess will almost certainly be too much for some to get into. However, its weird parts are stitched together so skillfully that it might very well appeal to a wider audience than it sounds like it would on paper.

"Poor Things" may be extremely strange and, at times, disturbing, but surprisingly, it's not confusing to follow. The events of the story are told in the straightforward fashion of a classic Hollywood hero's journey — in contrast to its more structurally complicated literary source material — and the heavy thematic ideas it explores are presented clearly and emphatically. As such, the ending of the film might not require "explanation" to understand, necessarily, but there's still a lot to discuss and dig deeper into regarding those themes. So let's examine what Lanthimos' film is saying about the development of identity, feminine sexuality, and challenging oppressive norms.

Trigger warning: this slide includes discussion of female genital mutilation.

In the final act of "Poor Things," Bella returns home to London. She finds that Godwin has made another adult-woman-baby-brain creature named Felicity (Margaret Qualley) and finally learns of the strange circumstances of her own origin. Wanting to help people, she chooses to use the knowledge Godwin granted her to become a doctor. Though she's judged by many as a "whore," Max still wishes to marry her, and the ceremony finally goes through — but someone crashes the wedding.

It turns out that Duncan tracked down Alfie Blessington (Christopher Abbott), the husband of Victoria, whose body became Bella's own. He demands her back, and Bella follows Alfie, curious to learn more about who she used to be and why Victoria was so unhappy living with him. Alfie wants his wife confined to his house and focused on birthing more babies. To make matters even worse, he has a doctor ready to cut off her clitoris. Like Victoria before her, Bella would rather die than live like this, and Alfie is happy to oblige with both a drink of poison and a gun at the ready. Bella uses the opportunity to fight back, spitting the poison into his face and taking his gun away.

Interestingly, though, she doesn't want to kill Alfie. Instead, she drags his body back to Godwin's laboratory to operate on him. Godwin passes away, but the film ultimately has a happy ending. Toinette (Suzy Bemba), Bella's co-worker, girlfriend, and educator on socialist causes in Paris, comes to London to be with Bella, Max, and Felicity. As they spend time together in the garden, we finally see the results of the surgery on Alfie: His brain has been switched with a goat's!

Bella's independence is demonstrated in many forms, but her sexual independence particularly stands out. She discovers the joys of "make happy anytime" and "furious jumping" without the life experience that would tell her it's inappropriate to discuss such things in most social contexts. Her boldness and bluntness would be shocking enough in the present day, let alone in the repressed Victorian era she lives in.

Even as Bella grows and changes throughout her adventures, this aspect of her stays strong. Sure, she becomes more socially adept in terms of knowing when it's appropriate to discuss or act on these urges, but if a social rule doesn't make sense to her — say, monogamy — she'll choose to ignore it, even if it means being judged harshly by others. She wants as many experiences as possible, whether those experiences are with a loving husband, a sleazy-yet-sexy paramour, a female partner, or the men who pay her for her services. Of course, if she were in charge, she'd certainly choose to be more selective with the latter than the male-centric structure of the brothel allows.

Bella doesn't need to change this part of herself — it's a society that restricts women and then judges them that needs to change. Alfie represents the worst extremes of Victorian patriarchy, so of course Bella's happy ending involves giving him a most ironic punishment. He's better off with a goat brain than a misogynist one.

While the "Poor Things" movie takes inspiration from the novel's premise, sense of humor, and many individual scenes, the character dynamics are changed, and the ending is completely different. Alasdair Gray's book is an epistolary novel, with most of it written as the autobiography of Archibald McCandless (a rough equivalent of Max in the movie) discussing his Frankenstein monster wife, only for the ending to switch to Bella's (or Victoria's) perspective and reveal the truth: She was only pretending to be a Frankenstein monster to escape her first marriage and be with her true love, Godwin.

The film, in contrast, is pure gothic fantasy throughout, as opposed to a meta deconstruction of the genre. Rather than playing games with perspective and leaving its female lead's perspective as a twist ending, the whole film is centered around Bella's perspective. It finds its feminist commentary within the fantasy story rather than outside of or in contrast to it the way the book does. 

Godwin is not sexually or romantically involved with Bella in the film, as the movie version of the doctor is physically incapable of sex, and his relationship with his creation is purely paternal. Bella's home city is changed from Glasgow in the book to London in the movie, with much of the book's more specific historical and political commentary excised in favor of more universal concerns. The book version of General Blessington is also killed rather than given a goat brain. That particular ending punchline is pure Lanthimos (the director really loves his goats).

Yorgos Lanthimos and Emma Stone did a very extensive interview about "Poor Things" with Vogue back in May 2023. There, Stone was able to discuss the full breadth of Bella's character arc. "Watching Bella mark that journey of going from such a self-focused kind of pleasure-seeking — whether it was, you know, eating way too many tarts in Lisbon or wanting to experience pleasure in all these different capacities that she learns about while being possessed by men — to wanting to become a doctor and help people in a different way, these lessons that we go through in our lives over a long period of time are happening very quickly for her," Stone said. "And it was such a great opportunity to live an entire life that wasn't marked at all by shame or trauma."

In the same interview, Stone connected Bella's character development with the different costumes she wears over the course of the film. "At the start of the film, Bella is being dressed by a maid and is wearing that white silk house cape a lot of the time; then, once she's set off on her journey, she's dressing herself, so she's wearing bloomers with a jacket and a big hat or whatever," Stone said. She used these costume changes as ways to reflect Bella's different mindsets at different points in the story. "At the end, there are these very military-looking dresses that look like nothing you've seen Bella wear; things are much more form-fitting and constrained, but that's because she's come to a place where she's grown and decided who she is and what she's going to do. She's not assimilating, necessarily, but there's just more structure there."