The Ending Of Saltburn Explained

This article contains spoilers for "Saltburn."

Writer-director Emerald Fennell knows how to play around with audience expectations. "Saltburn," Fennell's follow-up to her Oscar-winning debut film "Promising Young Woman," delivers another ending that's twisted by both definitions of the word. Among the big movies of fall 2023, this might be one that leaves viewers scratching their heads the most trying to make sense of what they just watched.

This confusion won't be due to the plot itself – the specific events are clearly presented and easy to follow. Instead, it's the questions about what the story means – or if it means anything at all – that will cause the most discussion and debate. "Saltburn" touches upon big themes of privilege, envy, love, loss, and obsession, but it handles these themes with a sense of ambiguity rather than delivering direct statements. On top of all that, it's filled with moments engineered for the purposes of shock and disgust. If you need help processing everything that goes on in the psychosexual thriller's final act, this article will examine the movie's conclusion from multiple different perspectives.

In the final act of the film, the Catton family has prepared a big birthday bash for Oliver themed around "A Midsummer Night's Dream," but Felix has become wise to Oliver's manipulations. The morning before the party, Felix takes Oliver on a "surprise road trip" – to Oliver's parents' house. Contrary to Oliver's sob stories, both of his parents are alive, friendly, middle class, and seemingly not addicts. At the party, Felix doesn't want to be anywhere near Oliver — though Oliver tracks him down in Saltburn's labyrinth to declare his love.

After the party, Felix's body is found dead in the labyrinth. Sir James and Elspeth try to act like everything's okay, but Venetia and Farleigh can't keep up the ridiculous facade. After the funeral, Oliver essentially has sex with Felix's grave. Not long after her brother's death, Venetia commits suicide, and while Elspeth wants to keep Oliver around, Sir James wants to pay Oliver to leave Saltburn.

Years pass, and the film brings us back to the present day. Sir James dies, seemingly of natural causes, and an older Oliver reunites with Elspeth. She welcomes him back to Saltburn with open arms – but sure enough, she has enough "accidents" to end up on life support. It's revealed that Oliver's opening narration was being delivered to Elspeth. Oliver confesses that he killed Felix by poisoning his drink before ripping away Elspeth's life support. With the whole Catton family destroyed, Saltburn is now in Oliver's possession. He celebrates with cocaine and naked dancing around the building.

It's important to acknowledge that "Saltburn" takes place in England, where issues of class are treated differently than they are in America. Whereas American capitalism is based around the semi-mythical idea of "the American dream" where anyone from any background can make it big if they work hard enough, British class structures are treated far more rigidly with a much more "know your place" attitude. This is particularly visible in institutions like Oxford, where a scholarship student like Oliver completely sticks out.

In that cultural context, it's possible there's greater catharsis and even empowerment for Brits in seeing Oliver find ways to rise above his station, no matter how twisted. In America, however, "you too can get rich with a little patience and hard work (and maybe crime)" stories are our cultural bread and butter, so this aspect of the film plays a bit more basic and less richly satisfying here.

On this topic, it's worth noting how "Saltburn" acknowledges this culture clash through the American character of Farleigh. One of the more complex supporting characters in the film, Farleigh bullies Oliver to assert his connections to privilege within the British class structure, but Farleigh's position is very much conditional — his hyper-privileged family still treats him as an outsider. There's no doubt this is due to his biracial status — if class hierarchies are slightly less ingrained in the American psyche, racial hierarchies are fixed in place on both sides of the Atlantic.

With the psychological inscrutability of its protagonist, "Saltburn" aims more for general shock and intrigue rather than trying to build deeper connections with the characters. Even so, there is one scene towards the end of the film that stands out for letting more genuine emotion enter the picture in a way that doubles as the film's most pointed joke about the British upper class. It's the scene after Felix has been found dead, and Sir James and Elspeth still refuse to let go of their preexisting plans despite their son's death.

Gathered at the dining room table, the parents just want to talk about how great Oliver's birthday party was while eating meat pies. In contrast, Farleigh and Venetia – the two most genuinely sympathetic characters – react to the death with actual tears. When Farleigh tries to talk about how absurd and cruel it is to act as if nothing happened, the parents respond with orders to "eat the bloody pie" and the claim that "no one wants to hear about your bloody American feelings." The parents represent the stiff upper lip, "keep calm and carry on" attitude taken to a comically unhealthy extreme. Even outside the specific cultural context, this scene hits awfully hard for the universal relatability of the struggle to pretend things are normal in the face of tragedy.

Imagery from Oliver's climactic "Midsummer Night's Dream" birthday party has been present throughout the marketing for "Saltburn," so while the dramatic events of the party are still spoiler material, the film's crew has been able to speak about the design elements of the sequence. 

"There were so many design elements that we wanted to bring to the party, elements that needed to feel like they'd been in the family for years, particularly the proscenium arch, where we imagined for hundreds of years families would put on plays for their neighbors and friends," said production designer Suzie Davies in the press notes. "And then to contrast that, we talked about having the slightly grotesque pig on the spit rolling in front of it. It was all about the juxtaposition of the surreal, the sinister, and the colorful."

Costume designer Sophie Canale talked about how Oliver's antlered costume came from a desire to make him look "like something out of folklore." She contrasted the intense jewelry design of Venetia and Elspeth's costumes with Felix's lazier Puck costume: "You've got everyone else at the party in ballgowns, black tie, fancy dress, or trashy dresses. But Felix is just in his jeans and a vest, and then he's put a pair of wings on and that's all the effort he's going to make."

Speaking in the press notes before the SAG-AFTRA strike, Archie Madekwe described the dramatic effect the party has on the story: "Throughout the film, there's something of a heightened Shakespearean quality to Saltburn and the Cattons and then it all comes to life on this night."

As reported by Gold Derby, Fennell explained her biggest goal for the film following another awards consideration screening in Los Angeles. Speaking in a Q&A moderated by Variety's Clayton Davis, she said that she wants "everyone to, you know, hate it, love it, be turned on, be freaked out... whatever it makes you feel. I want people to feel something. That's the reason you make a movie and not a TV show or write a book."

By this standard, "Saltburn" is undeniably a success. Love it or hate it, it's sure to make you feel something. It's a guaranteed controversy-bomb with at least five of the most shocking scenes of the year. What else is there to say about a movie where the main character licks his crush's bathwater from the drain; has sex with his crush's sister in a manner that might be too ... let's call it "creative" to describe on a family-friendly website; sexually assaults his crush's cousin in bed; humps the dirt over his crush's grave, and celebrates the death of a whole family while dancing naked?