James Wan's "Malignant" is out in theaters and on HBO Max,
and everyone agrees — the ending is bonkers. The movie's mind-blowing
third act leaves the characters just as stunned as the audience. If you couldn't
wrap your brain around the final twists, here's the ending of "Malignant" explained.
"Malignant" starts by introducing a malicious person or entity named Gabriel, confined in
a research hospital in 1993. It then leaps forward decades to pick up the story of Madison,
which appears to be completely unrelated — at least at first. Then we learn that
the connection between Gabriel and Madison goes deeper than we ever could have guessed.
After spending most of the film under the impression that Gabriel was either
psychically connected to Madison, or possibly even a supernatural entity that only she could see, the
ending of "Malignant" reveals the shocking truth: Gabriel is actually Madison's parasitic twin,
who was born attached to the back of her body. Madison (named Emily for the first few years of
her life), partially absorbed the underdeveloped Gabriel in their mother's womb. However, they
were born with both twins conscious, even though Gabriel did not have a usable body of his own.
Though Madison and Gabriel shared a brain, they used it very differently.
Their consciousnesses were mostly separate, and the malevolent Gabriel
would attempt to manipulate Madison to try to convince her to carry out malicious acts.
After being turned over to a research hospital by their teenage mother, the decision was eventually
made to surgically remove Gabriel from Madison once the doctors determined he could not be
rehabilitated. However, although they removed Gabriel's body, they had to leave the brain
intact. That part of Gabriel remained mostly dormant until he was reawakened many years later.
Is a person like Gabriel actually possible? The short answer is "technically yes, but mostly no."
While craniopagus parasiticus is a real condition,
in which an underdeveloped parasitic twin is attached by the head to a developed twin,
the underdeveloped twin has never been known to be conscious.
The condition is extremely rare, with only four to six cases occurring in every 10 million births,
leaving only a very small sampling throughout history to draw conclusions from.
Additionally, although there have been several attempts in the 21st century to surgically
remove the parasitic twin in these cases, those children have never lived for very long, with the
most successful procedure still only extending the developed twin's life for another year.
So the odds of Madison being able to survive with Gabriel until the age of seven, and then
continue to survive with no complications into adulthood, are minuscule at best.
The chances of Gabriel being able to take over Madison's body, go on a killing spree,
and beat an entire police station in hand-to-hand combat are, uh, even smaller.
Gabriel has the ability to manipulate and control electricity, and to use electronic
speakers to project his voice, even when he physically couldn't speak.
He also possesses superhuman strength. How he got those powers is never explained,
although it's possible that it's based on the myth that humans could develop superpowers if we were
able to access 100 percent of our brain function, rather than the purported 10 percent that most
humans actually use. With Gabriel accessing one part of the brain and Madison accessing the rest,
maybe that heightened brain function is supposed to be what gives him his extraordinary abilities.
However, although it presents a cool premise for movies, the 100 percent brain myth has
been thoroughly debunked. The truth is, we already do use pretty much all of our brains,
leaving pretty much zero untapped potential for superpowers. But considering the rest
of "Malignant," we doubt that the film is particularly concerned with real science,
making Gabriel's enhanced use of Madison's brain the most likely explanation for what he can do.
Although Dr. Weaver hoped that the surgery to remove Gabriel's body from Madison's when she
was a child would banish his evil consciousness forever, that didn't turn out to be the case.
Madison continued to hear Gabriel's voice even after being adopted by her new family.
When her adopted mother became pregnant, Gabriel felt threatened by the new baby,
worrying that if Madison had a new sibling, she would no longer need him.
So he manipulated Madison, trying to convince her to kill her baby sister.
However, Madison was able to resist him in order to keep the baby safe.
As Madison's bond with her sister Sydney grew stronger, she was able to finally
suppress Gabriel, banishing him to the back corners of her mind and snuffing
out her memories of him. This enabled Madison to have a mostly normal life,
strengthened by her strong ties to her family to subconsciously keep Gabriel mostly at bay.
At the beginning of "Malignant," a pregnant Madison is experiencing abdominal pain,
and worries that something may be wrong with the baby.
Through a conversation with her husband Derek, we learn that this isn't Madison's first pregnancy,
but all of her prior pregnancies have ended in miscarriage. The two fight,
and Derek throws Madison against the wall, hitting the back of her head.
We later learn that the cause of Madison's miscarriages was actually Gabriel,
feeding off her babies to gain strength. When Madison's head hits the wall,
the impact is enough to finally jostle Gabriel back to full consciousness.
Once he's awake, he immediately begins executing his plan to exact revenge on
everyone he believes has wronged him and Madison, beginning with Derek. After killing Derek,
he then moves on to the doctors who removed his body from Madison's at the research facility,
intending for his plan to culminate in the deaths of his birth mother and Madison's adopted family.
For most of "Malignant," it appears as though Madison is nowhere near Gabriel's
murders as he commits them. She believes she is receiving psychic visions of Gabriel's attacks,
which allow her to watch what is happening but not intervene.
"Did you know her?"
"No, but I saw her die."
But in the final act of the film, the horrifying truth is revealed:
Gabriel is actually using Madison's body to carry out his attacks. Whenever Gabriel takes over her
body, he also takes over her brain, giving her the illusion of being in a separate location the whole
time. In reality, Madison is always physically present at the murders, but unconscious,
with her mind being manipulated by Gabriel to keep her from understanding how he's using her body.
When Detectives Shaw and Regina Moss finally can't ignore the growing pile
of evidence that Madison is at least closely related to the recent string of killings,
they bring her in for an interrogation. While Madison is insisting on her innocence,
Shaw's phone rings with a call from an unknown number. Shaw puts the call on speaker, and it
is Gabriel's voice, speaking to the detectives while Madison sits wordlessly across from them.
"That's him. He wants to talk to you."
It seems to prove that Gabriel and Madison can't be the same person, but he's actually cleverly
using his extraordinary abilities to throw them off the track. Through his manipulation
of electricity, he's able to control Shaw's phone, and then he uses the speaker to create his voice,
as we've seen him do many times before. It's an ingenious way to attempt to prove Madison's
innocence, but unfortunately, the detectives still don't trust her enough to release her. Instead,
they put her in a holding cell with a number of other women, which proves to be a grave mistake.
At the end of "Malignant," it appears that Gabriel has finally won, overpowering Madison once and for
all to kill both Madison's sister and mother in the hospital. But it quickly becomes clear
that Madison has turned Gabriel's own tricks against him. Just as he had tricked her into
thinking she was safe at home when her body was in a totally different part of town committing
gruesome murders, Madison tricked him into believing he was killing Sydney and his mother.
In reality, she had finally gained the mental strength to take back control of her body.
She then confronted Gabriel inside her mind,
locking him in a mental cage so he couldn't control her anymore.
Unfortunately, the problem that existed at the beginning of "Malignant" still remains:
since Gabriel and Madison share a brain, there is no way to completely remove Gabriel without
killing Madison. Therefore, although Madison can trap him, she can't get rid of him entirely.
He's always there, occupying some part of her brain. She even acknowledges this in the end,
when Gabriel taunts her that she won't be able to keep him locked up forever..
However, this time Madison is an adult, not a child, and has no intention of burying what
she knows deep in her subconscious again. This time, she tells Gabriel, she will be ready for
him when he inevitably eventually breaks out. Of course, it's also highly likely that she'll
be doing that from inside a prison cell, since even though we all know that mentally she was
innocent of Gabriel's murders, the police aren't likely to let her physical body off the hook.
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