Hereditary Ending Explained

A familiar premise with a knotty, complex conclusion

Warning: Spoilers Ahead

Ari Aster’s 2018 supernatural horror film Hereditary treads a well-worn roadmap of beats and genre tropes, though its spectacular direction and cinematography truly set it apart from the pack. But while familiar, the ending might leave some viewers scratching their heads: what just happened? (And why?)

From the opening scene of Annie delivering a frosty eulogy for her deceased mother Ellen, it’s clear the family has long suffered beneath the weight of familial expectation. It’s the source of the schism between Ellen and Annie (who didn’t want Ellen “sinking her hooks” into infant Peter). Even Charlie, “Grandma’s favourite”, feels the burden of legacy, blurting out that Ellen “wanted [her] to be a boy”.

After Charlie has a severe allergic reaction at a high school party, Peter rushes to get her to hospital. Desperate for air, Charlie sticks her head out the car window and is decapitated when her head smashes against a telephone pole.

While the family struggles with their grief, Annie seethes with rage and resentment at Peter. She blames and resents him for Charlie’s demise; later confessing she tried everything to abort Peter. It’s a moment of unfiltered vitriol that also hints at Annie’s suppressed denial: she was afraid of birthing a male child (possibly suspecting Ellen’s less-than-wholesome intentions for the boy). These admissions, heaped upon his own guilt, begin to take their toll on Peter.

Annie later meets Joan, who comforts Annie in her grief. Months later, Joan reveals she performed a séance and made contact with the spirit of her dead grandson; after Annie witnesses the spirit writing on a chalkboard, Joan urges Annie to contact Charlie and gives her an incantation in an unknown language to open the way, not realising Joan is a member of a demonic cult. The cult worships an entity called Paimon, one of the eight kings of Hell, and Ellen was the “Queen” destined to deliver a male host for the demon in exchange for wealth, knowledge and power. However, having been denied Peter through Annie’s protection, the grandmother set to work on his more pliable sister, thus the cult surreptitiously laid their path through the family’s lives, steering events towards their intended end.

Annie’s efforts at contact do not go well for the family: Charlie seems to manifest in the house but the manifestations are violent and cruel, particularly towards Peter.

In one of the film’s penultimate scenes, Peter sees Joan shouting a spell from across the street, demanding Peter to “get out”. He stumbles around the remaining scenes in a fugue-like state, his identity almost snuffed out by guilt and terror. Only briefly do we see that spark return—as he attempts to save himself from a possessed Annie—before he is broken one final time, witnessing the forced self-decapitation of his mother in the attic.

The film shows in several close-ups of faint words carved into the walls—ZAZAS, SATONY and  LIFTOACH PANDEMONIUM (the latter meaning “open Pandemonium”)—words indicating the cult’s design well before the escalation of events. What some viewers may not have noticed is the sigil of Paimon carved onto the telephone pole where Charlie is killed. It’s an easily missed detail, but one of huge importance. Her death is a carefully prepared means to an end—which Charlie herself surely also knew, judging from her reaction to the bird crashing against her classroom window, then later cutting its head off with scissors.

Whether entrusted with the knowledge or simply an unwitting puppet, Charlie was ultimately the back-up option for Paimon’s cult, but because the demon-king “covets a male body”, Charlie in her present body isn’t suitable. Ellen’s book of invocations indicates that a host must first be broken, at its most vulnerable.

Her death, therefore, is orchestrated not only to shatter the protective bonds of mother to son and break his selfhood through guilt, despair and self-loathing, but also to free Charlie’s soul. Peter’s spirit, effectively extinguished, leaves a male husk for Charlie to control. Even though it’s a work-around solution, it fulfils their master’s conditions, and Charlie will not resist the way Peter might have. 

Joan confirms this in the final scene, comforting Charlie (in Peter’s body) as she coronates her as King Paimon before they invoke the demon proper, stating she was always intended to be Paimon’s host—they simply had to correct the issue of her “wrong body” first.