The following contains spoilers for Sinners, now playing in theatersSmoke’s final vision in Sinners carries a deeper meaning, bringing his character arc to a powerful close. Leading Sinner‘s cast of characters, Michael B. Jordan delivers a career-best performance as criminal twins Smoke and Stack, whose paths ultimately diverge in opposite ways. While Stack and Mary (Hailee Steinfeld) seemingly embrace vampirism and escape together, as it gives them freedom to be together, Smoke makes an unexpected choice. His decision separates him from his brother for good, but it brings a sense of closure that perfectly completes his personal journey.
Ryan Coogler’s Sinners is receiving outstanding reviews, as it takes its time building rich, layered characters and themes. Finally, when the supernatural element enters the picture, the audience is deeply invested, hoping the characters, and what they stand for, make it through in whatever form survival takes. Most of the individual endings in Sinners are quite unexpected, though they respond perfectly to character and motivation. In his final moments, Smoke has a vision that explains why he ultimately had to separate from his brother and could never become a vampire.
Smoke Has A Vision Of Annie & Their Baby Girl In Sinners’ Ending
After Slaughtering The KKK, Smoke Sees Annie Sitting With Their Baby
After saving Sammie and killing Jack O’Connell’s Remmick after his backstory is explained, Smoke’s story isn’t quite over. Knowing Hogwood and the Ku Klux Klan are coming, he stacks up on ammunition and takes the clan by surprise, slaughtering them for what they meant to do to him and his family. During the confrontation, he is fatally sH๏τ and ends up on the floor, face-to-face with a wounded Hogwood. Smoke asks his adversary for a cigarette, and the reluctant bigot ends up giving up his pack, hoping he might be allowed to live.
Right after he lights up a cigarette, Smoke hears two familiar voices sitting nearby. When he looks over, he is surprised to see Annie (Wunmi Mosaku) feeding their baby girl. She tells him he had better throw the cigarette if he wants to hold his child, symbolically communicating that he must leave behind his criminal past and corrupted idenтιтy in order to be allowed back with his family. He does, but not before shooting Hogwood, who had interrupted the beautiful moment. Finally, Smoke takes his daughter into his arms, bringing his arc to a powerful close.
Why Smoke Has A Vision Of Annie & Their Baby
Smoke Chooses To Die So He Can Reunite With His Family
Everything hints that Smoke had hoped to reunite with his ᴅᴇᴀᴅ loved ones that day. Before the final shootout, he took off Annie’s magic bag — the charm that had kept him alive through World War I and his criminal years with Al Capone in Chicago, which is how he and Stack made all that money in Sinners. The moment suggests he was ready to die, especially after losing both Stack and Annie the night before. His wish comes true, and as he’s dying, he is comforted by reuniting with Annie and their child.
It’s powerful that she calls him Elijah, not Smoke, as he is leaving that criminal, violent life behind, and embracing a clean afterlife.
His wife and child’s white clothes confirm they have found peace in the afterlife, and now, Smoke will join them. In contrast to Stack, who appears as a stylish vampire in the 1990s during one of Sinners‘ post-credits scenes, Annie and Smoke choose a very different path. Annie refuses to become a vampire, and Smoke refuses to keep living, and both were motivated by the desire to reunite with their baby girl. Their ending is bittersweet as they die, but in doing so, are happily reunited, something they were denied in life.
What Ryan Coogler Has Said About Smoke’s Visions In Sinners
Smoke Finally Gets To Be A Father & Becomes Elijah
Recently, director Ryan Coogler reflected on Smoke’s visions in Sinners, calling it “the only ending that made sense.” He emphasized that the film is, at its core, a story about idenтιтy, and that the last scene gives Smoke a chance to reconnect with who he was before loss and violence corrupted his path. Notably, Smoke was pushed to kill his own father to protect his brother, Stack. That, and the death of his baby girl, likely pushed him into a life of crime as he joined his brother’s business schemes and escaped the love he shared with Annie.
Sinners has become the first horror film to receive an A rating on CinemaScore, surpᴀssing fan-favorites like Get Out and A Quiet Place.
Coogler noted, “Smoke sees himself as a father and as a man who’s unredeemable because of his past sins.” But in his final moments, he’s surprised by Annie, who offers him a way back to who he wants to be, a father and husband. It’s powerful that she calls him Elijah, not Smoke, as he is leaving that criminal, violent life behind, and embracing a clean afterlife. Sinners carefully builds to this resolution, beginning with the brothers’ return from Chicago, where Smoke immediately sets off in search of Annie, already hinting at the different paths they would take.
