Strange Darling is one of the most exciting movies of 2024, and here is the film’s killer twist, explained. Although the premise of Strange Darling may sound fairly simple, the movie becomes great in its execution, with Strange Darling‘s non-linear timeline and constant twists and turns making for an incredibly dynamic story. Audience members are constantly met with surprises throughout the runtime of Strange Darling, and now that the film has had its digital release, it is time for an all-new group of fans to discover director J.T. Mollner’s hit horror film.

Strange Darling is a film that is best gone into entirely blind, with the film being a much more enjoyable experience for viewers who know absolutely nothing about the story, premise, or structure. However, fans who have seen Strange Darling know that the film follows two main characters: Willa Fitzgerald’s The Lady and Kyle Gallner’s The Demon. The film presents Gallner’s character as a deranged killer who is hunting Fitzgerald’s character down at the very beginning of the film, but as the story unravels, audience members realize that things aren’t quite what they seem.

The Lady Is Strange Darling’s Killer, Not The Demon

Although This Isn’t Clear At The Beginning

Although Strange Darling opens with a scene that implies that Gallner’s The Demon is the killer, it turns out that Fitzgerald’s The Lady is Strange Darling‘s true killer. Since Strange Darling is told out of order, the film’s opening scene actually takes place near the end of the story, with Gallner’s character being armed with a sH๏τgun and a truck as he chases Fitzgerald’s character. The film later reveals that the duo had previously met up for a one-night stand, with things quickly turning violent and leading to this series of events.

During their one-night stand, The Lady drugged The Demon, leaving him incapacitated. Then, she began carving her initials into his chest, presumably preparing to kill him. Luckily, The Demon was able to reach for his gun, shooting The Lady in the ear and causing her to flee. The Lady discovers that Gallner is a police officer, and while she manages to get a head start on her victim-turned-pursuer, he eventually regains his strength and starts to go after her. The rest of Strange Darling‘s story is not a killer hunting a victim, but rather a victim hunting a killer.

The Lady’s Murders & History Explained

Who Is The Electric Lady?

The Lady’s attempt to kill The Demon isn’t a one-time thing, as Strange Darling eventually reveals that The Lady is a prolific serial killer. The Lady’s murders have been widely reported on, with her crime spree leading to her getting the nickname The Electric Lady. The Electric Lady killer is one of the most wanted criminals in the world of Strange Darling, and while she hasn’t been caught by the beginning of the film, her encounter with The Demon and the subsequent police officers eventually leads to her demise.

The Lady’s murders as The Electric Lady seem to have a similar modus opperandi, with her seducing men, drugging them, carving into their chest, and killing them. Things seemed to be going according to plan when The Lady was planning on killing The Demon, but the fact that Gallner’s character had a gun threw things off. Although she failed at killing The Demon initially, The Demon shooting her wasn’t the end of The Electric Lady’s string of murders, with them continuing throughout Strange Darling.

While attempting to flee, The Lady makes her way into the house of two elderly doomsday preppers. By the end of Strange Darling, The Lady killed both of them, with her also shooting a police officer later in the film. On top of that, when The Demon chases her into the house, The Lady manages to get the drop on him, biting his neck. This causes The Demon to bleed to death, and while this puts an end to her main pursuer, her antics throughout the movie have attracted the attention of law enforcement.

How Strange Darling Teases That The Lady Is The Killer

The Movie Hints At It Throughout

It isn’t made clear that The Lady is The Electric Lady killer until later in Strange Darling, but the film does tease it throughout. When looking at the events of Strange Darling in chronological order, a Sєxual sequence plays out before any of the violence of the film kicks off. In this scene, it is clear that The Lady is into masochism, bondage, and other forms of pseudo-violent Sєxual activity. While this could be nothing, the fact that it takes place within a movie where one of the two characters is a killer points to The Lady being the truly violent one.

On top of that, The Electric Lady is teased throughout Strange Darling, with the name being mentioned before the police explicitly make the connection that The Lady and The Electric Lady are one and the same. Since the audience knows that it would be strange to refer to Kyle Gallner’s character as a lady, it only makes sense that if anyone is The Electric Lady, it is Willa Fitzgerald’s character, something that is revealed by the end of the film.

Strange Darling’s Killer Twist Subverts Horror’s Final Girl Trope

It Connects To The Film’s Theme

The final girl trope has been a staple of slasher movies since Halloween, and when Strange Darling opens with a girl running away from someone who clearly has murderous intentions, it only makes sense to believe that The Lady is the film’s final girl. However, Strange Darling flips this trope on its head, revealing that The Lady is not the final girl. Instead, she is the killer. The Lady uses the knowledge that people will ᴀssume she is a victim to her advantage, with this helping her to deceive others in order to get away with her killings and various other crimes.

This connects to a major theme of Strange Darling‘s ending, with that being the dangers of ᴀssumptions and stereotyping. Many of the characters in Strange Darling take Willa Fitzgerald’s character at face value, ᴀssuming that she is the victim and that she couldn’t be the dangerous one. Every character that lets The Lady in or takes pity on her becomes one of her victims, with the only exception being the woman who shoots and kills The Lady. This subversion is one of the many things that makes Strange Darling so great.

The Real Meaning Of Strange Darling’s Ending

The Lady Got What She Knew She Deserved

Some fans believe that the death of The Lady at the end was her salvation, and it was what she was seeking all along, thanks to one scene in the film with a mirror. One person mentioned on Reddit that they believed the killer wasn’t evil all along and that she did see people as demons. Later in the film, she told the police officer she saw “devils.” There was then a scene in the movie with a one-frame sH๏τ of her seeing herself as a demon in the mirror when she looked into it. Redditor Fauxterra1984 wrote:

“I have a theory that The Lady, as mentally ill as she was, didn’t start that way and did indeed actually see people who were akin to demons because of who they were inside and that eventually she decided she had to kill these demons and rid the world of their evil. This is why when things go sideways and she says she doesn’t want to kill some of those people it’s because she actually doesn’t … The Good Samaritan shoots her and gives her some kind of salvation.”

Given this, The Lady seems to have felt she was doing the right thing by killing those she saw as demons posing as good humans. However, by the end, she had killed people she didn’t think deserved to die, and because of that, she had become a demon as well and saw it in herself in the mirror. She needed the Good Samaritan to shoot and kill her to complete the ritual of stopping all the demons in the world.

How The Strange Darling Ending Was Received

Fans Believe The Lady Knew She Had Become A Demon As Well

Strange Darling is a movie that received almost universal praise from critics and won over fans as well. The film has an almost perfect 96% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes and an 85% Popcornmeter score from the audience. One audience member loved the revelations, writing, “It uses our empathy and understanding of humanity, acquired through decades of mᴀss-audience programming of horror films, to trick us into thinking we know what’s going to happen, but in reality nothing is as it seems. Strange Darling is a fun horror puzzle.”

The critics tended to agree, with Alison Foreman of IndieWire saying it “deconstructed date night“:

“Electric and unforgettable, “Strange Darling” lives up to its maddening moniker. In a summer movie season that’s been middling at best, this is a must-see — a feat of filmmaking so extraordinary you’ll wonder if it could ever truly be spoiled. You’ve met this man and this woman. You know these tropes and their horrors. But in this exceptionally slippery film, somehow never once losing its traction, you’ve never seen “it” put “THERE” before.”

When breaking down the ending, one Reddit thread said that the film “played with” the viewer like the killer played with their victims. Redditor simpleᴅᴇᴀᴅwitches wrote, “The way the film plays with your emotions and edges The Lady being the killer back and forth until she finally is revealed. The amount of times you’re toyed with is similar to her toying with her victims.” The biggest praise for Strange Darling is how it played with expectations and then stuck the landing in the end.