The Ending Of Total Recall Explained

Total Recall is one of the most beloved science fiction films of the last few decades, perfectly meshing director Paul Verhoeven's high-octane sleaziness with sci-fi legend Philip K. Dick's original high-concept We Can Remember It For You Wholesale, all wrapped up in a tidy Austrian bow with the massive star power of an early '90s Arnold Schwarzenegger. Still, the movie's story of a secret agent buried deep undercover with conflicting loyalties (or maybe just a construction worker tired of his humdrum life dreaming of a better one) has led audiences to wonder about the enigmatic final scene: was Quaid dreaming, or was he actually a secret agent?

But fans don't need to subject themselves to scientists and untested dream procedures to figure out the ending—we've painstakingly combed the movie for all the clues you need for what's really happening as Douglas Quaid looks out across the Martian sky.

We'll start at the beginning. Fittingly, the movie opens with a dream, as Quaid sees himself and a woman we'll later learn is Malina (Rachel Ticotin) on Mars in spacesuits. Quaid slips and falls down a hill and his helmet breaks, his eyes bulging out of his skull as he wakes up, ending the dream. At the end of the film, Quaid and Malina are sucked out into the atmosphere of Mars, and his eyes bulge out of his skull almost identically to the dream that started the movie.

As mentioned above, the scientists are culling Quaid's dreams for potent imagery, the better to match his subconscious desires with his Rekall-implanted memories. Even if Quaid is actually Hauser on a deep secret mission, it makes no sense for him to dream his own death in a way that looks identical to what actually happens. We don't even get a sense that this particular kind of death is common on Mars, as the residents have the good sense to stay indoors and breathe recycled air. Quaid's dreaming death scene is foreshadowing for the final action set piece on Mars, a viscerally effective image that the scientists used to make the Rekall sequence feel even more real.

Early in the film, one of Quaid's co-workers from the construction company warns him not to go to Rekall—he heard someone was lobotomized there. Quaid ignores his warning; after the Rekall procedure, he discovers that his best friend is actually an undercover agent for the government tasked to keep Quaid unaware. But is he?

His warning about the possibility of a lobotomy echoes throughout the visual inspirations of the movie: when Quaid pulls out his tracker chip, he pushes a tool through his nasal cavity until he hears a "chunk," a strikingly similar process to original lobotomy procedures. Likewise, when the doctor shows up on Mars to tell Quaid he's having an adverse reaction to the Rekall procedure, he takes the tack of reminding Quaid of the possible side effects to the brain. When Cohaagen is planning to swap Quaid's memories with Hauser's, the terror of the scene is that Quaid's personality will be erased, a terror shared by similar horror stories of lobotomies. Even Quaid's eye-bulging near-death scene at the end of the movie can be read as the fear of a brain aneurysm. The oft-mentioned dangers of the Rekall procedure reverberate through the entire film.

Malina is the mysterious woman who first appears in Quaid's dream that opens the film. She's given no dialogue or personality, just a face in an astronaut's suit. Later, when Quaid goes to Rekall, they ask him to describe his perfect woman, encouraging him to be as honest as possible to have "more fun" in the implanted memories. Quaid describes a woman who is "brunette... athletic... sleazy and demure," and before he passes out he sees that the scientists are sculpting Malina's face.

We know from the beginning that the scientists are combing through Quaid's dreams to better fit him for an implant—while Malina's face appearing on the televisor could be interpreted as Quaid's hallucination, we know it to be a product of the scientists' technology. Malina herself, as we later find, works in a brothel, is athletic, and is both demure and sleazy. She perfectly matches the personality type Quaid wants to appear in his Rekall memories.

When the sales agent boasts to Quaid that Rekall implants are better than a regular vacation, he lists a litany of annoyances that their service avoids, and one of them is the issue of "crooked cabbies" ruining a vacation. When Quaid is on Mars later in the film, he runs into Benny (Mel Johnson Jr.) a cabbie that drives him into the red light district; Quaid finds out Benny has a deal with a specific establishment that gives him a cut of the profits if he brings tourists there.

But that's not all—later in the film, Benny is revealed as a double agent for Cohaagen, tasked with discovering the secret mutant freedom fighters' lair. Benny, then, is a crooked cabbie twice over, a subconscious trigger that Quaid uses to fill out his dreamscape while within the Rekall procedure. Benny's presence also serves as a balm for Quaid's worried mind—if this were a "real" Rekall procedure, then there wouldn't be any crooked cabbies, just like McClane explained earlier in the film. By the time Quaid reaches Mars, his mind has started to protect him from the possibility that the Rekall procedure is going very wrong.

Lori shows up for the final time when Quaid is confronted by Dr. Edgemar (Roy Brocksmith), who warns Quaid he's in danger of suffering a schizoid embolism, and he's trapped within the dream. He says he and Lori, the real actual Mrs. Quaid, have gone into Quaid's fantasy to pull him out before further damage occurs. He also tells Quaid he's suffering a schizoid embolism that will leave his mind jumbled unless Quaid accepts their help. He warns Quaid that the Rekall fantasy will become jumbled, that the "walls of reality will break down...One minute, you're the savior of the rebel cause; next thing you know, you'll be Cohaagen's bosom buddy. You'll even have fantasies about alien civilizations as you requested; but in the end, back on Earth, you'll be lobotomized!"

Quaid thinks Edgemar is a plant and shoots them both, but the doctor is right: the walls (of the hotel) literally break down as Cohaagen's men burst in. In the next scene, Kuato is murdered, leaving Quaid as the leader of the rebellion, just as Cohaagen bursts in to deliver the news that Quaid is actually Hauser, his right-hand man. The doctor's prediction was exactly right.

Likewise, in the lab scene, the secret arc reactor/alien artifact can be spotted flashing across the screen before Quaid's put under. One of the scientists also makes the observation that "It's all about alien artifacts these days." It makes no sense for the Rekall offices to actually have access to the top-secret alien artifact that Cohaagen has spent untold amounts of money to keep secret.

It appears on the monitor because it's part of Quaid's dreaming package, and they're prepping the operation. Verhoeven himself backed that up on the DVD commentary, saying, "All the images of the tubes that you just saw are of course the tubes that you see at the end of the movie when the nuclear reactor starts."