The Ending Of Guillermo Del Toro's Pinocchio Explained

The historical setting of "Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio" immediately lets you know that the film will have a more serious focus than past versions of the story. The beginning of the story takes place in the midst of World War I, and as warplanes are making their way back to base, they drop bombs just to lighten their load. One of those bombs lands on Geppetto's church and kills his son Carlo.

From there the film's antiwar message becomes even more explicit. By the time Geppetto creates Pinocchio, many years have passed. World War I has come to a close, but now Benito Mussolini has come to power in Italy and fascists dominate almost every aspect of daily life in Geppetto's town and the surrounding areas. Geppetto, like many of the other Italian citizens, does his best to play along with what the fascists want in order to avoid any violence at their hands.

Pinocchio isn't so agreeable. He's a rambunctious young boy who likes to do things his own way. Just by being himself, Pinocchio shines a light on just how wrong the fascist belief system is. The primary antagonists of the film, the carnival owner Count Volpe and the government representative Podestà, are both fascists who want to crush Pinocchio's spirit for the glory of the fatherland. It's Pinocchio's individualist streak, unlimited optimism, and empathy for other people that ultimately lets him prevail over his foes.

Pinocchio doesn't learn how to be obedient in the film, but he does learn how to be good. At the beginning of the movie, Pinocchio breaks rules to get what he wants. He leaves Geppetto's house to follow his father to church. He skips out on going to school because he wants to drink hot chocolate at the carnival. By the end of the movie, he's breaking rules to save lives. What changed?

Pinocchio's journey away from home takes him through plenty of hardships, but two moments in particular demonstrate how Pinocchio's experiences led him to change his attitude in life. First, Pinocchio sees Count Volpe beating and berating Spazzatura. He immediately steps in to defend the monkey, and when that doesn't work, the two of them conspire to sabotage the Count's performance for Benito Mussolini. Later Pinocchio is taken to a training camp for fascist soldiers. There he comes to understand that his old bully Candlewick was really just being cruel because that's what his father Podestà taught him to do. Pinocchio and Candlewick become friends and rebel against Podestà's rules.

Over the course of the film, Pinocchio suffers, but he also witnesses others suffering because of the people who are in charge of them. All of that convinces him to change the way he goes about disobeying and transforms him into a true hero.

There's another character in the movie who goes through a drastic change thanks to Pinocchio, and his transformation mirrors Pinocchio's own growth. Candlewick is the son of Podestà, a war-obsessed fascist government official who lives in Pinocchio's town. When the boys first meet, Candlewick takes a cue from his father and acts like a bully toward Pinocchio, going so far that he convinces Pinocchio to stick his wooden legs in a fire.

All that changes in the film's final act. Podestà ships Candlewick off to a special military training camp for young boys, and eventually he finds a way to get Pinocchio to the camp as well. Podestà is obsessed with the idea of using Pinocchio as an immortal soldier, but neither of the children is genuinely interested in fighting a war.

At the training camp, Candlewick confesses to Pinocchio that he just wants to make his father proud of him, and Pinocchio comforts him by telling him all fathers love their sons, but fathers are still people and don't always behave the way they should. In a training exercise, Pinocchio and Candlewick come to a tie, and Podestà orders his son to shoot his new friend. Candlewick refuses, finally telling his father that he doesn't need his approval. He and Pinocchio rebel against the camp's leadership just as bombs begin to fall. 

When Sebastian enters the film, he begins narrating different events. He explains that when he first met Pinocchio, he was a writer working on a book about his life, and he tells the story of how he first got involved with Geppetto, his puppet, and the Wood Sprite. At the end of the film, Sebastian talks about Pinocchio's long life with Geppetto and Spazzatura, who both eventually die as Pinocchio goes on agelessly.

In some instances of Sebastian's narration, the camera shows him writing as he's speaking, which made it all the more surprising when Sebastian begins to narrate over his own death. Just after seeing that Sebastian, like the others, died, we catch up with him in the afterlife, playing cards with the skeletal rabbits who work for Death. The transition makes for a quick twist. It reveals that all this time, Sebastian wasn't narrating from some grand book that he wrote about his adventures. He gave up that dream in order to save Pinocchio's life. Instead, Sebastian has been telling his life story to the disinterested rabbits over a few hands of poker. The darkly humorous turn in the story is emblematic of what sets "Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio" apart from other takes on the story.

In the film, Death claims that Pinocchio's "realness" is tied to his mortality. She says that human life is special because it is short, but even though Pinocchio gets to live for a very long time, he's still gone through the transformation of becoming a real boy by the end of the film.

In more traditional versions of Pinocchio's story, like Disney's classic film, his journey ends when he gets magically transformed into a physical human being. That was never going to be the case in Guillermo del Toro's version. "To me, it's essential to counter the idea that you have to change into a flesh-and-blood child to be a real human," the director told Vanity Fair. "All you need to be human is to really behave like one, you know?"

Pinocchio's transformation from an inhuman puppet to a real boy was a slow process that began when he first met Geppetto at the beginning of the film. In a way, every interaction he had with the people he met further pushed him toward humanity, but it was the moment that Pinocchio smashed Death's hourglass that sealed his fate. By being so full of love that he was willing to sacrifice his own life, Pinocchio truly embodied what it means to be human.

What happens to Pinocchio now? At the end of the movie, his family has died, and though the exact timeline is never made clear it seems likely that the world has changed quite a bit. When Pinocchio first comes to life, Benito Mussolini has taken power in Italy and fascism is on the rise throughout Europe. Depending on how long Geppetto and the others lived, Pinocchio might be on his own just on the other side of World War II.

Pinocchio has a real sense of adventure, and he's never been afraid to explore new experiences. It seems more than likely that after Geppetto and the others died, Pinocchio left his small Italian town behind and ventured off into the wider world. The film doesn't say anything about the adventures that Pinocchio goes on later in his life, but wherever he goes, he's sure to continue being a positive influence on everyone he meets.

Sebastian says that he believes Pinocchio won't live forever, and based on what Death told Pinocchio during his last visit, that seems like a safe assumption. Whether or not Pinocchio ever makes it back to his hometown and Geppetto's little house, there's definitely hope that he and his Papa get reunited in the afterlife some decades down the road.