The Ending Of Suspiria Explained

It might be best to start by comparing the new Suspiria with the original, as there are important differences between the two — particularly regarding the movies' final acts, which completely diverge from each other. 

The first Suspiria also focuses on an elite German dance academy visited by an American outsider named Suzy Bannion, played there by actress Jessica Harper. In the original, Suzy ultimately comes to realize that the dance academy is a front for a coven of witches, and burns it to the ground. Argento's movie spends its whole running time leading up to the reveal of an occult society, but that's more or less where Guadagnino's version starts, with Chloë Grace Moretz's Patricia raving manically to Dr. Jozef Klemperer about the conspiracy of witches that has dominated her world and mind.

Guadagnino's version also focuses much more heavily on the aspect of dance, which mostly served as a framing device for a carnival of horrors. It's much more central to the remake's story — as well as the witches' ritual. 

Around the movie's midpoint, the academy leader Madame Blanc, played by Tilda Swinton, introduces the notion of a new dance centering around the theme of rebirth. (Her proposed title for the piece, Wieder Öffnen, is German for "Open Again").

The idea of reincarnation, or some sort of occult agelessness, is openly alluded to among the instructors of the Helena Markos Dance Company throughout the movie's first two acts. But it's at the midpoint that you begin to see how that theme is going to play out, plot-wise — especially when we get our first glimpse at the deformed claws of Mother Markos, scratching at the edges of her hiding space under the school's floor. While the details aren't made totally explicit, the development gives direction to the story — some kind of dance is going to be conceived, seemingly to bring Markos back to a state of youth. It also seems like the feat will require a costly sacrifice.

Okay — Mother Who? Good question — and one for Dr. Klemperer to find out.

One of the Suspiria remake's biggest (and most time-consuming) additions to the original narrative is the inclusion of the elderly Dr. Klemperer as a main character, seeking information on the Markos company due to his concern over Patricia, his missing therapy patient. While he initially regards Patricia as a woman suffering from delusions, he soon acknowledges that he has begun to share in this so-called delusion to an extent. He increasingly comes to see Patricia's stories as evidence of a potentially criminal conspiracy, at the least.

As we see from his notes and the diary Patricia left, there is an intricate internal consistency to Patricia's thoughts about the company. Using both of their notes as a guide, Klemperer is able to determine with some accuracy the history of the Markos company. As powerful as its witches are, they are merely descendants of millennia-old figures described as "the Three Mothers." Their names, we learn with him, are Mater Tenebrarum, Mater Lachrymarum, and Mater Suspiriorum — or the Mothers of Darkness, Tears, and Sighs. As the title of the movie suggests, the ending of the movie focuses quite heavily on the latter woman.

Where Patricia resisted the coven, Susie embraces it. In her resistance, Patricia is made to disappear, while in her compliance, Susie ascends. In many ways, she is the left to Susie's right. Where Susie never errs from embracing the darkness of the witches' coven, Patricia rebels against the established order — so much so that the witches are able to present her becoming an extremist left-wing bomber as a plausible cover story for her absence.

As the last acts of the movie reveal, Patricia didn't really disappear from the academy at all. Instead, she's trapped inside it, still alive along with Olga, the woman who Susie's dance physically destroyed earlier in the film.

When Sara descends into the academy's catacombs in the minutes before the company's Volk performance, she succeeds in finally finding Patricia, Olga, and nameless others — all alive, but horrifically disfigured. Thanks to some power of the witches, they are trapped in a state of deathless suspended animation and suffering — a devastating fate which Sara shortly earns for herself as well. 

The dancers of the Markos company aren't the only ones summoned up for some dark occult ritual. Earlier, the witches decide to incorporate an old, up-till-now abandoned aspect of the ritual into their next rebirthing attempt, bringing along Dr. Klemperer as an unwilling "witness" to the proceedings. This is not done kindly.

Over the course of the movie, we learn that the somber Klemperer attained his air of loneliness following the disappearance of his wife, Anke Meier, who is implied to have been killed during the Holocaust.  Klemperer has spent decades trying to move on from his traumatic separation from Anke — which makes it all the more shocking when she appears to him, seemingly back from the dead, at his country home outside Berlin. (Intriguingly, she's played by Jessica Harper — the original Suspiria's Suzy Bannion.)

The movie plays their reunion so emotionally that you almost don't notice Anke is walking an enraptured Klemperer back from the countryside into West Berlin, beyond the boundary of the Wall, and up to the doors of the Markos academy. As Klemperer realizes where Anke's inexplicably led him, she is suddenly revealed — with a heart-stopping wail — to be a cruel illusion of the witches. Now that all the pieces are in place, the final dance is ready to begin.

This scene is the first time in the movie that we get a full-body glimpse of Mother Markos, and boy oh boy does she look nasty. Her bonkers body has problems that go far beyond age or simple deformity — this is a dramatic degree of corruption. She appears to have extra limbs hanging off that quite simply aren't supposed to be there.

All throughout the movie, Mother Markos is spoken of as though she's just barely made it through a botched attempt at rebirth. The last effort, we are told, ended poorly, with Markos left essentially on death's door. 

In this scene, looking at her in the flesh, we can sort of see what this ritual going wrong might look like. With her extra limbs and impossible-looking proportions, it's as though she's partially fused with another body. She was almost reborn, but the ritual didn't work. Now, as Susie enters the room with full confidence, Markos and her supportive allies in the coven believe the time for her reincarnation has finally arrived.

After Blanc's blood is spilled, it seems like Markos' resurrection is at hand. Little does she know, this ceremony isn't for her at all. As a matter of fact, the ritual is the culmination of a power play that's been brewing in the background for the entire movie.

To the horror of Markos, Susie reveals herself to be none other than the revived Mother Suspiriorum — the millennia-old entity who supersedes Mother Markos in the witches' organizational hierarchy. To the shock of every person who's not stuck in some kind of dance trance, Susie — or Suspiriorum — begins to unleash absolute hell on everyone who dared pretend to be her equal, or seize power in her absence. 

After all this buildup, Markos is straight-up killed by Suspiriorum, her body exploding in a cloud of gore and viscera. Every witch who supported Markos as a leader of the group is killed, too. Suspiriorum doesn't pull it off herself — instead, she summons the living embodiment of Death itself to insanely murder all of her enemies, soaking every surface of the room in blood.

The rest of the movie is essentially her victory lap as she assumes control of the company. She's not pure evil, either. Beyond allowing the witches who didn't support Markos' leadership to live on with their memories of the ritual expunged, she also allows the deathless Patricia, Sara, and Olga to finally die, their ruined bodies collapsing to the ground in an act of motherly mercy. 

One of the movie's funniest moments comes when Klemperer is allowed to leave the academy after his duties as a "witness" are all wrapped up. Shell-shocked and barely able to walk, he's guided out the front doors by one of the witches, who gently pushes him into the night to the sounds of a lullaby. He walks away from the insanity, and makes his way back home. The end? No — it's time for an extensive epilogue.

After Klemperer returns to his home in the city, he sits in bed in an utter daze, regarding some government papers of his dearly departed Anke — papers certifying her as "Aryan," despite Jewish ancestry, which apparently failed to keep her safe during the Holocaust.

As he sits, Klemperer is visited by a mature, cool and confident Susie, now fully imbued with the spirit of Suspiriorum. But Susie is not there to harm him — instead, she takes pity on Klemperer, showing him a kindness by telling him what she knows of Anke's ultimate fate. She tells him of her capture and final days in a concentration camp, using Anke's most private memories of her relationship with Jozef to prove she is telling the truth — a truth the doctor weeps to hear about. After providing him the closure he has sought for decades, Susie then expunges the memories of the horrors he witnessed, essentially setting him free.

Yeah, we're not done. Did you know there was a post-credits scene to this 152-minute motion picture? 

While Suspiria does continue beyond its credits reel, the extra scene doesn't do much in the terms of advancing the story. The brief, wordless scene focuses entirely on Susie/Suspiriorum standing in the cold, smiling and gesturing and — according to Guadagnino — "looking forward towards something" in a maddeningly vague manner before walking out of frame. 

The meaning of the moment is clearly open to interpretation, which is to say that it doesn't seem to specifically mean anything. But as much as we'd like to send you off by saying "Look, you're on your own here," we do have some ideas. 

The original Argento Suspiria was followed up by two sequels: Inferno and The Mother of Tears, each focusing on a different one of the ancient Three Mothers. This gesture feels like a tease about how the academy's witchery will spread into the world outside the frame. But is Guadagnino literally teasing the idea of a straight-up sequel in the vein of Argento's follow-ups? Nothing's been officially announced, and it doesn't feel likely. The most practical explanation is that the shot just intends to send you out of the theater thinking, considering the implications, perhaps exhausted... with heavy sighs.