The Ending Of Gerald's Game Explained

When "Gerald's Game" hit Netflix in 2017, the internet was abuzz with theories about its plot, its deeper meanings, and especially its ending. Adapted by Mike Flanagan from a seemingly unadaptable Stephen King novel, it starts with as simple a premise as you could possibly get: A woman, Jessie (Carla Gugino), ends up chained to a bed when her husband, Gerald (Bruce Greenwood), drops dead at the worst possible moment. Stranded in the middle of nowhere without another living soul for miles around, she must escape before it's too late.

However, with this being a Stephen King story, things aren't as simple as they seem, and Jessie is beset by ghosts, visions, and traumatic memories. It all culminates in a gruesome finale that had viewers covering their eyes and scratching their heads. If you haven't seen "Gerald's Game," you should probably stop reading now, as we're about to get into major spoiler territory. For everyone who has seen it and still has questions, you're in luck. Let's take a deep dive into the ending of "Gerald's Game," from explanations to Easter eggs and everything in between.

The following article mentions sexual assault. If you or anyone you know has been a victim of sexual assault, help is available. Visit the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network website or contact RAINN's National Helpline at 1-800-656-HOPE (4673).

As she's arguing with her husband's ghost and her spiritual counterpart, Jessie has flashbacks to a traumatic experience from her childhood, one that she's claimed to have forgotten due to amnesia. One summer when she was 12, Jessie and her family traveled to the lake to watch a solar eclipse. While the rest of the family went out on a boat to witness the event, Jessie stayed on land with her dad, Tom (Henry Thomas). While sharing a viewfinder, Tom starts commenting on how much Jessie — who he calls "Mouse" — has grown up, and reminisces about how she used to sit on his lap as a little girl. As the moon fully covers the sun, Jessie agrees to sit on her dad's lap for old time's sake. Tom tells her to keep staring at the eclipse as he touches himself inappropriately.

Later, Tom finds Jessie in her room, and through mental manipulation convinces her not to tell anyone about what happened, especially her mom, as it would only make things worse between them. At dinner that night, Jessie breaks a glass, cutting her hand wide open. Her father wraps a bandage over her wound, telling her he'd hate to have to take her to the hospital and have them sew her fingers back together. That memory sparks something in Jessie that helps her in her current, dire situation.

Throughout her ordeal, Jessie is terrorized by the Moonlight Man, a shadowy figure who looks a lot like the sort of terrifying image our mind creates when we awaken in the dark and see something lurking in the corner. According to Gerald's ghost, this is Death, and he's come to collect something from her after she dies. Jessie convinces herself that he isn't real, only to discover that he's a madman named Raymond Andrew Joubert who's been killing people in their homes at night and mutilating their corpses. Which begs the question: Why would he spare such easy prey as someone chained to a bed?

As news of Joubert's arrest becomes public, Jessie learns a lot about the man who still haunts her dreams: How his enlarged features are due to a medical condition known as acromegaly, that he started off robbing graves before graduating to murder, and that he liked to take various mementos from his victims, including jewels, bones, and body parts. Perhaps most importantly, she learns that Joubert enjoyed raping and mutilating his male victims, which is why she found Gerald was missing his ears while she remained untouched. Perhaps he spared her because he had no interest in women, or maybe it's because she skipped right to the point of his visit, which is giving him something to remember her by (in this case her wedding ring). 

The 1992 novel upon which "Gerald's Game" is based was long thought to be unadaptable, due to the fact that the title character dies early on and the rest of the story takes place entirely in Jessie's head. As Mike Flanagan revealed in an interview with the Independent, a lot of changes were required to make the book cinematic. "It's a stream of consciousness," the filmmaker said of the story. "The trick for us was trying to make that visually interesting. What we came up with was keeping Gerald in the movie by taking that inner monologue and making it an outer monologue."

This is a major departure from the book, in which Jessie isn't visited by her husband's ghost at all, but instead by a variety of women, including a younger version of herself known as "Pumpkin" and a "Goodwife" version of Jessie who encourages her to stay put and wait for help. She's also visited by a vision of Ruth Neary, a college roommate who almost learned the truth of what Jessie's father did to her on the lake that summer. Once Jessie is free in the book, she writes to the real Ruth, telling her about her past trauma and how it got her through her near-fatal dilemma. Since Ruth isn't in the film, Flanagan has Jessie write the letter to her younger self as an apology.

During her long night fighting off death, Jessie is confronted by two warring visions — one of her dead husband telling her she'll never make it, and one of an alter ego encouraging her to survive. As they argue with her and with each other, details begin to emerge about Jessie's past that points to a pattern of behavior on her part: She traps herself in metaphorical prisons because she feels she deserves it, and that's led to her being trapped in a literal one.

When Jessie's father molested her, she convinced herself that she was responsible, which is why she was afraid to tell anyone what happened. Keeping that trauma suppressed caused her to marry an older man who she was always desperate to please, just as she was desperate to please her dad. It's little wonder she allowed Gerald to put the handcuffs on her, despite every instinct telling her not to. The only way she can free herself is to confront her past and finally deal with it. In this way, "Gerald's Game" is a metaphor for how trauma can ruin our lives if we allow it to define us. The ending is all about Jessie coming to this realization.

Ever since it was first published in 1992, the ending of "Gerald's Game" has sparked debate amongst the most devoted of King's readers. The issue stems from the character of the Moonlight Man, referred to in the novel as the Space Cowboy, and the revelation of his true identity in a letter Jessie writes to her college friend Ruth (turned into a letter to her younger self in the film). James Smythe summarized this contention in a 2014 review for The Guardian, part of a longer reassessment of King's work. "The Space Cowboy — a mixture of Jessie's imagination and a real serial killer — is pretty much the strongest example of deus ex machina in his entire oeuvre," Smythe wrote. "The character exists solely to give Jessie the impetus to free herself, and it pretty much ruins the ending." 

In Smythe's view, the introduction of the mythical monster spoils what is essentially a tightly-focused inner conflict. "It's a book about a scared woman coming to terms with who she is, what's been done to her, and finding the strength to overcome," he explains. "The Space Cowboy threatens to undo that." Many of these same criticisms carried over into the film adaptation, which is faithful to the book almost to a fault. Would the ending have been more impactful if Jessie had confronted her past and finally processed her trauma without the addition of a giant, semi-supernatural killer? We'll never know.

In an interview with Bloody Disgusting, Mike Flanagan acknowledged that the book's ending was controversial amongst King fans, though he's always been a fan of it himself. "It was something when I read the book that I loved," he revealed. "I know it was polarizing with fans of the book, so the people that hated that epilogue in the book are going to hate it in the movie." He went on to say that he was sure the ending of the film would be a "lightning rod" among viewers, but he was determined to remain as faithful to the source material as possible. "That's what happened in the book," he said. "There was never a time where it felt right to do the film without that ending, for better or worse."

Flanagan expanded upon his feelings about the ending in an interview with GQ and why he felt it necessary to include it in the movie. He explained that he wanted the Moonlight Man to be seen as "a combination of all of the sickness and all of the diseased maleness that Jessie's been victim to throughout her life, all rolled up into the one tumorous character she could actually confront head-on." He also said that Jessie had "earned that symmetry, to be able to turn around and take a decisive, emotional victory over all of this," and that he knew the finale would likely divide opinion. "I expected it to be polarizing," he said, adding, "I took it as a badge of honor that we must have adapted the book faithfully enough that we're sharing the same complaints."