‘Smile 2’ Ending Explained: What Happens to Skye?

• “Smile 2” has a memorable, completely bonkers ending.
• The way it ends leaves the door open for the franchise to proceed, as does its box-office success.
• The primary film was a box-office hit in 2022, and the sequel is monitoring nicely too.

One of the anticipated horror motion pictures of the 12 months is lastly in theaters. And boy, does it reside as much as the hype.

“Smile 2” is the sequel to the 2022 movie “Smile,” which starred Sosie Bacon as a psychiatrist named Rose Cotter who finds herself the sufferer of a curse after witnessing a affected person die by suicide.

That affected person had beforehand watched one other particular person die by suicide, and the movie finally reveals that there is an unexplained supernatural entity haunting its victims by taking the type of numerous smiling folks. The creature mentally and bodily tortures its chosen sufferer for a number of days, earlier than lastly possessing the sufferer and forcing them to kill themselves in entrance of one other particular person — who, in flip, turns into the following sufferer within the chain.

The primary movie was the function debut of filmmaker Parker Finn, who returns because the writer-director of the sequel.

Here is what to know in regards to the “Smile 2” plot, that wildly twisted third act and ending, and the way forward for the sequence.

Warning: Main spoilers forward for “Smile 2,” together with the ending.

‘Smile 2’ has a brand new primary character: pop star Skye Riley

“Smile 2” initially opens on a personality we met within the first film: Kyle Gallner’s Joel, a police officer and Rose’s ex-boyfriend who witnessed her dying by self-immolation on the finish of the 2022 movie and thereby inherited the curse from her. It appears at first as if he’ll be the particular person we’re following within the sequel, however that is a misdirect.

In actuality, Joel is simply within the first jiffy of the film, the place we see him kill a drug supplier’s lackey in an try to alleviate himself of the curse by passing it on to a different particular person (the primary movie established that the one loophole for escaping the Smile Entity entails killing one other particular person your self and ensuring somebody sees it). Issues go sideways nearly instantly, when Joel by accident shoots and kills the drug supplier himself, then is run down and killed by a automobile when he flees the drug supplier’s gang.

A brand new character, low-level drug supplier Lewis (Lukas Gage), is the unwitting recipient of the curse after he by accident sees Joel kill each the supplier and his lackey when he is stopping by to choose up medicine. However Lewis, too, is not lengthy for this world; he is solely the car by which the entity’s curse is handed on to our new main woman — troubled pop star Skye Riley (Naomi Scott).

After we first meet her, Skye is a recovering drug addict. After a automobile crash left her badly injured and killed her boyfriend, actor Paul Hudson (performed by Ray Nicholson, the son of Jack Nicholson), who was driving, she’s getting ready for her comeback world tour. Nonetheless in power ache however unable to get a physician to prescribe her painkillers as a consequence of her previous substance misuse, Skye turns to her former highschool classmate Lewis to get Vicodin.

Lewis is on the tail finish of the Smile Entity’s curse when Skye arrives at his condominium. Strung out on coke and wildly paranoid after days of seeing the smiling creature, Lewis all of a sudden (and graphically) begins grinning at Skye earlier than calmly smashing his personal face open with a health club weight.

Although we do not see the entity onscreen, viewers who’ve seen the primary film acknowledge that Lewis was possessed, and has now handed the curse onto Skye. Now, Skye should take care of a literal demon on high of her metaphorical private demons: particularly, the psychological well being issues which have led her to push away everybody near her.

That features her mom-manager Elizabeth (Rosemarie DeWitt), her candy and well-intentioned assistant Joshua (Miles Gutierrez-Riley), and her ex-best pal Gemma (Dylan Gelula), who reduce ties with Skye proper earlier than her near-fatal accident the 12 months prior.

The ‘Smile 2’ ending options twists upon twists

All through the movie, Skye contends with being haunted by the entity, which frequently takes the type of her overzealous followers (together with one creeper from a meet-and-greet who attacked her). She will get help from her former pal Gemma, who surprisingly simply agrees to forgive Skye for her poisonous habits all through their friendship when Skye reaches out for assist in the early days of the curse.

In the meantime, Skye can be receiving incessant textual content messages from a stranger who tells her that they know she was at Lewis’ condominium the night time he died. After a disastrous charity look results in a meltdown when the entity takes the type of Skye’s lifeless boyfriend, she lastly agrees to satisfy with the texter and learns he is a possible ally: Morris (Peter Jacobson), an ER nurse, who tells her that his brother was additionally a sufferer of the Smile Entity additional again within the chain.

Upon assembly, Morris tells Skye that he believes the one approach they’ll cease the entity for good is to cease Skye’s coronary heart whereas she’s alone in a room, briefly killing her and thereby depriving the entity of a number to leap over to.

Initially, Skye is horrified by the suggestion. However issues quickly get even worse for her. Later, she returns to her condominium, the place she’s confronted by the entity, which has taken the type of a swarm of her followers. They assault her, and one reaches its hand into her mouth, apparently to own her.

When Skye awakens, she’s in a non-public rehab facility, being watched over by her mom and Joshua. Left alone, Skye and her mom have a confrontation the place her mom rails towards her for letting everybody down by asking to cancel the tour. Quickly, Skye’s mom is revealed to be the entity in disguise, which we see stab itself repeatedly with a damaged shard of mirror.

Skye goes to flee earlier than realizing she’s coated in blood: It appears to be like like she killed her personal mom, regardless of Skye (and the viewers) seeing the entity stab itself.

In a panic, Skye flees the hospital after a confrontation with Joshua, some medical doctors, and rehab safety. She runs into Gemma, who was en path to the rehab facility to go to her, and steals an Uber driver’s automobile at gunpoint to go to Staten Island; having run out of choices and never wanting anybody else to die, she’s agreed to satisfy Morris to enact his plan to cease her coronary heart to defeat the entity.

Gemma hops within the automobile with Skye, insisting on sticking together with her and saying she’s her “experience or die.” The heartwarming second is reduce quick when the actual Gemma calls Skye on the cellphone, revealing that the entity has been Gemma all alongside: Gemma by no means really known as Skye again or got here to see her after Skye’s preliminary voicemail apologizing for his or her falling out a 12 months earlier.

The entity vanishes after taunting Skye by telling her that Gemma hates her, revealing that Skye, not Gemma, has been driving the automobile the entire time. Skye arrives on the deserted Pizza Hut that Morris has rented out — its freezer, he says, will permit them to get her physique temperature low sufficient to stop mind injury whereas they cease her coronary heart for 9 minutes.

Morris units every thing up within the freezer, which conveniently has a door that can solely open from the surface, then leaves to go “get one thing.” At that time, Skye sees the model of herself critically injured after the automobile crash suspended from the ceiling: It is the Smile Entity, having taken the type of her previous self.

The entity-as-past-Skye taunts Skye, telling her, “You will by no means escape who you really are on the within.” Skye fights off the creature and manages to get her palms on the injection to cease her personal coronary heart. This seems to work, because the entity shrieks — solely to disclose it is one more fakeout and none of this battle has actually occurred.

“You are not in management. I’m,” it says, earlier than pushing Skye by a door that reveals she’s really on stage mid-performance on the opening night time of her tour.

Skye’s very a lot alive mother and Joshua are within the viewers, showing to recommend that it wasn’t simply the earlier scene within the freezer that wasn’t actual however every thing that occurred on the non-public rehab facility too, together with Skye’s obvious homicide of her mom.

A horrified Skye appears to be like out on the huge, cheering crowd from the stage, then sees the entity (now showing as a double of her present self in her live performance outfit) in entrance of her. The double tears open its scar and the entity emerges from its corpse, climbing into Skye’s mouth and possessing her.

The film then cuts to the viewers’s perspective, the place it seems that Skye is having a seizure onstage; the entity is not seen to them. The involved viewers cheers when Skye recovers and will get up, a broad smile overlaying her face.

Having efficiently possessed Skye, the entity forces Skye to kill herself on stage in entrance of hundreds of followers. We do not really see Skye kill herself, however the digital camera stays targeted on the horrified reactions of the live performance attendees watching it occur. Within the ultimate shot, we see Skye, mendacity lifeless on stage, together with her glittering microphone stabbed by her eye. A literal mic drop.

What does this imply for ‘Smile 3’ and the franchise’s future?

The primary “Smile” film was a box-office smash again in 2022, making over $217 million worldwide. Deadline even named it one of many 12 months’s most respected blockbusters when it comes to revenue. It would not seem that was a one-off both; “Smile 2” is monitoring nicely to this point, topping the primary movie’s debut with a $23 million opening. That each one makes it exhausting to think about Paramount would not wish to order extra sequels if writer-director Parker Finn is sport.

The ending of “Smile 2” cleverly opens up the world of the franchise in order that future installments may go in any variety of instructions. Now that an enviornment stuffed with followers have witnessed Skye’s dying by the hands of the entity (plus the thousands and thousands extra who most likely watched it streaming), it may conceivably infect any, or all, of them, theoretically spreading its curse worldwide.

(And perhaps wiping out humanity within the course of? Who’s to say!)

Finn additionally averted a typical style pitfall: overly explaining the character of your monster. Viewers finish “Smile 2” simply as clueless in regards to the nature of this creature as they have been on the finish of the primary film. Not one of the characters have any concept what this factor is, or whether or not it has any weaknesses that might permit it to be defeated, and neither can we.

Hopefully, Finn will proceed to stay on the helm of the franchise ought to it proceed. He is already stated he is received plans for a 3rd film lined up, although “Smile 3” hasn’t been formally confirmed but.

“There are some concepts that I feel are very thrilling. I feel it is actually enjoyable to think about a lineage of ‘Smile’ motion pictures the place each turns into extra off the rails than the earlier one,” Finn instructed SFX Journal.

“Smile 2” is now in theaters.