Antlers Ending Explained (Spoilers)

In an isolated Oregon town, a middle-school teacher and her sheriff brother become embroiled with her enigmatic student, whose dark secrets lead to terrifying encounters with an ancestral creature.

Antlers: Spoilers Below

Julia's father's abuse of her is retroactively shown through flashbacks of her youth. However, Antlers keeps things vague, implying brutality and devastation without showing the gory details. She returned to Oregon after living in LA for so many years to be closer to her brother Paul, whom she left behind when she moved away in an attempt to get away from their father. Although Julia could have come back years sooner, she didn't do so until after her dad died; it's likely because she couldn't return to her childhood home if he were still there. Julia is still working through the lingering trauma from her father's mistreatment, which is easy to see how it still affects her. Facing him would have been an emotional ordeal, so Julia stayed away until it was safe to visit Paul and reestablish their relationship.

After young Lucas is discharged from the hospital, it becomes evident that his bully's corpse is severely mutilated. Julia conveys to Lucas that his father Frank has passed away (unbeknownst to them, his demise was caused by a Wendigo emerging from him), and his brother Aiden is nowhere to be found. Lucas informs Julia that Aiden is in the mine and "Frank wants to go for him and take him, so they can all be together."

Both Paul and his assistant Dan go to the mine to investigate and find Aiden, who now has the same unhealthy appearance Frank got before he finally turned into the Wendigo. Frank kills Dan and hurts Paul while Julia and Lucas run away and hide. Then, Lucas goes into the center of the mine while Julia helps Paul.

When the boys are found, Aiden appears to be less human than before, Lucas is horrified by sight, and Frank appears to be a Wendigo, devouring an animal. When Warren Stokes told them that a Wendigo could only be killed when fed, Julia realized she had to fight Frank and defeat him. She managed to gouge his fiery heart out of his body and destroy it, finally killing the beast.

As a result of the Wendigo possessing Aiden after its spirit leaves Frank's body, Julia is forced to make the difficult decision to kill him to spare him from a life of misery. She makes Lucas turn away so that he doesn't have to witness his baby brother's death. She sadly approaches the boy, looks like she's going to hug him, and then stabs him to death, ending the curse.

Sometime later, Lucas is seen being cared for by Julia and Paul. Julia wants to keep him with them for a while longer until they decide what to do with him, while Paul is worried that he might turn into a Wendigo. They share a moment by a lake and then decide to go home. Paul suddenly starts coughing as Julia and Lucas walk away. He says he'll catch up with them soon, but the movie ends with Paul's coughing getting worse and him spewing black goo. This hints that he might have been infected by Frank earlier and could become the next Wendigo.

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