Candyman Ending Explained (Spoilers)

A sequel to the horror film Candyman (1992) that returns to the now-gentrified Chicago neighborhood where the legend began.

Candyman: Spoilers Below

In Chicago, 1977, at the Cabrini-Green housing projects, a young boy meets Sherman Fields, who has a hook for a hand and gives children candy. Later on, the police suspect Fields of putting a razor blade in a piece of candy a white girl eats and track him down before beating him to death.

Over forty years later, visual artist Anthony McCoy lives in Chicago with his girlfriend, art gallery director Brianna Cartwright. Troy, Brianna's brother, visits his sister one night and tells them the legend of Helen Lyle from the original movie. Unfortunately, Troy tells a misconstrued version of the events, claiming Helen kidnapped a baby and went on a killing spree before immolating herself. Anthony, looking for a creative spark, visits the Cabrini-Green projects to research the Candyman legend. Anthony meets William Burke, the owner of a laundromat and the boy who saw Sherman Fields beat to death by police officers. He introduces Anthony to the story of Candyman and how while Sherman was posthumously exonerated, Sherman's spirit will appear and kill the summoner if somebody says "Candyman" five times to a mirror.

Anthony is inspired by Burke's story and makes an elaborate art piece, "Say My Name," based on the Candyman legend, to display at Brianna's and her co-worker Clive Privler's art exhibit; however, the public mainly ignores the work and art critic Finley Stephens disparages it, enraging Anthony who drunkenly storms off from the exhibit. Later that night, Clive's girlfriend, Jerrica, summons Candyman, and he brutally murders the two of them. Anthony begins compulsively painting gruesome portraits of unknown people.

Anthony's increasing obsession with Candyman disturbs Brianna, who is reminded of her father, who committed suicide when she was a child and was also an obsessed artist. While investigating Helen Lyle's Candyman research, he encounters Sherman's ghost. Later, after learning that Finley was murdered after summoning the Candyman at Anthony's behest when he visited her, he confronts Burke. Burke tells him that the legend originated in the 1890s with Daniel Robitaille, an artist who, after having an interracial affair with his client's daughter, was lynched and mutilated. Since then, the souls of other murdered black men have become part of the Candyman "hive," renewing the legend for generations; they are also the subjects of Anthony's paintings.

The legends continue to spread, and a group of schoolgirls summon the Candyman and are subsequently killed. A bee sting Anthony received on his hand before meeting Burke causes a physical transformation that spreads across his entire body. At a hospital, he learns that Anne-Marie, his mother, lied about where he was born. After confronting her, she reluctantly reveals that Candyman was responsible for "Helen's" killing spree and had planned to sacrifice Candyman and baby Anthony; he was the baby rescued from the bonfire that night. After that, the community vowed never to repeat the Candyman legends. Anthony leaves and wanders the Cabrini-Green rowhouses, resigned to his fate.

Brianna is worried about Anthony and visits Burke's laundromat; however, Burke kidnaps her and brings her to a decrepit church where Anthony is in a fugue state. Burke reveals that he witnessed Sherman's death and that Sherman's spirit, reborn as Candyman, killed his older sister and her friends after she summoned him. Burke plans to reclaim the Candyman legend as an instrument of vengeance rather than a symbol of suffering by having the police gun Anthony down. He saws off Anthony's hand and replaces it with a hook before chasing Brianna, who cut herself free with her pen, into the rowhouses, where she kills him with it; Anthony appears and collapses in her arms. The police arrive and murder him on the spot.

After the police detain Brianna and unsuccessfully try to intimidate her into making a statement that Anthony provoked them, she uses a rear-view mirror to summon Candyman/Anthony, who massacres the police. Anthony kills the last-surviving corrupt cop in a gated alley and approaches Brianna with a swarm of bees lifting him from his upper torso. His face transforms to that of Daniel Robitaille, who previously took the form of Anthony and Sherman, and gives a straightforward instruction for Brianna to "Tell everyone" about what she had just witnessed.

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