Writer-director Maggie Gyllenhaal and stars Jessie Buckley and Christian Bale share their perspectives: “Is that a happy ending? I don’t know.”

Maggie Gyllenhaal, Jessie Buckley, and Christian Bale explain The Bride’s ambiguous ending

Writer-director Maggie Gyllenhaal and stars Jessie Buckley and Christian Bale share their perspectives: "Is that a happy ending? I don't know."

By Wesley Stenzel

Wesley Stenzel is a news writer at **. He began writing for EW in 2022.

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on March 6, 2026 3:38 p.m. ET

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Christian Bale and Jessie Buckley in 'The Bride'. Credit:

- *The Bride* ends with both of its lead monsters (Jessie Buckley and Christian Bale) dead in a laboratory — until they're seemingly reanimated.

- Director Maggie Gyllenhaal suggests that the characters might have been "brought back to life with no memory."

- Stars Jessie Buckley and Christian Bale are happy that the finale is open to interpretation.

It's alive…or is it?

After two hours of monstrous hijinks, Maggie Gyllenhaal's *The Bride* ends on something of a bittersweet note. The film follows the Bride (Jessie Buckley) and Frank (Christian Bale), formerly known as Frankenstein's monster, as they embark on a whirlwind journey across the U.S. during the 1930s after multiple acts of bloody self-defense land them on the wrong side of the law.

The final sequence of the film sees the Bride return to Chicago to reunite with her creator, Dr. Cornelia Euphronious (Annette Bening), whom she begs to help reanimate Frank after he's gunned down at a drive-in movie.

Jessie Buckley in 'The Bride'.

During her last stand in Euphronious' laboratory, Buckley's character dies as she's ripped to shreds by police gunfire, leaving the scientist with two lifeless, blood-soaked corpses.

However, Myrna Malloy (Penélope Cruz) — who's just been promoted to detective status — orders the police to clear the room, and tells Euphronious, "Take as long as you need."

The doctor and her maid, Greta (Jeannie Berlin), then hear the disembodied voice of Mary Shelley (Buckley) compare Frank and the Bride to Romeo and Juliet.

Shortly thereafter, we see lightning flash in the windows of the lab, indicating that another reanimation procedure has just occurred, and the final shot of the film shows the Bride and Frank's hands coming to life and clutching one another on the operating table.

Annette Bening in 'The Bride'.

Gyllenhaal spoke with ** to break down her thoughts on the film's finale.

"Dr. Euphronius does something radical to end the movie," the filmmaker explains. "She does something iconoclastic, radical, against the grain. She shouldn't, and she does it anyway. And that's what finishes the movie, right?"

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Gyllenhaal emphasizes that because the Bride didn't have a clear memory of her past after her first reanimation at the beginning of the movie, the lovers' return to life might not be as cheery an ending as we might initially expect.

"If the Bride and Frank were brought back to life with no memory, who knows if it would be a happy ending?" she says. "Maybe one of them has a memory, one of them doesn't. At least the way the logic we've built, they might not know each other. Is that a happy ending? I don't know."

Christian Bale and Jessie Buckley in 'The Bride'.

However, Gyllenhaal notes that she still interprets the ending with a positive spin, seeing the characters' collaboration as a victory in and of itself.

"What I do think is triumphant at the end of the movie is Mary Shelley, Myrna, Greta, Dr. Euphronius, all these women coming together to bring this other woman back to life," the director says. "Which is kind of what we are all doing by making the movie."

Bale doesn't know what to make of the characters' fates. "There's no predicting what could happen with characters like that," he says. "They're completely raw. They have great wisdom, but also incredible childlike qualities, capable of insane levels of violence if they wish. There's no knowing what will happen next."

Jessie Buckley and Christian Bale in 'The Bride'.

When asked whether she thinks the Bride and Frank will live happily ever after, Buckley says that she wants the audience to make the finale their own.

"That's for everybody else to hope for," she says. "I hope so. I loved them. I loved being in their love. I loved their disobedience and their punk, and I learned a lot from their love. I learned a lot of how much you can live and love and contain the most monstrous parts of each other. I feel there's something reinvigorated from their love, which is bigger than both of them in a way. So who knows?"

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The film also contains a brief mid-credits sequence, which begins with Detective Jake Wiles (Peter Sarsgaard) casually eating an ice cream cone. The camera then moves indoors to find a group of women exacting their revenge on Chicago mob boss Lupino (Zlatko Burić) after his widespread exploitation and abuse of sex workers in the city.

But Gyllenhaal emphasizes that the women don't continue the cycle of violence by killing Lupino; instead, they forcibly give him the Bride's signature lip tattoo to leave their mark.

"I love that the women at the end with Lupino, he does get some comeuppance and Wilds helps with it, but they don't kill him," she says. "They tattoo his face like the Bride. It's not violence perpetuating more violence."

*The Bride* is now playing in theaters. For more on the movie, read EW's cover story here.

*Reporting by Sydney Bucksbaum.*

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