SPOILERS BELOW!
Blumhouse’s long-anticipated live-action adaptation of the popular video game series known as Five Nights at Freddy’s has finally been released in theatres in the United Kingdom, two days earlier than its upcoming US release this Friday.
Starring in the latest Blumhouse horror has Josh Hutcherson as Mike, Matthew Lillard as William Afton, Piper Rubio as Mike’s sister Abby, Mary Stuart Masterson as Aunt Jane, Kat Conner Sterling as Abby’s babysitter Max, Christian Stokes as Uncle Hank, and Elizabeth Lail as Vanessa Monroe, among others.
That being said, now that the movie has finally been seen by some members of the FNAF fandom, it’s fair game to dive into the flick’s official ending and explain exactly what happened, why it ended the way it did, and more!
Five Nights at Freddy’s Ending Explained: What’s It All About?
As expected, Blumhouse’s Five Nights at Freddy’s movie shares an identical plot to the original game’s storyline and deep lore that the fandom has become very familiar with over the years.
The movie tells the story of five children who mysteriously vanished during the 1980s while visiting Freddy Fazbear’s pizzeria, causing the establishment to close down.
Skip forward in time, enters Mike Schmidt (Hutcherson) who’s in need of a new job due to being fired at his prior security job. Due to having sole custody of his little sister Abby (Rubio), Mike ends up having to take her to work with him, custody that his Aunt Jane (Masterson) is in the middle of trying to take off of him legally.
Mike meets with his “careers expert” Steve Raglan (Lillard) and begs for a new job, Raglan offers him a last-chance job of sorts on a not-so-well-paid security night job at the now-abandoned pizzeria.
Similar to the game, during Mike’s first night on the job, we’re shown a bit more of his backstory. He falls asleep while on the job and dreams about his younger brother Garrett (Lucas Grant) who was kidnapped during a camping trip with their family.
During Mike’s second time dreaming about this memory, he encounters five other children in his dream who end up trying to hurt him – the children who are later revealed to be the souls trapped inside the animatronics – the first night ends up being uneventful compared to the game’s version.
Then enters Vanessa (Lail) who visits during the second night to provide a bit of an explanation to MIke about the pizzeria’s history. It’s revealed during this night that the children are the five children who disappeared in the 1980s, it’s also shown that when they hurt Mike in his dream – it hurts him in real life too. This naturally causes Mike to start realising that something bad is up.
During Mike’s working at the pizzeria, his Aunt Jane attempts to sabotage his security job by getting Abby’s babysitter Max (Sterling) and her brother to break in and trash the place. They’re also joined by Carl (Joseph Poliquin) and Uncle Hank (Stokes), however, once they all enter… they are quickly killed off one after the other by the animatronics.
Five Nights at Freddy’s Ending Explained: Abby’s Role
As theorised, Mike’s sister Abby ends up in a lot of danger while sleeping at the abandoned pizzeria due to having to go there with her brother on his third night shift. This is after her babysitter Max disappears, as mentioned above, you know why!
During the third night shift, both Mike and Abby fall asleep in his security office – the same iconic location from the original game. In Mike’s dream, he yet again encounters the five children who offer him information about his long-lost brother in exchange for ‘anything’ they want in return.
This all happens while Abby is egged into playing with the animatronics, the same ones that are possessed by the ghosts of the same five missing children. Vanessa, Mike and Abby all play with the characters, where they build a fort. However, Vanessa tells Mike that if he ever brings his little sister with him on the job again, she’ll shoot him.
At this point of the movie, Mike has told Vanessa a fair amount of his backstory, despite knowing literally nothing about her. He suspects later on that Vanessa has more of a connection to the abandoned pizzeria than she may be leading on. He also realises that the drawings his sister has been making are drawings of the same five children appearing in his dreams, children who she calls her imaginary friends from the beginning of the movie up to this point.
Mike, after all of this, asks his Aunt Jane to take care of Abby, which makes Abby hate him due to her not wanting to go with her Aunt. Mike returns to his night shift job but ends up being nearly killed by the animatronics who finally have him all alone.
Five Nights At Freddy’s Ending Explained: Springtrap
“I always come back!” (Lillard said it!)
Mike manages to escape a near encounter with an animatronic’s trap, he later wakes up in a police outpost with Vanessa, who dresses his wounds to keep him safe… for the meantime.
She reveals that she knows literally everything about the pizzeria’s haunted past, and she also drops the bombshell that she’s the daughter of William Afton (Lillard).
She also tells Mike that the five children want Abby, that her father used to work at the pizzeria as a “yellow rabbit”, his real name, and the fact that he was the one who took the five children in the first place and placed them in places that nobody would find… inside the animatronic suits!
It should be noted that Lillard’s Steve Raglan is also William Afton.
While Mike is with Vanessa, a version of Freddy goes to collect Abby at the house and sadly kills her Aunt Jane in the process. Freddy takes Abby back to the restaurant where the animatronics turn on her, all of which try to kill her too.
Mike now being in the know, he quickly rushes back to the restaurant with some tazer weapons, moments before the “yellow rabbit” aka Spring Bonnie enters the scene.
Mike faces off against all of the animatronics, where Afton surprisingly reveals that it was he who stole Mike’s younger brother, Garrett, revealing that he also killed him. Vanessa enters the pizzeria to help Mike and Abby, but Abby reveals the dark truth about Afton to his animatronic victims.
After she communicates what really happened to them, they all turn on Afton and defeat him… just as fans would have all loved to hear, Afton says “I always come back!” just before putting his suit’s head back on.
Skip to the end, Abby is at school and seems fairly settled now, and Mike is shown telling her that they may be able to revisit her friends after she asks him about them. Afton is then shown slowly dying inside the Spring Bonnie costume, while the child ghost of Freddy Fazbear watches.
The end hints that Lillard’s William Afton will return in a sequel as Springtrap.
Five Nights at Freddy’s is now in UK theatres – its US release is on October 27th in both theatres and on Peacock for streaming at home.
