The SubstanceEnding Explained: What Happens to Elisabeth and Sue — and What Does That Final Gruesome Scene Really Mean?

Mar. 15, 2025

Demi Moore in ‘The Substance’.Photo:©MUBI / Courtesy Everett Collection

©MUBI / Courtesy Everett Collection

There’s a major price to pay for youth and beauty inThe Substance.

After a car wreck nearly kills her, Elisabeth is presented with a unique opportunity: to participate in a black market, body-enhancement program known as “The Substance.” Elisabeth can’t resist the program’s promises of youth, beauty and perfection, so she injects herself with a mysterious slime-green liquid.

In a rather gruesome spine-splitting sequence, Elisabeth “births” Sue (Margaret Qualley) — a flawless, “better version” of herself. But there’s a catch: Elisabeth and Sue must switch bodies every seven days, with no exceptions. While one is awake in the world, the other is in a comatose state generating the fluid necessary for their counterpart to stay alive.

When Sue becomes greedy with her time, exceeding seven days on the outside, Elisabeth suffers the consequences, and things take a dark and twisted turn.

So, how didThe Substanceend? Here’s everything to know about the movie’s final minutes.

Warning:The Substancespoilers ahead!

What happened at the end ofThe Substance?

Demi Moore in ‘The Substance’.©MUBI / Courtesy Everett Collection

By now, audiences have learned that mere hours past the seven-day deadline has crippling physical effects on Elisabeth’s body, so when Sue is forced to switch bodies after several months, Elisabeth emerges unrecognizable. The elder of the duo then decides to terminate the experience and the program provides a serum that will kill Sue.

Midway through injecting Sue with the serum, Elisabeth has second thoughts and attempts to revive her counterpart. This causes a glitch, allowing both women to be awake at the same time. Sue is furious and ultimately kills Elisabeth.

Without her lifeline, Sue’s body begins to deteriorate — she loses her teeth and her ear — just before she’s set to host a New Year’s Eve show in Los Angeles. She rushes home to inject herself with the original slime-green liquid in the hopes that she will transform again into another, younger, more beautiful self. Instead, this triggers a mutation and Sue gives birth to a disfigured and grotesque monster (Monstro Elisasue).

What is the monster inThe Substance?

Demi Moore and Margaret Qualley in ‘The Substance’.©MUBI / Courtesy Everett Collection

The monster is a mutated version of Elisabeth and Sue — a result of the latter injecting herself with the original activator serum. Its name, Monstro Elisasue, is simply a fusion of both character names.

While speaking toVulturein February 2025, Fargeat described the ghastly creature as “liberation from the tyranny of image.”

“It’s the moment where [Elisabeth] finds some relief when she has almost no human shape. It’s the first time she looks at herself in the mirror and she doesn’t judge herself in a harsh way,” she continued. “She’s not scared. It’s the moment where she has, for the first time, some tenderness for herself.”

Did Sue and Elisabeth share the same consciousness?

Demi Moore; Margaret Qualley.©MUBI / Courtesy Everett Collection (2)

©MUBI / Courtesy Everett Collection (2)

Elisabeth and Sue are the same person biologically. However, it becomes clear that they don’t share the same consciousness. If that were the case, Sue would be more concerned with Elisabeth’s well-being and refrain from abusing the seven-day switch rule.

“The idea was to suggest a kind of reincarnation. They are the same person, but their minds are different due to their new bodies, which changes their relationship with the world," Fargeat explained toNerdophilesin September 2024.

What is the message behindThe Substance?

The Substanceexplores body image and societal expectationsfor women related to aging — something Moore toldThe Guardianin September 2024 that she is all too familiar with.

“How violent we can be towards ourselves, how just brutal,” Moore said, recalling the extreme lengths it takes to remain youthful and thin as a young actress and model in Hollywood.

“Self-judgment, chasing perfection, trying to rid ourselves of ‘flaws' … all of us, if we start to think our value is only with how we look then ultimately we’re going to be crushed,” she added.

For Fargeat, a crisis of self-worth in her 40s ultimately led her to createThe Substance.

“I started to have these crazy, violent thoughts that my life was going to be over — it’s the end of being interesting, it’s the end of having any value in society,” she told theLos Angeles Timesin February 2025. “It made me realize that if I wasn’t doing something with [those thoughts], it could destroy me.”

“The movie is not about just aging,” Fargeat continued. “It’s about how you’re supposed to look and behave to conform to the idea that society has built of what it is to be a woman. And a huge part of it has been, I think, defined through the eyes of men.”

source: people.com