Editor’s note: The following contains spoilers for ‘Frankenstein’Guillermo del Toro‘s long-awaited Frankenstein is now on Netflix, and audiences are eating it up. Oscar Isaac shines maddeningly bright as Dr. Victor Frankenstein while Jacob Elordi impresses as the Creature in a film that is, admittedly, a bit of a departure from the source material. Nevertheless, del Toro has managed to somehow capture much of what made Mary Shelley‘s original Gothic such a work of art. But how does Frankenstein end? Different from the book, we’ll say that much…

‘Frankenstein’ Divides Its Narrative Between Victor and The Creature

Much like the novel, del Toro’s Frankenstein is framed from the perspectives of both Victor Frankenstein and his Creature, dividing the narrative to relay certain aspects of the tale to fill in gaps for Lars Mikkelsen‘s Captain Anderson (and the audience). Victor spends his half speaking about his childhood, namely the abuse he suffered at the hands of his father and the love he shared with his mother, who died in childbirth delivering his brother William (Felix Kammerer). Her death — and visions of a flaming angel — was what sparked Victor’s lifelong obsession with reanimating the dead, which kicked him out of the world of respected academia. Yet, with the help of benefactor Henrich Harlander (Christoph Waltz), the mad doctor soon has the resources to continue his experiments, all while fancying his brother’s fiancé and Harlander’s niece Elizabeth (Mia Goth), who bears a striking similarity to his departed mother.

Soon, Victor is successful in bringing the Creature to life, though he begins to detest his creation, burning the lab to the ground with the Monster inside. It’s here that the Creature’s perspective takes precedence, as he tells Victor and the captain of his survival, eventually befriending the blind patriarch (David Bradley) of a family of woodland hunters. But when the man is killed by wolves and the family deems the Creature responsible, he turns his attention to his maker, hoping for a companion. But having been spurned by Elizabeth on her wedding day to William, Victor is resentful of his creation, whom he sees as the cause of his separation from her. This leads to Elizabeth’s death, as Victor attempts to shoot his Monster, only for her to throw herself between them instead.

It is this moment that sets Victor on a crusade to hunt down and kill his creation once and for all. The Creature leads his maker all the way into the Arctic, where he torments the doctor, proving that he cannot die, even when he wants to. By the time Victor is found by Captain Anderson and his crew, and brought on board their sailing vessel, the Creature is hot on their tail. Eventually, he boards the ship to tell his version of the events, and the end of the film boils down to a final confrontation between Victor and his Creature.

‘Frankenstein’ Concludes With Reconciliation Between Frankenstein and His Monster

Image via Netflix

But upon hearing the Monster’s story in his own words, the baron finally understands his own sins. Realizing that he treated his Creature harshly as a result of the way he was looked down on by his own father, Victor uses his dying breath to beg his Creature for forgiveness. He goes even further than that, however, as he actually acknowledges the Creature as his son. It’s a beautiful moment of reconciliation as the two Frankensteins find themselves, for the very first time, on equal footing. Not in a physical sense, but in almost a spiritual one, as Victor leads by example for the sake of his “child,” hoping to see him embrace the humanity he was given. “In forgiveness is where the Creature learns that he can finally be human,” Jacob Elordi told Netflix’s Tudum. “The only way he discovers that is not through violence or revenge. It’s through actually seeing another person and understanding them and understanding his father’s flaws and that his father came from somewhere as well.”

The Creature forgives Victor, finally choosing to live his own life and embracing what was given to him by his maker. In the final shot of Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein, the Monster witnesses his father’s death, but is allowed by Captain Anderson to leave the ship without harm. Then, wandering the frozen tundra, the sun begins to rise. Frankenstein’s Monster extends his arms and allows its rays to shine upon him, refusing to fear the day (and, therefore, life itself) anymore. This calls back to one of his earliest moments with Victor, who, in his lab, once opened the shades to allow the sun to peak through, teaching his Creature to feel the “life” that comes from it. It’s here in the Arctic that the Creature regains that childlike wonder for life, truly fulfilling his maker’s design to reanimate the dead.

Interestingly, del Toro ends Frankenstein with a quote from Mary Shelley’s contemporary, the poet Lord Byron, that reads, “The heart will break, yet brokenly live on…” The film comes full circle as Victor becomes the father he wished he had in his youth, and the Creature learns a valuable lesson about humanity from his broken creator. The quote itself also speaks to the grief that the Creature leaves with here, having lost not just his father, but a mother-like figure in Elizabeth as well. Despite the loss he incurred, the Creature chooses life and forgiveness, rejecting being a child of the night and instead deciding to live in the day, no matter what trials may come.

Guillermo del Toro’s ‘Frankenstein’ Ending Differs from Mary Shelley’s Original Novel

Image via Netflix

Image via Netflix

Image via Netflix

Image via Netflix

Image via Netflix

The reconciliation between monsters at the end of Frankenstein is a major shift from the Mary Shelley novel. In the book, the two do not share Victor’s final moments on earth. In fact, the doctor of the novel never departs from his desire to see the Creature destroyed. What was first a mission of revenge for all the family and friends the Monster murdered soon becomes (in Frankenstein’s view) a holy mission, albeit one he knows that he won’t be able to complete. “Miserable himself, that he may render no other wretched, he ought to die,” Victor Frankenstein says near the end of Shelley’s original 1818 text. “The task of his destruction was mine, but I have failed.” It’s here that he attempts to convince Captain Walton (as he’s named in the book) to continue his quest to kill the “daemon,” though not before acknowledging that he has his own sworn duties.

Soon after, Victor dies, and the next time Walton writes, he recounts his encounter with the Creature, who is saddened by his maker’s death and vows to burn himself on a funeral pyre. “The light of that conflagration will fade away,” the Creature says. “My ashes will be swept up by the winds. My spirit will sleep in peace; or if it thinks, it will not surely think thus.” Clearly, Guillermo del Toro was not satisfied with Shelley’s tragic ending, choosing instead to reconcile father and son, creator and creation, in the final moments of his film. With this, he reinterprets Frankenstein to be a tragic tale of forgiveness and repentance, and while the Creature’s repentance comes too late in the novel, Victor’s occurs at just the right time in the film.

Whichever adaptation of Frankenstein you prefer, it’s clear that del Toro adores the tale in all its forms. “I’ve lived with Mary Shelley’s creation all my life,” the director explained to Tudum. “For me, it’s the Bible. But I wanted to make it my own, to sing it back in a different key with a different emotion.” In his long-awaited work, we can see the longing del Toro has to see creature and creator reconciled, to see the story retold in a way where the mad and the macabre could be brought together in harmony, justifying not just the Monster, but the monster who made him. For del Toro, himself a lapsed Catholic, Frankenstein was never solely about the dangers of playing God, but about the way in which forgiveness can transcend all true horrors, and how fathers and sons might learn to understand each other.

Frankenstein is now streaming on Netflix in the U.S.