The Ending Of Sydney Sweeney's Immaculate Explained

Sydney Sweeney nailed the religious horror sub-genre in Michael Mohan's 2024 film, "Immaculate" and delivered an ending that horrified viewers.  Taking on the leading role and producing, the "Euphoria" star swaps sexually charged high school for a holier-than-thou convent and quickly proves that one is more hellish than the other. Here, she plays Sister Cecilia, a young woman who joins an Italian convent to ease the suffering of dying nuns. It's here where she realizes she may be enduring a fate worse than death after becoming pregnant seemingly through immaculate conception.

Praised, protected, but overall imprisoned in the convent, Cecilia learns just what dark actions have been put in place to ensure the safety of her offspring, and the grim deeds that she must push herself to escape and most importantly, retain her independence that this unholy group is attempting to take from her. It's in this story and specifically its final act that the film provides unflinching commentary, not only through her actions to escape her captors but also via the gut-wrenching finale that might force audiences to look away. Also, even amidst the carnage put together by blood, sweat, and a brutally placed stone, "Immaculate" hints at a sequel or perhaps even a trilogy thanks to a weapon that Cecilia uses quite literally in sticking it to the man.

It's hard to sit through Sydney Sweeney's brush with God and not compare it to the nunsploitation film involving a miracle pregnancy that came out the same year as "The First Omen." While the Damien prequel certainly stokes the fires of a compelling terror with its striking visuals and commendable homages, "Immaculate" stands alone making a louder statement against the fight for women's autonomy, due to the traumatic experiences that three of the characters endure, with only one of them barely surviving alone.

If the convent is a representation of the modern world and women in it, then Cecilia, along with Sister Gwen (Benedetta Porcaroli) and Sister Isabelle (Giulia Heathfield Di Renzi) display the varying impacts it has on them by the end of the film. Isabelle fails to meet the demands required of her to carry the Messiah and is cast out because of it, and when Gwen tries to speak up against the horrors unfolding, she is brutally silenced as a result. Both suffer dearly for their troubles, leaving Cecilia as not just the final girl of this story, but the only one to protect herself. Of course, the three aren't that close, to begin with, but it makes Cecilia's story feel far more isolated against the threat she's desperate to escape from and the realization that her faith will be tested in more ways than she could imagine.

"Life is so cruel. Only a man can be responsible," Gwen tells Cecilia at one point before her death. Sadly, as we eventually find out, men are indeed at the center of the "miracle"  that is her supposed immaculate conception. Cecilia fakes a miscarriage in an attempt to get out of the prison of a convent, and after she fails to escape, Father Sal Tedeschi (Álvaro Morte) reveals the truth to her, explaining that science — and not God — put her in her current state. It turns out that DNA was extracted from the Holy Relic (a nail that was used at Christ's crucifixion), and through this discovery, the former geneticist turned holy man applied his training while trying to create the Second Coming.

Unfortunately, as is the trope of every mad scientist, Tedeschi has his previous efforts decorated around his lab, showing the deformed fetuses that understandably horrify Cecilia. The revelation is another addition to the film's arsenal of speaking out against religion's control over women. It also reinforces the perspective that Cecilia is deemed only as a vessel just like so many before and objectified further when she's branded on her foot like cattle only meant for breeding. It's here though, that our very different warrior nun makes a last-ditch effort to escape and reclaim herself for herself.

We're not ones to use the term "boss b***h" very often, but on Cecilia's second attempt to flee the convent, she certainly enters such a mode, bringing down whoever she can to cut free. Taking out the Mother Superior (Dora Romano) and the Cardinal (Giorgio Colangelli), Cecilia then attempts to burn down Tedeschi's lab, which she does after escaping the priest and torching him along with his work. This leads to a ferocious second round, where a severely burned Tedeschi attempts to cut Cecilia's baby out with a scalpel, all while stumbling around the catacombs in the dark. It's here where our hero fights back in a brutal fashion, stabbing him in the neck with the Holy Relic, which led to a painful bit of filming for the nun with the nail.

Speaking to IndieWire, director Michael Mohan revealed that in one take, Sweeney got an eyeful of fake blood but powered through regardless, much to his reluctance. "But she's my boss, and she was like, 'Keep shooting, Mike. Keep shooting until you f*****g get this,'" explained the director. With the camera still rolling, it was in the third take that they got what was needed, albeit with an actor in a level of pain that Mohan revealed could be heard in her voice. "That was probably the hardest thing," he said of shooting the blood-filled scene. "But it was harder for her than it was for me."

Even with Tedeschi's efforts burnt to the ground, Cecilia is still carrying its legacy, and it isn't far from making its way into the world. After getting a safe distance from the convent, she's forced to give birth during a horrendous one-take sequence that sees her give life and then take it away all in about five minutes. The close-up of Sydney Sweeney's face is a scream of agony, rage, and release from a hell she came close to being stuck in. Caked in blood, and cutting the umbilical cord with her teeth (which Mohan told IndieWire was a mix of pastry and food coloring), she crushes the creature with a rock in the film's final moments.

It's a visceral sequence that Michael Mohan, who reunited with Sweeney after they worked together on "The Voyeurs," takes full credit for, as he revealed he rewrote the ending, adding that the one we see is the first try for those involved. "When I first read the script, it did not have this ending, and when I closed the script, I had the vision for what this needed to be," he said. "It is my proudest directorial moment because it is exactly how I pictured it." It didn't even take much to accomplish either. "What you see in the movie is take one. We did a couple of other takes, but when we saw that first take, we knew she had nailed it," the director continued.

Undeniably, Sydney Sweeney's performance helps carry the film to its final resting place, with Mohan making no effort to reveal the life she takes that we thankfully never see. "The goal was never to show it," he confessed, referring to the creature gurgling off camera. "Whatever people imagine is going to be 10 times more terrifying than what I show them." With that, the door slams shut on Cecilia's journey with an abrupt cut to black, but while this Virgin Mother's chapter might be over, Michael Mohan has proposed that there might still be others waiting to be told from the world of "Immaculate," all thanks to one essential element — the nail that put Cecilia through this ordeal in the first place.

During an appearance on the "ReelBlend" podcast (via CinemaBlend), Mohan hypothesized that while one rusty nail is buried in the neck of Father Tedeschi, two others are still in existence. "There are two more nails out there. Are there two more labs somewhere in the world that [Cecilia] needs to go take down?" Currently, there has been no confirmation that another film is on the cards, but given the film's $28 million box-office earnings against a $9 million budget, it wouldn't be total blasphemy. The next film could see Cecilia on a new holy mission, taking down these twisted religious chapters whose biggest mistake was messing with the wrong nun. 

If you need to know more about the star of "Immaculate," you can check out these 12 little-known facts about Sydney Sweeney.