AlthoughSmile 2’s ending should have been exceptionally obvious, the horror sequel managed to make the twist feel like a genuine surprise thanks to some incredibly clever misdirections.Director Parker Finn’s sequelSmile 2builds on the world established by 2022’s sleeper hitSmilefrom its opening scene onward. The bravura opening sequence seesSmile’s doomed antihero Joelventure into the trap house of some drug dealers so he can pass the curse onto them, only for him to accidentally also implicate Lukas Gage’s luckless small-time drug dealer Lewis. This bodes badly for Naomi Scott’s Skye.
A traumatized pop star, Skye Riley suffers from chronic pain and PTSD after a car crash that killed her boyfriend, Paul Hudson. Skye relies on Lewis to provide her with Vicodin, but gets much more than she bargained for when he takes his own life in front of her whileunder the Smile Entity’s control. This passes the curse onto Skye and, as the pressure mounts around her big comeback tour, the musician’s grip on reality becomes increasingly tenuous. This leads toSmile 2’s brutal twist ending, a shock that should have been glaringly obvious but isn’t.
Smile 2’s Ending Does Include A Mass Curse At Skye Riley’s Concert
Fans Guessed This Twist As Soon As Smile 2’s Premise Was Revealed
From the moment that the sequel’s premise was announced,countless commentators guessed thatSmile 2’s story would end with Skye succumbing to the Entity at a concert and cursing the entire crowd. Fan theories online argued that this ending was almost inevitable since it was the most dramatic way for the curse to go viral. Moreover, the decision to make the sequel’s main character a famous pop star instead of an ordinary civilian seemed like a clear path to getting more victims exposed to the Entity’s influence. AlthoughSmile 2did utilize this exact ending, it was somehow surprising.
Fan theories about Smile 2’s ending seemed to grow increasingly irrelevant as the sequel’s plot unfolded
Smile 2led viewers down a winding garden path, only using the obvious twist long after that ending appeared to be impossible.Fan theories aboutSmile 2’s endingseemed to grow increasingly irrelevant as the sequel’s plot unfolded. First, Skye made a disastrous appearance at a charity event that ended with her accidentally tackling an elderly woman off the stage. Then, she met a family member of one of the curse’s earlier victims who had a hare-brained scheme to stop the Entity by temporally stopping Skye’s heart. Then, Skye murdered her own mother while trapped in a rehab facility.
Smile 2’s Misleading Story Made Its Predictable Twist More Satisfying
Skye’s Story Helped The Twist Work
By the time Skye had unknowingly killed her mother, fled rehab, and volunteered to be temporarily killed by this random stranger to hopefully stop the curse, viewers had completely forgotten about the possibility of her playing a comeback concert. Thus,the idea of Skye unleashing the curse on a huge captive audience was pushed to the back of the audience’s mindas this seemed increasingly impossible. Then,Smile 2audaciously repeatedSmile’s Stephen King-inspired twistwhen the sequel revealed the entire final act took place entirely in Skye’s mind, and she was actually standing onstage ready to start singing.
What Singer Is Smile 2’s Skye Riley Based On?
Smile 2’s singer heroine Skye Riley might be fictional, but it is not impossible to work out who the musician sounds like and who she may be based on.
Smile 2’s twist ending is not, in itself, particularly innovative. 2017’sThe Ringreboot Rings and 2019’sThe Cleansing Hour, which even starred theSmilefranchise’s Kyle Gallner, both end by implying that countless people have simultaneously been cursed by viewing the events of the movie via livestream. OnceSmile 2’s heroine was revealed to be a performer, it didn’t take a genius to work out that her demise would take place onstage, be witnessed by innumerable people in person and online, and subsequently givetheSmilefranchise’s demonic Entitymore victims than ever before.
Smile 2 Expands On The Original Smile’s Famous Twist Ending
Thus, it was the execution ofSmile 2’s twist, rather than the twist itself, that made the ending so ingenious.Smile 2’s ending makes an obvious twist impossible to predictby showing viewers the same misdirection that the monster uses to confuse and disorient Skye. It is not quite clear when the Entity’s lies begin and reality ends, since the events before Skye arrived at rehab could reasonably be things that actually happened within the movie’s reality. Skye’s mother is alive at the concert, so her death is definitely part of the Entity’s elaborate mirage.
Potentially half ofSmile 2’s story is an imaginary delusion cooked up by the demon.
However, the fact that Gemma was never real means Skye’s hallucinations may begin much, much earlier in the movie. InSmile, about ten minutes of the movie’s ending takes place in the heroine’s head. In the sequel, potentially half the movie is an imaginary delusion cooked up by the demon. It is not even clear ifSmile 2’s Morrisis a real person, or if he is merely the Entity in disguise. This ambiguity makesSmile 2’s ending even scarier and more effective.
Where The Smile Franchise Goes From Here
A Post-Apocalyptic Landscape Is Likely
The fact that the entire captive crowd watched Skye’s death means that the entity has all these people to start spreading the curse to possibly multiple people and multiplying exponentially. There is also the fact that this concert was being streamed online, thanks to several people recording it.This could push the curse to an unlimited number of people worldwide. Director Parker Finn hinted that he had ideas for moreSmilemovies, which could suddenly create the idea of it becoming a worldwide epidemic, changing the story completely.
What could result is something similar toBird Box. WhileBird Boxhad an entity that could cause people to die by suicide if they saw it, this is very similar. With the mass attention the entity gets from streaming the concert worldwide, the entire planet could fall into chaos and end up in a post-apocalyptic landscape within weeks. Of course,SmileandSmile 2was all about singular people and their tales of personal trauma, and that would have to change on a larger scale, but this opens the door to limitless possibilities.
