Confused About the End of Hereditary? Here's Our Best Guess at What It Means

First things first: let's break down exactly what happens in the insane final sequence. To review, Annie Graham (Toni Collette) has unknowingly performed a ritual that has welcomed a demon named King Paimon into the household. Paimon, we learn, desires a male body, so he's set his sights on Annie's son, Peter (Alex Wolff). It turns out Annie's late mother was a member of a cult of Satanists who worship Paimon and whose mission is to provide him with a human vessel.

Annie also has another daughter name Charlie, who is deeply troubled after the loss of her grandmother, with whom she was closely bonded. Charlie dies early in on the film in a freak accident; her brother accidentally decapitates her by driving too close to a telephone pole.

Joan (Ann Dowd), who is part of Annie's grief support group and is an old friend of Annie's mother, seems to be one of the highest ranking members of this cult. She's working tirelessly to secure Peter's body for Paimon without Annie's knowledge.

As Paimon circles in on his target (with Joan's help), Peter starts to go crazy. He gets pulled out of school after he smashes his own face into his desk. After digging around in the attic, Annie discovers materials pointing to her mother's cult involvement and even figures out the deal with King Paimon. She tries to explain everything to her husband, Steve (Gabriel Byrne), but he's convinced she's had a mental break. Annie tries to destroy Paimon by tossing her late daughter's sketchbook into a burning fire, since that was the object she used to summon the demon into her home. This causes Steve to burst into flames and die.

After this, Annie becomes temporarily possessed by Paimon (or falls under Paimon's influence). The house has been completely infiltrated by members of the satanic cult; they're attempting to complete the ritual that will give Peter's body to Paimon. As Peter runs to the attic and attempts to escape, Annie decapitates herself. Peter jumps out the window and loses consciousness. In the final scene (which takes place in Charlie's treehouse), the ritual is complete. King Paimon seems to have successfully entered Peter's body, and the entire cult bows down in submission. Joan says Paimon's body has been "corrected," and we cut to black.

Here's my take: Annie always knew about her mom's "special friends," but I'm not sure she always knew that it was specifically a cult. Even so, I think she knew that they were into some pretty heavy stuff, and I do think the cult has been trying to get a "male body" for King Paimon for quite a long time. Annie mentions at one point that her brother committed suicide, which seems to suggest that Annie's mom may have been trying to give him to Paimon. And when that didn't pan out, she set her sights on her grandchildren.

We learn in the beginning of the movie that there was a period when Annie wasn't speaking to her mother. Here's what I think happened: Annie must have known something going on with her mother and her brother. When she got pregnant with her son Peter, she seemed determined not to let her mother set her sights on her son. At first, she tried to miscarry, but I believe she must have run away with Steve before he was born.

We also learn that Annie and her mother reconnected sometime after Peter's birth. I'm assuming there must be some kind of ritual the cult performs in utero to "promise" a body to Paimon. It's possible that Paimon was somehow "attached" to Annie's second child, Charlie, when she was born. Or maybe Charlie was born as Paimon, and that's why she was always so strange.

Since Paimon prefers a male body, the cult needed to "correct" Charlie's body to please Paimon. Which is why they did that specific set of rituals to detach Paimon from Charlie and make Peter the final offering.

It looks like it. Even Charlie's unfortunate death (which seems like a freak accident) ultimately appears to be something that was orchestrated by the cult, as indicated by the carving of Paimon's symbol in that telephone pole. So, by some kind of witchcraft, or even by the sheer will of Paimon, Charlie's death was enacted in a very deliberate way.

Joan gives Annie a ritual that will welcome Paimon's spirit back into the Graham household, and she disguises it as "a way to communicate with Charlie's spirit." Then, the cult does a ritual of their own (which seems to involve the beheaded body of Annie's mother) to put Paimon's spirit into Peter's body.

Even if all of that does check out, there are still a few things I find confusing. For one, I'm perplexed by Steve's death. When Annie tries to burn Charlie's sketchbook early on in the film, her arm catches fire. So why does Steve burn up and die when Annie throws it into the fire later?

There's also a lot of mystery around Annie's mother. We're ultimately not sure how she dies, although it's mentioned she suffered from dementia. Does she sacrifice herself as part of the process to please Paimon? And who digs her up and puts her in the Graham family attic? And why are there so many decapitations? Is that an important part of the ritual?

Though I can speculate, Annie's involvement in the cult is ultimately unclear. Was she aware of it when she was younger? Was she a part of some kind of "deal" with Paimon? Did the rest of the family know about Grandma's side hustle?

Anyway, now that I've spent far too much time wondering about this horrifying movie, I'm going to take a nap. If I can ever get that burning image of Charlie's severed head out of my memories.