Benny Safdie and Nathan Fielder’s brainchild, The Curse, has recently delivered one of the most memorable finales in all of television history and the ending is mind-bending! After spending nine and a half of its 10 episodes behaving like a show whose reality is somewhat like ours, it turns it all upside-down — quite literally! The finale picks up months after the previous episode, revealing Whitney’s (Emma Stone) pregnancy and the long-awaited release of her show with Asher (Nathan Fielder). Now, you’d think the rest of the episode would follow the aftermath of their show’s release or explore their failing marriage, but no.
Asher wakes up the next morning stuck on the ceiling, and that is when The Curse descends into complete madness. It turns out that the world has turned upside down for Asher, and gravity is pulling him upwards. The fire department comes in, and thinking Asher is having a mental breakdown, they start sawing the tree branch he’s clinging to as a last resort. Screaming his head off, only we, the audience, and Asher realize what will happen when the saw breaks through. And just like that, Asher falls into the sky and suffocates in space. So, what did this bizarre ending mean? Were the curses real? Here are three possible interpretations of The Curse’s ending.
Asher Was Cursed by Dougie
While the show never explicitly clarifies why gravity flipped for Asher, the first and most apparent explanation in a show called The Curse would naturally be the curse. Throughout the season, we get hints that the curses are real. Nala (Hikmah Warsame) curses Asher by removing chicken from his dinner, and it happens. The show also establishes that curses work on their own timeline, taking effect unexpectedly, like Nala’s classmate, who falls in the playground long after she was cursed.
Applying this logic to the finale, we can connect the dots to Dougie (Benny Safdie). In The Curse Season 1, Episode 8, Asher makes a disrespectful remark about Dougie’s deceased wife, and Dougie curses him. While we never find out what Dougie’s curse was, it is the most plausible in-story explanation for what happened to Asher. Perhaps he cursed Asher with something like “disappearing from the face of the Earth,” and the curse only manifested months later.
This theory gains weight from Dougie’s reaction to Asher getting sucked into the sky. At first, Dougie doesn’t buy what’s happening, but when he realizes it’s true, he breaks down in tears and says, “I really didn’t mean it.” Now, this ambiguous statement could be interpreted a million different ways, but maybe Dougie’s saying he didn’t think curses were real and he never expected anything like this to happen when he cursed Asher.
Whitney’s Baby Made Asher Irrelevant in Her Life
Throughout The Curse, the cracks in Whitney and Asher’s marriage become increasingly visible, culminating in what feels like a breaking point by Episode 9. Whitney shows Asher her confessional about her dissatisfaction with their marriage, but instead of letting her go, Asher clings on tighter. He asserts, “If you didn’t want to be with me, and I actually truly felt that, I’d be gone. You wouldn’t have to say it. I would feel it, and I would disappear.” And Whitney, being a narcissistic egomaniac, cannot resist such undying adoration.
However, everything changes after the time jump when Whitney becomes pregnant. The baby changes how Whitney designs her houses, how she presents herself to her viewers, and how she views Asher. Until Episode 9, she’d disliked Asher, but in the finale, it’s very much turned into hatred. Just before they go to bed, as Asher sings to the baby in her belly, there’s a morbid look of repulsiveness in her eyes. At this moment, it’s clear to us that she doesn’t want to be with Asher anymore. She has her baby now. Asher is irrelevant to her. And the very next morning, when she goes into labor, Asher quite literally gets yeeted out of her life.
It Was Metafictional Commentary on Television Media
In the very final moments of the show, bystanders trying to make sense of the situation comment how everything that just happened “is for TV,” which perfectly sums up the weird ending. Throughout the season, The Curse comments on how TV shows are made, with creators messing with the story to make it more exciting and entertaining. And the finale was precisely that. Just as Dougie continually tinkers with his fictional show to heighten drama and entertainment, if the creators of The Curse suddenly want Asher to walk on the ceiling for their spectacle ending, he’ll walk on the ceiling.
The ending also works as a visual metaphor for Asher and Whitney’s messed-up relationship. Like repulsive magnets, they struggle to hold on to each other, only to find themselves floating for a moment before being pulled back to their respective gravities. In Episode 8, Dougie asked Asher what he’d do if Whitney left and turned his world “upside-down”? And Asher said he’d be “nothing” without her. He’s always sacrificing parts of himself to make Whitney happy — his voice, his reputation, his beliefs. In the end, she takes everything until he’s got nothing left to give. That’s what happens to people in toxic relationships, and it could be said that Asher’s fate is a literal manifestation of this.
But the point is, the ending doesn’t really make sense within the confines of their fictional world. It only adds up when you realize you’re watching a TV show about two people in a failing marriage making a TV show. The ending wasn’t really for Asher and Whitney’s show. It was for our show — the one we’ve been binge-watching this entire time. It makes sense in our reality, not theirs. If you’re a fan of this show, you’ll likely also enjoy watching these five excellent Black Mirror episodes.
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