Let's break down what's important about the ending of The Long Walk

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Francis Lawrence’s 2025 film adaptation of Stephen King’s 1979 novel The Lengthy Stroll is pretty devoted to the e-book — till it all of a sudden isn’t. Screenwriter JT Mollner (writer-director of the underrated 2023 horror film Unusual Darling) provides a number of the major characters extra background and clearer motives. He pares the story’s central death-match competitors down from 100 members to 50. He pushes the propaganda parts behind the Lengthy Stroll just a little tougher, making it clearer why every year, dozens of teenage boys would volunteer to be marched throughout the nation at gunpoint, even understanding they’ll be killed one after the other in the event that they falter or attempt to escape, till just one is left alive.

However he doesn’t change a lot else. Followers of the e-book will clearly acknowledge the characters they already know (by identify, character, narrative perform, and the main points of their deaths), the story’s particular rise and fall, the mournful short-term friendships these doomed boys type, and the grueling, horrific feeling of inevitability. Not less than as much as a sure level. And at that time, it all of a sudden turns into essential to ask: Which components of the film’s ending are actual?

[Ed. note: End spoilers ahead for The Long Walk book and movie.]

How Stephen King’s The Lengthy Stroll ends

<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" alt="The "Four Musketeers," four of the teenage boys on a deadly walking contest, go side by side together in The Long Walk" data-img-url="https://static0.polygonimages.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/longwalk-unit-240806-00283rc.jpg?q=49&fit=crop&w=825&dpr=2" src="https://static0.polygonimages.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/longwalk-unit-240806-00283rc.jpg?q=49&fit=crop&w=825&dpr=2"/> Photograph: Murray Shut/Lionsgate

Bear with me right here, as a result of for individuals who solely know one model of this story or the both (or neither), we’re going to should get into some element to match them. When you’ve learn the e-book and seen the film and simply need to get into the “What’s actual?” half, skip to the ultimate header under.

King’s model of the story brings the competitors down to a few of the boys. Two of them have solid a connection over the course of 4 straight days of unbroken strolling: Ray Garraty (performed within the film by Cooper Hoffman) and Peter McVries (David Jonsson). The third, recognized solely as “Stebbins” (Garrett Wareing), holds himself at a distance from the remainder of the opponents till the very finish of the Stroll, however finally opens as much as Garraty and McVries. For McVries, a sensible, variety presence who takes care of Garraty and saves his life in the course of the Stroll, the tip comes rapidly. He reaches his breaking level and quietly sits down, accepting his execution by the hands of the boys overseeing the Stroll.

That simply leaves Stebbins and Garraty, who hold stepping into silence for a protracted, unclear time frame, till Garraty catches as much as Stebbins to confess defeat — and Stebbins promptly drops useless. By that point, Garraty is so bodily and mentally damaged by the ordeal that he can’t even register that he’s gained the competitors. Hallucinating shadows within the distance, and pondering they’re contestants he nonetheless has to beat, he shrugs off the individuals attempting to congratulate him, and simply retains going.

It’s a haunting ending — in a small manner, a forerunner to Suzanne Collins’ Starvation Video games books, and the concept that nobody actually wins a Battle Royale-style elimination recreation, even when they survive. Nevertheless it’s oddly abrupt and anticlimactic after all of the buildup, all of the mesmerizing dread and horror of the remainder of the e-book. (Even devoted followers of King’s work typically complain in regards to the endings of his novels, to the purpose the place he has a repute for not sticking his landings.)

The Lengthy Stroll is my favourite King e-book, simply the one I’ve re-read most. However I’ve by no means felt that hooked up to the ending, and it definitely doesn’t really feel cinematic. After I discovered that Lawrence, who directed a lot of the Starvation Video games motion pictures, was lastly bringing The Lengthy Stroll to the massive display, my greatest query was how he was going to deal with the ending.

The Lengthy Stroll’s ending, e-book vs. movie

<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" alt="A group of teenage boys in earth-toned clothes walk along a road together near sundown in The Long Walk" data-img-url="https://static0.polygonimages.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/longwalk-unit-240807-00605rc2.jpg?q=49&fit=crop&w=825&dpr=2" src="https://static0.polygonimages.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/longwalk-unit-240807-00605rc2.jpg?q=49&fit=crop&w=825&dpr=2"/> Photograph: Murray Shut/Lionsgate

Within the film, the competitors once more comes all the way down to Garraty, DeVries, and Stebbins. However after Stebbins delivers his speech about who he actually is and why he volunteered for the Stroll, he says he’s executed inspiring individuals for The Main (Mark Hamill), the enigmatic dictator determine behind the Lengthy Stroll, and seemingly behind the dystopian, oppressive society that spawned it. Stebbins turns again towards the troopers shadowing the opponents, and lets them kill him, leaving DeVries and Garraty alone.

The e-book’s ending kills DeVries first to separate Garraty from the final particular person he cared about and linked to on the Stroll. DeVries purposefully surrendering to demise is each a logo of the exhaustion and despair the contestants have reached at that time, and the ultimate blow to Garraty’s sanity and sense of self. He’s left in a state of surprised, mechanical apathy, persevering with the marathon with a rival he barely is aware of and doesn’t assume he can beat.

The film kills Stebbins first to be able to place Garrity and DeVries as the ultimate survivors, every dealing with the inevitability that certainly one of them goes to die and go away the opposite alone. These are fairly totally different story instructions with totally different flavors: The e-book is extra nihilistic, the film is extra emotional. Nevertheless it nonetheless appears apparent that DeVries goes to surrender and let Garraty win the competition.

Garraty, in any case, is the clear protagonist of the story. He’s the one most straight wronged by The Main, who personally executed Garraty’s father, with Garraty and his mom watching, for the sedition of studying. Garraty is the one with the plan to strike again: The winner of the annual Lengthy Stroll will get to ask for something, and Garraty plans to ask for a gun, and use it to kill The Main then and there.

As an alternative, when DeVries tries to surrender, cease strolling, and let his buddy survive the Stroll, Garraty hugs him, and pushes him to get going once more. Then, as soon as DeVries is in movement, Garraty smiles fondly and drops again behind DeVries, unnoticed, and simply stops strolling. He’s executed earlier than DeVries even realizes he’s stopped. DeVries is proclaimed the winner. After mourning over Garraty’s bloody corpse, he follows by with Garraty’s plan, requisitioning a rifle from one of many troopers charged with executing the Lengthy Walkers, then capturing the Main useless. Then he turns to stroll away, as if he, like Garraty within the e-book, is simply going to proceed the Lengthy Stroll alone — albeit with much more intentionality and seeming sanity.

That ending is definitely extra cinematic — it’s a curveball each for an viewers accustomed to the e-book, and for many who aren’t, and who assume they see precisely what’s coming when DeVries tries to surrender and let Garraty win. And it’s rather less grim and nihilistic. Garraty is useless, however his father and all the opposite boys useless within the Lengthy Stroll have been avenged, and the viewers can a minimum of think about a future the place The Main’s demise launches some form of seismic change for the higher on this darkish, impoverished, bitter world.

However is what we see on display truly what occurs in any respect?

What’s truly actual within the ending of The Lengthy Stroll?

<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" alt="The Major (Mark Hamill), a man in a grey military uniform, black hat, and opaque sunglasses, stands in the back of a vehicle in The Long Walk" data-img-url="https://static0.polygonimages.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/longwalk-unit-240808-00237rc.jpg?q=49&fit=crop&w=825&dpr=2" src="https://static0.polygonimages.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/longwalk-unit-240808-00237rc.jpg?q=49&fit=crop&w=825&dpr=2"/> Photograph: Murray Shut/Lionsgate

I don’t assume there’s any doubt that Garraty’s demise, or DeVries’ grief and his request for a rifle, all play out precisely as we see them on display. However as soon as DeVries will get the rifle and factors it at The Main, actuality begins to get more and more wonky. The background blurs away. The sound of the huge crowd that assembled to look at the tip of the Stroll fades out right into a hole vacancy round them — not the sound of a crowd holding its breath, however the absence of ambient sound. The area round DeVries and The Main begins to grow to be much less actual.

You would definitely learn this as subjective sound, as an expression of the main focus DeVries is feeling on this second, when every thing else drops away, together with Garraty’s physique. However DeVries doesn’t have the form of private connection to The Main that Garraty or Stebbins had, the form of connection that will make this second play like a vindication. It doesn’t really feel just like the world has fallen away round them, leaving them alone collectively. It seems like DeVries is in an imaginary area by himself.

After which he holds the rifle on The Main far longer than the aspect of shock would enable — The Main has ordered the troopers round him to face down, but it surely’s nonetheless onerous to think about nobody would take the shot to avoid wasting his life. As soon as DeVries kills The Main, there’s even much less purpose to carry again. The Main’s orders aren’t related anymore, and neither is his security.

In that second, there’s a manner Lawrence might need framed this all to inform us one thing main has modified not only for DeVries, however for the nation. However there aren't any response pictures from the troopers deciding to not kill {the teenager} who’s simply killed their chief. There’s no footage of the gang that will inform us they’re about to elevate DeVries up on their shoulders in celebration, or tear him aside. It appears remotely doable that within the second the place he’s holding The Main at gunpoint, everybody would wait and watch and hold nonetheless, but when this was all actually taking place, it’s nearly sure that certainly one of The Main’s ruthless skilled killers, who've been gunning down teenage boys at point-blank vary for days, would kill DeVries — if not for revenge, then merely due to the adrenaline of the scenario.

Nobody shoots him. Nobody strikes into body to arrest him. We by no means learn the way anybody else responds to The Main’s demise. He’s left alone in a soft-focused, shadowed area the place the one strong factor is the highway stretching forward of him. And that makes the ending really feel extremely unreal — as unreal because the phantoms Garraty chases down the highway on the finish of the novel.

<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" alt="Cooper Hoffman as Garraty and David Jonsson as McVries in a night shot in The Long Walk" data-img-url="https://static0.polygonimages.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/the-long-walk-LONGWALK_Unit_240807_01738RC_rgb.jpg?q=49&fit=crop&w=825&dpr=2" src="https://static0.polygonimages.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/the-long-walk-LONGWALK_Unit_240807_01738RC_rgb.jpg?q=49&fit=crop&w=825&dpr=2"/> Photograph Credit score: Murray Shut/Lionsgate

My learn on all the scene is that DeVries does get killed, presumably instantly after capturing The Main. The liminal half-space he winds up in after that — a spot the place the bystanders and troopers have simply plain ceased to exist — is no matter comes subsequent. A extra sentimental director would present him reuniting with Garraty in that fuzzy, soft-focus area. (Within the e-book, after DeVries is killed, Stebbins briefly tries to speak Garraty into giving up too: “If there are things like souls, his continues to be shut. You would catch up.”) A extra cynical one would possibly present the boys’ our bodies mendacity aspect by aspect on the highway. A extra uplifting one would possibly present the aftermath of both The Main’s demise, or DeVries’ capturing, with the individuals rioting towards both dropping their supposedly beloved chief, or dropping the Lengthy Stroll winner, who’s been upheld all through the movie as a logo of the nation.

As an alternative, Lawrence and Mollner give us ambiguity. There’s nothing to latch onto within the closing shot to inform us what the truth is, or what the longer term appears like for DeVries or this nation. There aren't any solutions. It’s a direct parallel for the tip of King’s e-book, with a winner who doesn’t really feel like he’s gained, and a symbolic highway forward that you could learn nonetheless you need.

Possibly we’re meant to take all of it actually, and Lawrence and Mollner are simply suggesting that, for DeVries, the destiny of the nation and the response of the gang round him don’t matter anymore. However their lack of emotional influence on him wouldn’t in any manner clarify their lack of bodily presence, their means to the touch him, the best way all of them appear to only fade into mist. Possibly this can be a basic woman or the tiger audience-choice ending, and we’re every meant to see what we wish in it.

However for me a minimum of, DeVries being allowed to kill The Main after which stroll away doesn’t really feel doable, and doesn’t really feel believable — not with out some sense of why which may occur. Nothing within the film as much as that second units up the concept that The Main’s most devoted killers wouldn’t reply not directly to his demise, or {that a} crowd primed to shriek with pleasure and enthusiasm over the graphic homicide of teenage boys would stand by silently when their world modifications in entrance of them. I don’t assume what we’re seeing is actual. Whether or not that’s a satisfying touchdown for this story, effectively, that’s much more as much as particular person interpretation than the details of the ending itself.