Spoiler warning: this page discusses the ending of Killers of the Flower Moon (2023) in full.
Martin Scorsese’s film, based on David Grann’s 2017 nonfiction book, follows the murders of members of the Osage Nation in 1920s Oklahoma. It stars Leonardo DiCaprio as Ernest Burkhart, Robert De Niro as William King Hale and Lily Gladstone as Mollie Burkhart. Scorsese co-wrote the screenplay with Eric Roth. It runs 206 minutes and received ten nominations at the 96th Academy Awards without a win.
What happens in the last stretch
The main story ends with Hale and Ernest facing the law. Rather than close on a text card, the film cuts to a radio programme in the style of a true-crime broadcast. Over the sound of a studio performance, the radio drama reports what happened to the people involved. According to the Wikipedia plot summary, the Shoun brothers were linked to other wasting deaths but were never prosecuted for lack of evidence. Byron Burkhart was tried as an accomplice in the murder of Anna, but a hung jury meant he served no prison time. Hale and Ernest received life sentences and were later paroled despite Osage protests.
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Mollie’s ending
The film then turns to Mollie. She died in 1937, aged 50, of complications related to diabetes. She was buried with her parents, sisters and daughter. Her obituary made no mention of the Osage murders. Scorsese then delivers the closing tribute to her himself, as described below.
Scorsese on screen
Scorsese himself appears at the end as the producer of the radio programme. Wikipedia reports that he chose the radio format to keep the focus on the relationship between Mollie and Ernest. It also reports that Roth wrote the closing tribute to Mollie and that Scorsese delivered it himself, because he felt he could not direct another actor in that role.
What the ending is doing
These are readings, not facts stated by the filmmakers, except where noted. The radio show shows the murders being retold as popular entertainment, which fits the filmmakers’ stated aim of taking responsibility for the story instead of treating it as a thriller. The decision to give the final word to Mollie, a woman whose death went unremarked in her obituary, corrects that silence. Her place in the film’s last moments shifts attention from the perpetrators to the people they harmed.
The film is also frank that Scorsese is an outsider telling the story. Appearing in his own film at the end is a way of showing that someone is choosing how the history is presented.
