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What does the ending of The Substance mean?

The ending of The Substance delivers a grim resolution to Elisabeth Sparkle’s attempt to defy the passage of time. What begins as a simple solution to a large but uncomplicated problem ends in a gory bloodbath on live TV. 

Throughout the film, Elisabeth fights to maintain control of her body and her life, but the system she buys into refuses to allow this. The deal The Substance offers—one week for her, one for Sue—seems fair, but it quickly tilts in Sue’s favor when Sue realizes she can exploit it for her own benefit. Sue takes over, leaving Elisabeth with nothing. By the time Elisabeth realizes that she will never regain control, she has lost the strength to resist Sue’s selfish theft of her time. She wastes away as Sue thrives, making it clear that the arrangement was never about sharing or fairness. Sue does not intend to give back what she has taken; in the end, she’s just another industry person who exploits Elisabeth. The irony is clear—Elisabeth created Sue to reclaim her career and her youth, but Sue’s success proves there was never any way to recapture them. The process did not restore her. Rather, it replaced her, just as Harvey initially planned to. 

When Monstro Elizasue disgusts the crowd by trying to host the New Year's Eve awards, the response to her physical appearance is everything that Elisabeth has always feared most. When the audience attacks Monstro Elisasue and she begins to spurt blood all over the room, the gore is so excessive that it’s almost funny. The final shot of the film—where Elisabeth’s detached face has clambered out of the wreckage of Monstro’s body and crawled over to her star on the Walk of Fame—is a moment of deep, tragic irony. Elisabeth’s face doesn’t see what’s truly in front of it until the final seconds of the film. Instead, she sees a golden corridor full of people congratulating and welcoming her, the fantasy that she nursed throughout her time in The Substance. When this image fades into nothing and Elizabeth sees the stars in the night sky above her, she sighs contentedly and dissolves into a reddish patch of liquid that covers the name on her star. This moment confirms that The Substance was never about transformation: it was about elimination. The remains of Elisabeth’s face are abruptly washed away by an industrial street cleaner, leaving only the impersonal gold letters of the star that commemorate who she once was. The substance of Elisabeth never mattered. Every version of her eventually ceases to exist. 

This conclusion reinforces the film’s themes of aging and obsolescence. Elisabeth’s story is not just about personal desperation but about the larger rejection of women who no longer meet impossible standards. The entertainment industry in particular views actresses as fundamentally interchangeable and replaceable. The horror of The Substance does not come from a supernatural force or an external villain but from the inevitability of Elisabeth’s fate. Once she enters the arrangement, she cannot escape it. The moment Sue exists, Elisabeth begins to disappear. In this world, the characters aren’t given the opportunity to fight against adversity and reclaim themselves; The Substance does not offer a chance at redemption. Elisabeth has no way back once she’s committed to her choices, and by the end, she has not just lost her career but her entire existence. The world moves on, and Elisabeth fades from it, unnoticed and forgotten. 

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