M. Night Shyamalan's Old Ending Explained

FULL SPOILERS ahead for Old!

M. Night Shyamalan movies are known for their twist endings (The Sixth Sense, etc.), but Old is the rare one that literally has a character explain everything in one pivotal closing moment. Still, there are enough head-scratching moments throughout the film that some viewers may still be left confused even after that exposition dump. So let’s dig into the ending of Shyamalan’s Old and everything that happened.

Old Movie Spoilers: Ending Explained

After it appears that Adult Trent (Emun Elliott) and Adult Maddox Capa (Embeth Davidtz) have drowned while swimming through the coral reef, the man who’s been recording them from the hilltop is revealed to be none other than the Hotel Van Driver (Shyamalan!) who dropped everyone off at the start of their nightmare on this supernaturally-powered, secluded beach.

The Driver communicates with headquarters that “Trial 73” is complete and that all participants are now deceased. The voice on the other end of the line wants the driver to be sure -- they can’t risk another incident like last time, even though that escapee ultimately drowned. The Driver insists Trent and Maddox are dead and he returns to the resort with all his computer and camera gear.

But this is not a real resort. It’s all a cover for Johnson & Johnson -- er, Warren & Warren, a giant pharmaceutical company. And the Resort Manager (Gustaf Hammarsten) is actually an exec from the company. Warren & Warren is name-checked a few times earlier in the film when the Capa family arrives at the island so the ending pays off that early nod.

What Is Trial 73?

It turns out Warren & Warren have been selecting these “winners” of a luxury resort vacation because they know each of them has some serious illness -- from cancer to dementia to multiple sclerosis to epilepsy -- and have been using this remote beach’s fantastical properties to conduct secret medical studies on them. The trade-off is that anyone stuck on that beach ages rapidly until they die and decompose to dust in almost no time.

When guests arrive at the resort, they are given cocktails made to their specifications. But when Shyamalan’s Driver enters we see headquarters is a big lab where the cocktails are made using medicines and particular plants. The cocktails have been laced with drugs and the lab has been monitoring all the beachgoers to see how effective their pharmaceuticals have been in combating the various afflictions of these unwitting medical study participants. 

Simply put, Big Pharma is the boogeyman of Old.

After the Resort Manager asks for a moment of silence to honor the late members of Trial 73, he villain-splains his whole “ends justifies the means” agenda by pointing out that Patricia (Nikki Amuka-Bird) went nearly an entire day without an epileptic seizure -- decades in terms of how time passes on the island -- so that proves their drug works wonders. In fact, their medical trials have shaved off years of further study and Warren & Warren can now proceed with the drugs of theirs they know work and can help millions of suffering people. Bummer, though, about the dozens of missing people who died to help make it all possible.

What Happened to Trent and Maddox?

About those missing people … adult Trent and Maddox aren’t dead after all! They survived the coral reef and made it to shore. Not only that, Trent has the journal they’d found earlier … the one kept by a former beach-bound guinea pig who wrote down the names and addresses of their fellow subjects before they all perished. 

The dead person's journal also includes deductions about what the source of the beach’s power is -- something something ancient material underwater … something something magnetism -- and that’s why it made it so hard to escape and what’s causing the rapid aging process. When adult Trent finally decodes the message his pal Idib (Kailen Jude) gave him before he left the resort, he realizes his newfound pal had warned him the coral reef was key (we learn it blocks the deadly effects of the beach).

Trent and Maddox make it back to the resort, where Trent gives Greg Mitchell (Daniel Ison), a vacationing cop he’d met as a child the previous day, the journal filled with all the missing people’s names and addresses. Greg sends cell phone pictures of the journal entries, the names are verified as being those of missing people, and very rapidly the whole scheme at the Resort implodes. Meanwhile, Trent and Maddox confront the Resort Manager in front of new arriving guests and help publicly foil the whole thing.

Old ends with Greg accompanying Trent and Maddox on their helicopter flight back to the mainland while Warren & Warren will presumably face justice for what they’ve done. Trent and Maddox will be reunited with a family member who had last seen these now fifty-something siblings when they were still just children.

What did you think of the ending of Old? Did M. Night Shyamalan explain too much this time or not enough? Let us know your thoughts on the movie and its ending in the comments below. 

For more on the film, check out our Old review and watch Shyamalan recount the logistical nightmare that was the film's shoot.

Old stars Gael García Bernal, Vicky Krieps, Eliza Scanlen, Thomasin McKenzie, Alex Wolff, Abbey Lee, Aaron Pierre, Rufus Sewell, Ken Leung, Nikki Amuka-Bird, Embeth Davidtz, Emun Elliott, and Kathleen Chalfant.