Eyes Wide Shut Ending, Explained

Eyes Wide Shut is Stanley Kubrick’s final feature and the director’s most dreamlike movie, ending on an ambiguous note. Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman star in the movie as Bill and Alice, an ordinary couple faced with a harrowing dilemma after a night out. When Alice openly discusses the sexual fantasies she had in the past, Bill sets out on an ethereal nocturnal journey that will lead him to a mysterious secret society.

Kubrick ends his legendary career with yet another masterpiece filled with symbolism and allegories. It’s difficult to even describe what kind of movie Eyes Wide Shut is, as it flirts with many genres such as drama, romance, and thriller. Kubrick’s exhaustive directing method took the best out of Cruise and Kidman, and the two deliver unmatched onscreen chemistry and some of their best performances ever. However, the film’s enigmatic ending continues to ignite heated discussions in the film community.

What Happens in Eyes Wide Shut’s Ending?

After a series of suspicious events involving Bill’s appearance at a sexual group’s secret meeting, Bill finally learns from his friend Ziegler that his life is not in danger and his paranoia is the result of unfortunate coincidences, including the death of the woman who helped him that night. A troubled Bill comes home to his wife and breaks down, confiding in her everything and promising to be truthful from now on. While Eyes Wide Shut ultimately comes full circle in the end, a lot of what happens in Bill’s nocturnal odyssey remains ambiguous, offering more questions than answers for the audience to dissect.

What’s the Purpose of Milich in Eyes Wide Shut?

A lot of what happens in the first hour of Eyes Wide Shut only pays off in the film’s final moments, and even some of the longer sequences can only be understood when looking carefully beyond the surface. The whole scene at Milich’s shop is extremely awkward and all over the place, adding hints of humor to the narrative while simultaneously building up tension to something that appears to be off. At some point, Milich finds his underage daughter having sexual intercourse with two older men in the back of the shop. He gets extremely hysterical and threatens to call the police. On the other hand, his daughter calmly holds tightly to Bill and whispers that he should “have a cloak lined with ermine.”

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The words whispered by Milich’s daughter seem to indicate she knows about Bill’s destination, something that perfectly fits with the movie’s mystical atmosphere. While it’s difficult to jump to conclusions, the scene in which Bill returns his costume to Milich makes it all the more obvious. Milich’s daughter shows up in underwear alongside the same two men from before. This time, Milich is not only completely nonchalant about it, but also offers his daughter to Bill. This scene suggests that Milich is now aware of Bill’s activities in the secret society, thus changing his attitude toward Bill, letting his mask fall off and disclosing his true wicked nature.

Who Was the Masked Woman That Helped Bill?

At the beginning of Eyes Wide Shut, a young woman called Mandy, whom Ziegler was having an affair with, overdoses in his room and Dr. Bill is assigned to assist her. The incident isn’t discussed again until Bill infiltrates the masked orgy his buddy Nick mentioned. When people immediately perceive him as an outsider, a mysterious masked woman warns Bill he’s in great danger and must leave as soon as he can. It’s left unclear how the woman and the rest of the group identified Bill as an intruder so easily, but the cab driver he left waiting on the outside is one of the most obvious indications.

When Bill is summoned by a man in a red cloak and judged in front of the whole group, the masked woman steps up and offers herself to be punished in Bill’s place. The woman in question turns out to be Mandy, whom Bill helped in Ziegler’s room. When he hears of her death by overdose the day after the secret meeting, Bill immediately suspects she really did sacrifice her life in exchange for his.

Mandy’s death ends up being one of the unsolved mysteries of the movie. While Ziegler later calls Mandy a “junkie” and claims that she had it coming, it’s difficult not to suspect that there’s something darker about his masked sexual encounters. The whole ritualistic aspect of the secret meeting indicates that something out of an ordinary orgy was going on in there, and he might have been responsible for Mandy’s death.

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Who Was the Red Cloak?

The true identity of the Red Cloak figure, supposedly the leader of the secret meeting, isn’t revealed, and doesn’t quite impact the overall story. The audience might feel inclined to focus on the masked group rather than Eyes Wide Shut‘s true conflict; that is, Bill’s obsession and his marriage with Alice. However, there’s no denying that this meandering in the story was Kubrick’s purpose: he intentionally inserts a distressing twist in the middle in order to disorient both Bill and the audience. But, the beauty of it is precisely how it all comes down again to the simple things in the end.

Regardless of the ending’s true intention, it’s reasonable to speculate that Ziegler might be the Red Cloak. At the end of the day, his manipulative manners obscured by his nonchalant discourse makes it clear how comfortable he is behind a mask. Ziegler insists that Bill doesn’t arouse suspicion towards what he’s seen, but can’t hide his anger towards Nick and Mandy, indicating that Nick might not only have been beaten but was actually killed just like Mandy.

The True Meaning of Eyes Wide Shut

In short, Eyes Wide Shut is a movie that redefines loving relationships from an unorthodox standpoint. The decision to tell this story from Bill’s point of view is extremely effective because his obsessive need to fulfill his desire and patch up his pride perfectly exposes the true nature of fragile masculinity. The scene in which Alice and Bill argue about Ziegler’s party sums up everything: while Alice discusses jealously from a pragmatic perspective, Bill is quick to dismiss her speculations as unfounded fantasies or stoner assumptions. However, when she opens up about her own fantasies, Bill is triggered by an unrelenting blow to his ego.

Eyes Wide Shut perfectly analyzes the decaying piles that support the structure of marriage and anonymity in a patriarchal society. Mandy perfectly embodies the fact that women always end up being much more exposed than men, despite standing in the same spot, while the masks suggest that even the most earnest relationships can’t survive without one or two secrets. Neither demonizing what monogamy stands for nor defending its conservative constraints, the movie addresses the topics of the ideal matrimony life with a somewhat satirical approach, especially after Bill’s many failed attempts to cheat on his wife brings him to a dangerous masked orgy with nefarious consequences, let alone how close he got to contract HIV from a sex worker, something that would’ve impacted not only him but also Alice.

By committing to marriage, Bill’s life is no longer singular, and that’s precisely why he breaks down when he finds the mask next to Alice’s pillow. That’s the pivotal moment he realizes how close he got to destroying the life he built. In the final scene, Alice formally tells Bill they have something very important to do: to unify their fragmented selves once again, to become two once again.