WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Candyman, in theaters now.
Candyman recontextualizes the core concept of the horror franchise, picking up largely from the events of the 1992 original and exploring the sheer power a legend like Candyman can have on the world and the people who live in it. By the end of the film, the myth of the Candyman — and the means of summoning him — has been reintroduced to a world that had tried to snuff it out and move on.
The ending of Candyman fully unleashes the dark supernatural force back unto the world in particularly gory fashion — but also directs it on the path to target those who in the past have helped fuel the legacy of pain in Chicago.
Anthony McCoy (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) spends most of Candyman becoming increasingly drawn into the legacy of the supernatural killer. After being tricked into bringing the legend back to the waking world by William Burke (Colman Domingo), Anthony is gradually transformed physically, with the bee sting upon his hand spreading up and across one side of his entire body. By Candyman‘s third act, he’s been rendered largely disconnected from the world — not even responding when William hacks off his arm and replaces it with a hook. He’s intent on fully transforming Anthony into a new incarnation of the Candyman to keep the legend alive, and pointed at the prominently white community and authorities who’ve gone by for years without repercussion for their treatment of Black people in Chicago.
Anthony’s girlfriend and art gallery director Brianna (Teyonah Parris) finds herself witness to the act, and aware of William’s plans that will end in the death of Anthony at the hands of the police. Brianna is able to escape her restraints and even kills William after luring him into a derelict building in Cabrini Green. Anthony collapses into Brianna’s lap and she does her best to get him to flee — but the police arrive and quickly fire on Anthony, killing him despite him posing no genuine risk to the officers. When she’s held in a police car and informed by the officers that she can either go along with their lies about the circumstances of Anthony’s fate or be accused of cooperating with him — likely spending the rest of her life in prison — Brianna calls on Candyman, ushering in Anthony’s return as the supernatural force.
Anthony quickly kills the officers present, and his appearance shifts from Anthony to the other men across the decades and centuries who’ve suffered similar fates — with the final face Brianna sees in the body of swarming bees being that of Daniel Robitaille (Tony Todd), the original Candyman and originator of the myth. It’s a brutal end to the film, and one that comes with a very bittersweet edge. Candyman has returned to the world, a force that cannot be stopped with conventional weapons and seems content to only kill those who call upon it — and in the film, as depicted, that’s primarily been caucasian people who’ve either trivialized the pain of others at best or fully attacked them at worst.
Brianna escapes with her life and freedom and can choose whether to further spread the legend or try to keep the truth of Candyman’s return a secret. Choosing the former, Brianna could create a supernatural Punisher to stalk the city streets of Chicago, called upon by those in the Black community who are targeted. But there are also a number of tragedies that come about because of the return of Candyman — and that’s not even counting the inevitable kill count the force will gain now that it’s back. Anthony is dead and a part of the Candyman legend and legacy, more or less giving him the same fate he was saved from as an infant in the original Candyman.
Candyman is now playing in theaters.
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