The Ending Of Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga Explained
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Contains spoilers for "Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga"
It's somewhat strange writing an "ending explained" article for a prequel like "Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga," because everyone who has watched "Mad Max: Fury Road" (which is presumably the target audience for this prequel) knows a lot about the ending already. We know that Imperator Furiosa (played by Alyla Browne and Anya Taylor-Joy here and by Charlize Theron in "Fury Road") will turn on her boss Immortan Joe (Lachy Hume in "Furiosa," Hugh Keays-Byrne in "Fury Road"). We've alerady seen that she'll try to bring his wives to her childhood home in the Green Place, that she'll discover that home has been destroyed, and that she'll retake Joe's Citadel with help from Mad Max (Tom Hardy).
However, even with much of Furiosa's future already known going into the film, not every plot element of George Miller's mythic tale has an inevitable predetermined end. Some of the story's developments can come as surprises, and perhaps the most intriguing aspect of the conclusion of "Furiosa" is one that plays with the ambiguous nature of truth when it comes to history and legend. Strap into your War Rig and ride shiny and chrome through our overview and analysis of the ending to the movie we called in our review "richly imagined" and "awe-inspiring."
What you need to remember about the plot of Furiosa
"Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga" is told in five chapters. In Part 1, "The Pole of Inaccessibility," raiders kidnap young Furiosa from her home in the Green Place and bring her to the camp of biker gang leader Dementus (Chris Hemsworth). Furiosa's mother, Mary Jabasa (Charlee Fraser), follows and tries to rescue her, but Dementus has Mary crucified. In Part 2, "Lessons from the Wasteland," Dementus' gang comes across Immortan Joe's resource-rich Citadel. After invading and conquering Gastown, Dementus's negotiations with Joe include giving him young Furiosa to join his harem. The mute girl deftly escapes, cutting off all her hair and disguising herself as a boy.
Part 3, "The Stowaway," centers around a now-grown Furiosa stowing away on the War Rig driven by Praetorian Jack (Tom Burke). They battle against the forces of The Octoboss (Goran Kleut), a former ally of Dementus who went rogue following his alliance with Joe. Furiosa and Jack form an uneasy alliance and start to develop romantic feelings.
By Part 4, "Homeward," Joe's Citadel has turned against Dementus. On a mission at The Bullet Farm, Jack gives Furiosa the opportunity to escape and continue her quest for the Green Place, but she chooses to stay and fight with him. Dementus crashes their car, an accident that severs Furiosa's arm, while his bikers brutally kill Jack. Returning to the Citadel, Furiosa builds herself a mechanical arm, and Joe's forces strategize their fight against Dementus in the 40 Day Wasteland War.
The ending of Furiosa explained
The fifth and final chapter of "Furiosa," titled "Beyond Vengeance," is the shortest and simplest of the bunch. After presenting much of the 40 Day Wasteland War through montage, the final confrontation between Furiosa and Dementus occurs on a smaller, more personal scale. After a chase, Dementus wrecks his car in a sandstorm, and is weakened as he tries to run away from Furiosa on foot.
Left pretty much defenseless against a vengeance-seeking, gun-toting Furiosa, Dementus tries talking to her, pointing out how both of them lost their families and how no amount of revenge will be capable of providing gratification. Furiosa psychologically tortures Dementus by holding off on shooting him until the blabbermouth is left unable to speak.
The film's narrator, The History Man (George Shevtsov), says that many people found the story of Furiosa simply shooting Dementus unsatisfying, and that legends have spread of her putting a more ironic end to Dementus by killing him in the ways he killed her mother or Jack. The History Man, however, claims that Furiosa herself told him the truth of what she did to Dementus: she planted a peach tree out of his body from a seed she kept with her since childhood. In the final scene, Furiosa shares the tree's fruit with Joe's wives before sneaking them onto the War Rig, kickstarting the plot of "Mad Max: Fury Road" (scenes from which play during the credits).
The History Man's narration explained
Is The History Man's account of Dementus' fate accurate? Probably not. Growing a tree directly out of a human body is a fantasy image, the kind that breaks from the reality established within the "Mad Max" universe. Telling the story in this way shows how myth and history bleed together; to quote John Ford's "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance," one of the best Western movies of all time, "When the legend becomes fact, print the legend."
Whether this particular legend came from Furiosa herself as The History Man claims, from his own imagination, or some other source, the symbolism of this mythic imagery is clear. By planting a seed from her lost paradise — her Eden, to get Biblical about it — in the body of the man who took everything from her, Furiosa is able to reclaim something of what she's lost, a form of revenge that's actually (pun intended) fruitful.
By sharing the tree's peaches with Immortan Joe's wives right before she frees them, she symbolically moves beyond just fighting for her own survival to the point of using her strength to help others, becoming the hero audiences loved in "Mad Max: Fury Road." In a way, this ending answers the question that The History Man's narration opened the film with: "As the world falls around us, how must we bear its cruelties?"
Is Furiosa's ending George Miller's self-criticism?
As Furiosa confronts Dementus during his long-drawn-out death, the warlord expresses the belief that both he and his soon-to-be killer are seeking out violence to fill a void that can never be satisfied. "We seek any sensation to wash away the cranky black sorrow," he tells her, before asking, "The question is: Do you have it in you to make it epic?"
"Make it epic" might as well be George Miller's raison d'être in directing the "Mad Max" films, and putting these words in the mouth of his film's villain could be seen as a form of self-criticism on Miller's part. If there was any negative criticism of "Mad Max: Fury Road," it was that its sheer entertainment value as an action movie minimized the tragedy of the violence it depicted.
"Furiosa" still delivers plenty of "epic" action, so Miller obviously isn't rejecting that part of his sensibility or being influenced by such criticism. However, the movie also spends more time on the horror and tragedy of life in the Wasteland than "Fury Road" allowed. While Furiosa's final showdown with Dementus is still framed as "epic" through its cinematography and music, it's noteworthy how anticlimactic their fight is compared to prior action sequences, with even The History Man acknowledging how unsatisfying the story may seem. And it's meaningful that Furiosa's ultimate act of revenge, at least in The History Man's mythic version, involves growing new life as opposed to just taking it.
How this ending fits into the Mad Max timeline
Making sense of the "Mad Max" timeline as a whole is a fool's errand — especially if Tom Hardy's Max is supposed to be the same character as Mel Gibson's, which would make him an immortal vampire and is probably best not to think about. However, as a direct prequel to "Mad Max: Fury Road," "Furiosa" is dealing with continuity more directly than any of the previous "Mad Max" films. The final scene of "Furiosa" takes place toward the beginning of "Fury Road."
Max (played here by Hardy's stunt double, Jacob Tomuri) makes a wordless cameo overlooking the Wasteland next to his V8 Interceptor car, in a shot directly paralleling the first shot of Max in "Fury Road." This happens midway through the film, and given how much time passes during the final act of "Furiosa," versus how little time passes in the opening of "Fury Road," this isn't supposed to be the exact same moment.
One thing that "Furiosa" does place in the timeline, curiously enough, is the 2015 "Mad Max" video game. Immortan Joe's second son, Scrotus (Josh Helman), is alive in "Furiosa," killed as the main villain in the video game, and dead by the time of "Fury Road." So if you're wondering what Max was up to while Furiosa was fighting Dementus, load up your PlayStation 4 or Xbox One.
The director's thoughts on Furiosa's character arc
So what drew George Miller towards telling this origin story for Furiosa? Part of it is that he develops backstories for every part of the "Mad Max" universe. As he told The New Yorker, "Everything that is on the screen — not only the character but each piece of the wardrobe, each prop, each bit of language — has to have a backstory." Furiosa's backstory was so important that he wrote a full screenplay about her while working on "Mad Max: Fury Road" as a reference guide for Charlize Theron.
In the press notes for "Furiosa," the director says he wanted to explore how "people are revealed by extreme situations — whoever you are, whatever circumstance you're in in the world, it's those situations which tend to reveal who you are." Young Furiosa is inspired by children he's known in his own life, "who, at a very young age, have tremendous resources, tremendous skills, and learn very quickly from their mistakes. They manage to find their way in the world without being overcome and destroyed. And I've always admired that."
Speaking to Rolling Stone, Miller also connected Furiosa's journey to his mother's life: "She was a truly great person, and lucky enough to live for 100 years. And having been a woman born in 1920, she kind of went through so much of what happened in the 20th century, from massive social upheavals to WWII ... She had obstacles thrown in her way, yet she still managed to attain great wisdom and respect in her life."
Anya Taylor-Joy on the power of Furiosa's goal
Anya Taylor-Joy was not quite the same after acting in "Furiosa," finding it a tough, often lonely assignment and refusing to answer questions on the specifics of the problems she faced while making the movie. She also finds it a tough one to watch: "Within the first three minutes, I'm crying," she told Variety. "And afterward, I cannot speak. I found it very traumatizing to watch."
Based on what she's said in the film's press notes, Taylor-Joy seems to have connected intensely with Furiosa's desperate (and tragically futile) search for the Green Place, drawing comparisons with contemporary environmental anxieties: "the reality of that universe is not terribly far off, and that was something that I was very attracted to in terms of telling this story and Furiosa's rightful obsession with getting back to the Green Place."
Discussing how Furiosa's motivation transforms over the course of the film, Taylor-Joy said, "Once she sees [finding the Green Place] becoming less and less likely, it opens this entire can of worms — she now has no place to put that determination and that energy. And once that happens, all of that turns on Dementus. She puts all of her pain, all of her loss — everything — on this one individual." The actress relished the film's ending because of Furiosa's increased agency: "When she does get agency, I felt that liberation, too. The first takes I just got to explode, and it was awesome."
What's next for the Mad Max franchise
Every "Mad Max" production has been an arduous ordeal, but the 79-year-old George Miller shows no intention of abandoning this series any time soon. If "Furiosa" makes enough money, he has at least two more stories he intends to tell in this universe. The more fleshed-out of these stories has been talked about in interviews for years under the title of "Mad Max: The Wasteland," which would follow Max over the year before "Mad Max: Fury Road." Rumors have discussed the possibility of this being turned into a TV series.
More recently, Miller has implied he's developing ideas for a potential "Fury Road" sequel about what happens after Furiosa takes over the Citadel, forming the conclusion of a Furiosa-centric film trilogy. He told Total Film, "I've often speculated when we see Furiosa go up to the Citadel on that platform at the very end [of 'Fury Road'] and nod goodbye to Max who wanders to the Wasteland ... I often think: 'What does she do, sitting up at the top of the dominant hierarchy? Does she fall into the trap that most revolutionaries do?' You know, yesterday's hero becomes tomorrow's tyrant, which is classic in storytelling."
The alternate anime version of Furiosa
It's unknown how much the ending of "Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga" ever varied from its original conception, given how much of the ending is predetermined by being a prequel film. However, we do know of an entire alternate treatment for the film, which was almost made as an anime.
Mahiro Maeda, director of such anime as "Gankutsuou: The Count of Monte Cristo" and the final two "Rebuild of Evangelion" films, designed concept art for "Fury Road" and "Furiosa," and almost directed the latter as an anime film. At one point, this anime was titled "The Peach," a name that makes perfect sense after seeing the live-action movie and how it ends. The one design element that carried over from Maeda's anime pitch to the final film is the teddy bear Dementus carries with him in memory of his children.
John Collee, who worked with Miller on "Happy Feet," wrote a treatment for the Furiosa anime. Unverified rumors have spread that this treatment was darker than the film that made it to theaters, involving a very different death for Dementus and scenes of sexual violence against Furiosa. If the latter rumor is true (and one commenter disputes it), then changing that aspect was a wise decision, given how badly the 2015 "Furiosa" comic handled such graphic depictions.
If you or anyone you know has been a victim of sexual assault, help is available. Visit the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network website or contact RAINN's National Helpline at 1-800-656-HOPE (4673).