What Happens To Lee Harker

Longlegs’ ending is chilling, involving multiple deaths and revelations. Written and directed by Osgood Perkins, Longlegs’ reviews have been mostly positive. Starring Maika Monroe and Nicolas Cage in one his more iconic roles to date, Longlegs ends with the arrest of the titular character. After decoding many of the letters Longlegs left behind at crime scenes, Agent Lee Harker revisited her own past to discover that she was one of the girls the killer targeted. With a photo revealing Longlegs’ identity, the FBI was able to finally catch him.

Longlegs goes on about a “friend of a friend” and quotes Revelation 13:1 before banging his head to death. Harker visits her mom to learn the truth. Ruth kills Lee’s colleague and Lee’s doll, claiming she’s free before revealing she made a deal with Longlegs — she’d deliver the handmade dolls to each family and ensure the murders happened so long as he let Lee live. Harker goes to see Agent Carter’s family, who’ve been targeted. Carter kills his wife, but Lee shoots him thereafter. Harker also kills Ruth, but when she goes to shoot the doll at the end of Longlegs, she freezes.

Is Agent Lee Harker Under Longlegs’ Control At The End?

Harker Stares At Ruby’s Doll For A Long Time

At the end of Longlegs, Harker attempts to shoot the doll the way Ruth shot hers. Harker’s gun can be heard going off, but there are either no more bullets or the safety is on (which is unlikely considering she had just killed her mother). Harker could have reloaded the gun, but she was glued to the spot, frozen while hypnotically staring at the doll. Longlegs’ handmade creation seems to have influence over Harker, preventing the FBI agent from killing it. It’s possible Harker is now under the doll’s — and, by extension, Longlegs’ — manipulation.

It could just be her terror, but the doll has a hold on Harker, who’s entranced. While she could eventually come to her senses and shoot the doll, it’s likely Harker is drawn to it because Longlegs’ influence was such a big part of her life for so long. Through the doll, Longlegs is still able to reach out beyond the grave. His impact is still felt, and it’s possible the doll will keep Harker in its clutches until the task is complete. Ruby is still alive, and Longlegs might use Harker to finish the job he and Ruth started.

Longlegs & Ruth Harker Quoting Revelation 13:1 Explained

The 2024 Movie Has Satantic Undertones

It’s unclear why Nicolas Cage’s Longlegs started killing families, but he and Ruth Harker both quoted Revelation 13:1 right before they died, which mentions a beast with seven heads and ten horns. The beast in question can be interpreted as being the Antichrist or a demon who rises from the sea to receive the authority and power by the dragon, Satan, to do his bidding. There is a second beast that appears in later chapters. In the film, Longlegs and Ruth are the beasts. They deceive and control the families, who each believe they’re receiving a gift from the church.

At the start of Longlegs, Ruth asks Harker if she’s been saying her prayers. By the end of the film, Ruth changes her tune and says something along the lines of prayers being useless. Ruth is an example of someone being manipulated by the original beast, Longlegs, to perform evil acts. Ruth believes they’re necessary to save her daughter, but she’s been corrupted to the point that even after she is free from Longlegs, Ruth’s help with killing families continues. She has become the second beast, and with the dragon and Longlegs, are the inverse of the Holy Trinity.

What The Families Hear After They’re Given Longlegs’ Doll

The Specifics Are Never Revealed

Longlegs hand makes dolls that Ruth delivers to each family, but the hollow silver orb inside the doll’s head doesn’t directly give them instructions. At least not in the usual sense. But there is a distinct sound that emanates from the silver orb. It sounds like static whispers that only the family can hear. It’s eerie and puts the family members into a trance they can’t break out of. The silver orb is hollow, but it’s revealed that Longlegs passes a part of himself through each doll, and it’s possible the families are hearing his voice indistinctly whispering to them.

Why Longlegs Targets Families With Daughters Whose Birthdays Are On The 14th

The Connection Comes Back To The Quote

Longlegs is a serial killer with a methodical approach: He targets families who have daughters born on the 14th day of any given month. The murders happen within six days before or after the birthday, which likely symbolizes the three number sixes that appear in the code. Longlegs doesn’t confirm the reason behind the 14th birthday, but it could refer to Revelation 13:1 — 13+1 is 14. Seven is a significant number in the Bible, and the double of that represents completeness, as well as divinity and deliverance. Longlegs might have believed he was freeing the families through death.

What’s more, the number 14 could refer to the beast with seven heads. The implication is that there are two beasts (Longlegs and Ruth), and 14 is the double of seven. Longlegs and Ruth both quoted Revelation 13:1, signifying the importance it had in their work. It also implies that the beast with seven heads can multiply. After all, the serial killer was never truly alone in his work. Even before death, Longlegs was confident his work would continue because the seed was already planted. The two beasts and the dragon essentially form the three sides of the triangle.

How Longlegs’ Ending Sets Up A Sequel

Harker And Ruby Could Have More Story Left To Tell

Longlegs ends on a cliffhanger, with the audience not knowing what comes next for Harker or Ruby. Both of the “beasts” are dead by the end of Longlegs, but the doll has yet to be destroyed, which means Longlegs, from beyond the grave, could pass the torch on to Harker to do his bidding in a Longlegs sequel. The fact that Harker doesn’t shoot the doll suggests she’s now under some sort of spell. If she becomes like the serial killer she tried to stop, it would be an interesting path to take in a sequel horror movie.

Whatever the case, the Longlegs ending leaves Harker and Ruby alive and a sequel could explore what happens to them next. Will they both become the “beasts” who deceive families and push them to kill, like Longlegs and Ruth before them? It’s not an impossible scenario considering the events of Longlegs, and it would be an intriguing route to take, providing a contrast to the way Harker is presented in the original story. The story could go anywhere, and Harker is a fascinating character to continue to follow on whatever journey awaits her next.

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The Real Meaning Of Longlegs’ Ending

Longlegs has many layers and, while it’s filled with religious references, the film’s ending hints at the disintegration of the nuclear family. Longlegs could have gone after the children, but he targeted the parents too, while making the father inflict violence upon his wife and daughter. It’s very targeted, and it focuses on the deterioration of this specific family structure; notably, Harker is the only one who made it to adulthood, and she was raised in a single-mom household. At the same time, Longlegs’ ending suggests violence can enter any home, no matter how wholesome a family may be.

The film’s finale also indicates that anyone — no matter how good they think they are as a person — can be swayed to do horrific and violent things if they think they’re protecting someone or that they’re doing it for the right reasons. All the characters, at one point or another, are forced or influenced to do something violent; it’s something they might have never dreamed of doing. Harker even kills her own mother to save someone else at the end of Longlegs, and the cycle of harm continues.

How The Longlegs Ending Was Received

The Bizarre Horror Won Over Critics

Longlegs went down incredibly well with critics, with director Osgood Perkins’ 2024 horror sitting on 86% on the Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer – an impressive feat. The key strengths of Longlegs, outside the performance of Nicolas Cage, were both the story and directoral skills of Perkins’. The tone of the movie crops up in multiple reviews as being exceptionally strong, with the overall eerie and sense of unrelenting dread being celebrated.

Longlegs is an atmospheric horror movie at its core, and it more than delivered when it came to atmosphere. The cinematography seemed to take precedent when it came aspects critics focused on in their reviews, with it receiving more commentary than the plot and ending of Longlegs. For example, in Wendy Ide’s review for The Guardian, the critic talks at length on the masterful way Perkins weaves triangle imagery into the movie:

Perkins clearly has an eye for a striking image. At first, we are struck by a recurring motif of obsessive symmetry within each shot, and an aspect ratio that switches between the tight little box reminiscent of home movie footage for a 70s flashback to a full rictus grin of a widescreen frame for the main story, set in the 90s. But once Harker has identified the satanic emblem, the screen is full of angles and triangles (created by shooting into the corners of rooms or foregrounding the zigzag of a staircase). Some of these shapes point upwards; more often they are inverted, perhaps subliminally signposting “the man downstairs”, as Longlegs coyly refers to the devil. Even the film’s structure takes a three-sided form, with the story neatly divided into three chapters. There’s an unexpected elegance to this window into unimaginable evil.

However, while Perkins has a lot of praise for Longlegs, she and many other critics did mention the ending negatively – though not in a way that’s a major criticsm of the story. Many felt that the final moments of Longlegs were a little lackluster simply due to not focusing on Nicolas Cage and his terrifying rendition of the titular villain. As Perkins puts it:

[Nicolas Cage’s character] ultimately ties into one of the niggling issues with
Longlegs
. Having created a potentially iconic horror villain, the picture attempts to broaden the peril to encompass secondary malevolent characters. But since there is nothing else in the movie remotely as terrifying as Cage singing Happy Birthday and cackling like a maniac while wearing a rubbery facial prosthesis, its bloody final act seems oddly anticlimactic.

This sense of the ending of Longlegs and the twists in plot being somewhat anticlimactic compared to the opening is mirrored by other critics. For example, Eliza Jensen writing for Rough Cut Film points out that the final scenes of the 2024 horror movie were outshined by its incredibly strong beginning:

I must admit that the patchwork plot of supernatural twists and character reveals doesn’t quite live up to what’s promised by that startling opening scene. But as an experience, and an especially jarring homage to more satisfying serial killer films of the 70s and 90s, Perkins’ scary story works.

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Longlegs

Longlegs is a horror thriller film by writer-director Osgood Perkins. When FBI agent Lee Harker is assigned to a serial killer cold case, their investigation leads them down a rabbit hole riddled with disturbing discoveries and the occult at the center of it all. When the trail of evidence reveals a personal connection, it becomes a race against time to prevent another murder.

Release Date

July 12, 2024

Studio(s)

C2 Motion Picture Group , Saturn Films

Distributor(s)

Neon

Cast

Maika Monroe , Nicholas Cage , Blair Underwood , Alicia Witt , Michelle Choi-Lee , Dakota Daulby , Lauren Acala , Kiernan Shipka

Runtime

101 Minutes

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