Longlegs Ending Explained: The Story Behind the Dolls

This article includes major spoilers for the movie Longlegs.

Longlegs is the kind of film that leaves many aspects unexplained or ambiguous, encouraging viewers to form their own interpretations. The movie weaves in numerous themes and concepts, such as potential psychic abilities, satanism, significant birthdays, occult symbols, and eerie dolls.

You will be left with questions, but that’s part of the movie’s charm. For instance, it remains unclear why Longlegs uses coded messages, although Lee eventually learns to decipher them.

As the film progresses, we discover that Lee’s mother, Ruth Harker, had a traumatic experience with the killer when Lee was just a little girl. To save her daughter’s life, Ruth agreed to become Longlegs’ lifelong accomplice.

One of the most chilling scenes is when Lee is knocked unconscious and wakes up in Longlegs’ sinister doll workshop. She realizes the workshop is located in the basement of her childhood home, meaning Longlegs had been living there the entire time. The car in the garage matches the one seen earlier in the film, emphasizing how close he had been to Lee throughout her life.

Ruth’s role involved dressing as a nun and delivering disturbing dolls made by Longlegs to his victims’ homes. Each doll contained a mysterious metal ball, which acted as a satanic trigger to unleash the devil’s influence. This catalyzed the fathers of each family to murder their wives and daughters before ending their own lives.

Disguised as a nun, Ruth would visit the homes on the daughters’ birthdays, all born on the 14th of any given month, and claim the girls had won a church prize: the doll. Upon unwrapping this “gift,” the bloodshed would begin.

Although the metal balls are supposedly hollow, one is shown cracking open to release a burst of black smoke, hinting at the black magic or witchcraft involved. The dolls are always covered with a black sheet, symbolizing the “lifting of the veil” between the world and Hell. Satan is likely the “man downstairs” referenced throughout the movie.

In the movie’s final scene, Lee is too late to prevent her mother from delivering one of the cursed dolls to her colleague, Agent Carter, and his family. She watches helplessly as Carter murders his wife. Lee manages to shoot Carter and her mother before they can harm Carter’s daughter, Ruby, but her gun misfires when she tries to destroy the Ruby doll. This ambiguous moment raises questions about whether Lee was unknowingly fulfilling Satan’s plan.

The film implies that the serial killer Longlegs might be Lee Harker’s biological father. There is no mention of Lee’s father, and in all Longlegs’ murders, the father is the one controlled and driven to kill. Additionally, the name “Longlegs” evokes “Daddy Longlegs,” suggesting a deliberate decision to hint at a paternal connection.

In a flashback, we see Longlegs hogtieing Ruth Harker, an act that aligns with the film’s pattern of fathers killing their wives and daughters. Ruth bargains for Lee’s life, becoming an accomplice to spare her daughter. Though this doesn’t confirm that Longlegs is Lee’s father, it remains a plausible theory.

What are your Longlegs theories? The movie is now playing in theaters nationwide.

Source: various sources