Warning: This article contains full spoilers for MaXXXine. If you’re curious if there’s a mid-credits or post-credits scene or if there’s a teaser for another film after the credits, like this series has done in the past, we’ll tell you right here: There is none in the traditional sense, though there is some extra material contained in the closing credits that is explained below…
Ti West brings his X trilogy to a close with MaXXXine (review), as the multigenerational story told in the 2022 original and its prequel – also released in 2022, following the surprise announcement that it even existed – wraps up. At least for now that is, since West has said he’s open to more stories in this universe down the line.
After the second film, Pearl, jumped back in time several decades to 1918 to explain the backstory of X’s elderly villain, MaXXXine provides a proper sequel to X, picking up six years after the events of that film in 1985 with the lone survivor of the 1979 “Texas Porn Star Massacre” (as a headline calls it), Maxine Minx (Mia Goth), now living in Hollywood. She’s still determined to become a star, far beyond the minimal fame her continued career in porn has provided. Even as Maxine’s dream seems closer than ever, after she’s cast in a big studio horror sequel, people once more start dying around her, as a mystery man has targeted her and those she’s close to.
MaXXXine Ending Explained: Can Maxine Find Fame at Last?
The conclusion of MaXXXine finds Maxine Minx deciding to take matters into her own hands in some big and notably violent ways. First, she and her decidedly ruthless agent, Teddy Knight (Giancarlo Esposito), come up with a plan to trap the private detective who’s been following and threatening her the entire movie, John Labat (Kevin Bacon). And what a plan it is, as Maxine goads Labat into following her out of a club before her friend, Shepard (Uli Latukefu), knocks him out with a baseball bat. They then tie Labat up inside a car at a junkyard and turn on a machine to completely demolish it, smashing both the car and Labat into oblivion – and then using the dobermans belonging to Shepard to lick up the bloody, goopy remains of Labat that spill out of the compacted vehicle.
With that done, Maxine decides it’s time to truly put an end to the threats around her and find out who it was who hired Labat, going to the address in the Hollywood hills that she was given earlier – her decision cemented after she realizes that this must be the place her murdered friends and colleagues all kept mentioning, believing it was a big producer’s home.
At this fancy house, Maxine finds a room playing home movies recorded by her father back in 1959 – footage we also saw at the start of MaXXXine – in which a young Maxine (played by Charley Rowan Mccain) declares her intention to become the star of her dad’s church and repeats his mantra: “I will not accept a life I do not deserve!” Already sitting in the room, also watching the footage play, is none other than Maxine’s father, Ernest Miller (Simon Prast), now revealed as the killer and the one who’s been stalking Maxine the whole movie. (This also means he was the one sitting in the dark, watching his daughter performing at a peep show earlier in the film, which is gross in a whole different way than the film’s visceral deaths.)
It turns out Ernest is quite the judgemental fanatic, declaring that he wanted to “save” Maxine’s friends, some of whom were also sex workers, but that when he decided that wasn’t possible, he had to kill them. He also has amassed a group of followers who we’ve seen throughout the film gathered outside the studio, protesting the religious-themed horror movie Maxine is in, who both observe and help him film as he ties Maxine up poolside in order to conduct a mock exorcism for the cameras, which Ernest indicates will be used to bring more people to his side.
However, they are interrupted by homicide detectives Torres (Bobby Cannavale) and Williams (Michelle Monaghan), who followed Maxine to the house after questioning her multiple times in the film about the murders. When they draw their guns to arrest Ernest and his men, some of his followers pull out weapons as well and a gun fight breaks out. While the cops take out most of the group, Maxine frees herself and also kills one of Ernest’s acolytes when they both fall into the pool.
Ernest flees into the hills towards the iconic Hollywood sign, with Torres and Williams in pursuit. They are all followed by Maxine, who ignores Williams telling her to wait for help and instead picks up a discarded gun. She hears gunfire and finds Williams tending to a badly injured Torres and is asked by Williams to apply pressure to his wounds, as Williams runs underneath the Hollywood sign letters ro confront Ernest.
Torres succumbs to his injuries and Maxine now approaches the sign, only to find Williams stumbling towards her, a cross stabbed into her eye, before Williams falls to the ground and rolls down the steep hill beneath her, presumably also dead. When Maxine goes to the front of the sign, she finds her father was in fact shot and badly injured by the detectives, and he lays on the ground, seemingly unable to move. Maxine stands above him, holding her gun towards him, as he tells her he failed her and she’s become a monster. Suddenly a police helicopter arrives, shining its light down on her, as a voice from the copter tells her to lay the gun down.
We then cut to news footage, reporting that the real-life Los Angeles area serial killer known as the Night Stalker – who’d been mentioned throughout the film – has been captured, but that there is a second incredible story about a serial killer to report on as well. That story is an interview with Maxine (joined by Teddy), who is now touted as the hero who stopped the other local killer, Ernest – with the reporter noting, excitedly, that he was her own father.
Maxine has finally found the fame she’s been looking for, as we then see her arrive at the world premiere of her horror movie, The Puritan II, at the Chinese theater, where a crowd of adoring fans cheer for her. She stops to speak to a reporter on the red carpet, who mentions Maxine has sold her life rights and a movie will be made about her incredible story.
Ernest Goes to Hell
Let’s backtrack a second though and do a refresher on Ernest. While MaXXXine’s big evil dad reveal may feel a bit random to those who may not recall the character and think he was invented for this film, he is actually deeply ingrained into the series and Maxine’s backstory. He was introduced in X as an unnamed TV preacher (with Prast playing him in that film too) who had a nonstop litany of fire and brimstone sermons at his disposal. We only see him on TV screens, but he’s a frequent presence in the film.
His crucial moments though are saved for the end of X, first when Maxine faces down the murderous Pearl (also played by Goth) and declares “I will not accept a life I do not deserve!” nearly simultaneously with the preacher’s same words on Pearl’s TV, which initially seems like some sort of cosmic coincidence. However, after Maxine kills Pearl and escapes the farm, we then see the preacher on TV again, lamenting that his own daughter was lured into a life of sin by deviants, as a photo he shows his congregation reveals Maxine is that daughter.
MaXXXine asks us to fill in a lot of blanks about Ernest to be sure, starting with just how he got the tremendous amount of money it would require to afford that super expensive Hollywood Hills house and to bankroll Labat the way he did. But X established he had a devoted following in Texas at the least by 1979 – both Pearl and her husband Howard and an unrelated convenience store clerk are all seen watching him on TV – and we can extrapolate both that his viewership grew in the six years since and that, in the tradition of certain notorious real-world televangelists, he used their donations to make himself rich in the process. He presumably then bought some prime LA real estate, while gathering his most fervent followers around him and radicalizing them.
In MaXXXine, after Maxine is seen doing her red carpet interview, we then return to the moment when the helicopter flew above Maxine and Ernest and find out how things played out. As it turns out, Ernest was not arrested. Instead, Maxine told him “Say it with me” and, knowing exactly what she meant, Ernest intoned, along with his daughter, “I will not accept a life I do not deserve!” She then tells him “You didn’t fail me, you gave me exactly what I needed. Divine intervention,” before she shoots him point blank – completely obliterating his head into a bloody pulp.
Her words seem to indicate that she’s well aware that Ernest’s depraved actions and her now being the one to stop him will give her exactly that final push she needed to achieve the fame she’s always felt destined for.
You’re a F**king Star!
In the final moments of the film, we see Maxine sit in her trailer, ready to go to set for another Puritan movie. She’s still as addicted to cocaine as ever, as she has been since we first met her in X, except now she uses her new Screen Actors Guild card to separate out a line to snort. X began with Maxine looking into a mirror and telling herself “You’re a f**king sex symbol!” and now she looks at herself and says “You’re a f**king star!” Everything’s changed for Maxine in terms of her status, and yet she’s still the same woman, for better or worse.
On set, director Elizabeth (Elizabeth Debicki) asks for a moment of silence for Molly (Lily Collins), the star of the first Puritan film and one of Ernest’s victims. Except it feels like it’s all for show, as not only does Elizabeth look over to her Assistant Director to wrap up the moment as quickly as possible to get back to work, but she then coldly tells Maxine that Molly never had what it took to make it as a bigger star outside of the Puritan films.
The next scene for The Puritan III is ready to shoot, and it involves a decapitated prop head of Maxine sitting on a bed, as the real Maxine marvels at how realistic it looks. When Elizabeth brings up Maxine’s newfound stardom, Maxine replies “I just never want it to end,” before the film concludes on a close-up of the bloody prop head, as Kim Carnes’ 80s classic, “Bette Davis Eyes,” plays over the closing credits.
While these final moments are open to some interpretation, it’s hard not to see Ti West noting here the folly of what Maxine is saying – she may never want it to end, but Hollywood is more than capable of chewing someone up and spitting them out, as it just did with Molly. Maxine is the new it girl, but will she stay that way? Or will her head be metaphorically chopped off as she’s cast aside, just like the prop in the film? (Hopefully her head won’t literally be cut off, but the girl has now been targeted by multiple killers, so she better watch out for that too.)
As the closing credits continue, the camera pulls back from the soundstage and rises into the air above the studio – and then keeps moving, sweeping across Los Angeles and above the hills, past the Hollywood sign. Except the sign doesn’t say Hollywood, it says MaXXXine. And then the camera continues to rise even higher, up into the clouds, and, eventually, into space.
The credits continue over a starfield, which feels appropriate for a trilogy about two women, Pearl and Maxine, who both desperately wanted to be a star. Eventually, the stars fade and the credits conclude over blackness – but not before we see a shooting star cross the screen. A lovely sight, but also perhaps one more ominous sign for Maxine, since a shooting star is actually a meteorite crashing down to Earth.
Does MaXXXine Have a Post-Credits Scene?
As noted at the top of this page, the film doesn’t have any post- or mid-credits scene. But X’s closing credits were followed by the huge surprise of a trailer for Pearl – an already-filmed movie whose existence was kept quiet until then. Pearl then ended with a shorter but still effective title reveal teaser for MaXXXine. This time, no new movie is on the immediate horizon, so no, there is not another teaser or trailer, but there is one last nod to MaXXXine’s 1985 setting: A vintage “Be Kind, Rewind” graphic appears on screen, before the image turns to the static of a VHS tape ending, before cutting to black.
Will the X Series Continue?
With MaXXXine, Ti West brings the X trilogy to a conclusion, but Maxine is still alive, which offers possibilities for the future, though it’s not the only route that could be taken.
West recently told EW that when it comes to the possibility of a fourth film, “I do have one idea that plays into these movies that could maybe happen.” Though we have no idea what West is considering, one suggestion that comes up a lot from fans is doing another prequel – one that covers more of what happened after the events of Pearl in 1918, when Pearl’s husband Howard came home and discovered the massacre she had committed.
Thanks to X, we know Howard (played in X by Stephen Ure and in Pearl by Alistair Sewell) becomes her willing accomplice as her killings continue – murdering people like Jackson (Scott Mescudi) and Lorraine (Jenna Ortega) himself – but fans understandably want to know the specifics of how he processed what she’d done and then went on to make the decisions he did.
At a recent screening of X and MaXXXine that I attended, West participated in a Q&A, and when asked if there was the possibility of a film in that era, he replied, “There could be.” Joking about the incredibly rapid pace he made the X trilogy at, he added, “I am very tired. But there’s certainly a movie there. Howard came home to some pretty serious s**t! We’ll see. You never know.”
The unique way this trilogy has worked, with Goth playing both Maxine and Pearl at various ages and in various eras, offers up plenty of paths. Perhaps another movie could tell parallel stories about both Maxine, post-MaXXXine, and Pearl post-Pearl? Anything’s possible. For now though, we leave this story and wrap up this trilogy with Maxine Minx enjoying her spotlight.
James Parker is a UK-based entertainment aficionado who delves into the glitz and glamour of the entertainment industry. From Hollywood to the West End, he offers readers an insider’s perspective on the world of movies, music, and pop culture.
