The Long Walks brutal ending, explained: Who wins?

So, you’ve finished The Long Walk. Your feet hurt, you’re scared of Mark Hamill, and you’re still trying to process that brutal-as-can-be ending. And trust me, there’s a lot to process.

From an unexpected death to an ultra-ambiguous final shot — not to mention some major deviations from Stephen King’s novel — let’s dive into the final steps of The Long Walk.

Who wins The Long Walk?

Cooper Hoffman and David Jonsson in “The Long Walk.”
Credit: Murray Close / Lionsgate

Like in any piece of media involving a death game, from Battle Royale to The Hunger Games to Squid Game, the biggest question on any viewer’s mind going in is, “Who is going to survive to the end?”

Usually, it’s the person we enter the game with: Shuya for Battle Royale, Katniss for The Hunger Games, Gi-hun for Squid Game. However, The Long Walk switches things up a bit. We primarily follow Ray Garraty (Cooper Hoffman) throughout The Long Walk, but he isn’t the last walker standing. Instead, he sacrifices himself for the ultimate winner: his closest friend on the walk, Peter McVries (David Jonsson). As he does so, he tells McVries, “I can’t see it. You can.”

The line references an earlier conversation where the pair talked about how McVries can find the bright side of things, while Garraty remains stuck on his idea of vengeance and killing the Major (Mark Hamill). Then, as they near the end of the walk, McVries asks Garraty not to shoot the Major, as that would result in his own death and devastate his mother, Ginny (Judy Greer). Instead, he encourages Garraty to choose love instead of vengeance. In the end, Garraty’s final sacrifice feels like his own way of following through on McVries’ plea to choose love. He gives up his dream of vengeance and chooses for McVries to win, even confessing his love for McVries in his final moments.

Garraty and McVries’ relationship is the cornerstone of The Long Walk, melding friendship and brotherhood and romance. While you could interpret Garraty’s final “I love you” to McVries to be platonic, the film highly suggests otherwise. Think back to the very long, loaded pause after McVries tells Garraty he doesn’t have a girlfriend. Or the very on-the-nose imagery of the pair looking at a rainbow in the distance. Or all the ways in which they stand up for one another and keep each other alive on the walk. Yeah, that goes beyond just friendship to me.

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Any implied romantic feelings between McVries and Garraty aren’t deviations from The Long Walk‘s source material. King’s novel is full of references to Garraty questioning his sexuality and McVries being interested in Garraty as more than just friends. The Long Walk director Francis Lawrence (who helmed all the Hunger Games films but the first) and screenwriter JT Mollner (Strange Darling) just take these references one step further with Garraty’s explicit declaration.

However, both Garraty’s death and McVries’ victory are major departures from The Long Walk‘s source material.

How is The Long Walk‘s ending different from King’s novel?

Cooper Hoffman, David Jonsson, Tut Nyuot, and Ben Wang in “The Long Walk.”
Credit: Murray Close / Lionsgate

In King’s novel, McVries is third last to die, sitting down peacefully and going out on his own terms, just as he attempts to do in the film. Meanwhile, Garraty wins after Stebbins (Garrett Wareing) collapses and dies.

However, Garraty’s victory is no fairy-tale ending. (What could be, after witnessing 99 other boys die on a death march?) Instead of registering his victory, Garraty thinks he sees a dark figure before him, beckoning him on. “There was still so far to walk,” he thinks.

The book ends with Garraty breaking out in a run toward the figure, leaving his fate ambiguous. Interpretations of the ending vary. Is the dark figure a representation of death, meaning Garraty is about to pass away like his fellow competitors? Or could it be a hallucination Garraty’s fragmented mind has conjured up after five days of walking nonstop? Is he doomed to walk forever, haunted by the trauma of the last few days?

It’s a grim ending, no matter how you see it. But it’s not at all what happens to McVries in the film version of The Long Walk.

What does McVries wish for after winning the Long Walk?

Mark Hamill in “The Long Walk.”
Credit: Murray Close / Lionsgate

Upon winning the Long Walk, McVries gets to ask the Major for one wish. Toward the beginning of the film, he said his wish would be for two walkers to win the Long Walk. That way two friends — like, just for example, him and Garraty — could win together. (Very Hunger Games double victor-coded of him.)

However, he switches up his wish after witnessing Garraty’s death and decides to make Garraty’s wish instead. Just like Garraty planned to do if he won, McVries wishes for the carbine of a nearby soldier. The Major agrees, and the soldier hands it over. McVries immediately takes aim, and, after the Major tries to talk him out of it, he carries out Garraty’s wish and kills the Major.

The moment is bittersweet, with extra emphasis on the bitter. Yes, it’s great that the evil Major is dead and that McVries is accomplishing what Garraty would have wanted. But on the flip side, he’s also choosing vengeance in the same way he begged Garraty not to do. Garraty sacrificed himself because McVries was capable of seeing the good in the world, but in killing the Major, is McVries snuffing out what Garraty was hoping to protect?

The Major’s death doesn’t happen at all in King’s novel, but, in the film, once he’s dead, there’s a return to the ambiguity of the source material. Upon killing the Major, McVries turns around and keeps walking into the distance. Even though there’s no dark figure encouraging him forward, the scene calls to mind Garraty’s continued walking in the book.

However, something about these last moments seems off. Why is no one chasing McVries down after he murdered the Major? Why are there no reactions from the crowd? Heck, why doesn’t the film show anyone but McVries after the Major falls?

The entire sequence and its steadfast focus on McVries feel like something out of a dream. And maybe that’s what these final moments are: a break from reality.

Like Garraty in the novel, perhaps McVries is so traumatized that he imagines that he keeps walking on. Or perhaps, on a much darker note, soldiers opened fire on McVries as soon as he killed the Major, and his final walk into the rain is him walking into death. The last image is ambiguous enough to keep viewers guessing, but when it comes to The Long Walk, nothing is ever too bleak.

The Long Walk is now in theaters.