The small, indie horror Strange Darling was critically acclaimed when it opened in select theaters last summer, but thanks to a limited theatrical release, it never became a hit with audiences. That may be slowly starting to change now that Strange Darling is streaming on Paramount+ and Showtime, free to anyone with a subscription to either service. Slowly but surely, more and more audiences are discovering this stylish, violent, non-linear thriller.

Written and directed by JT Mollner, Strange Darling stars Willa Fitzgerald as a woman on the run, and Kyle Gallner as the violent man pursuing her. But because this is a movie told out of order, not everything is at it seems.

Strange Darling is the kind of movie where you want to pay attention while you watch. But if you were looking at your phone and missed a few things here and there, that’s OK. We forgive you, and we’re here to help.

Read on for a breakdown of the Strange Darling plot summary, and an analysis of the Strange Darling ending explained, including what that podcast in the Strange Darling post credits scene means.

The movie opens with a text scrawl that claims this movie is a dramatization of a “true story” of a series of murders by a “unique, prolific American serial killer” that happened from 2018 to 2020 in the American West, from Denver, Colorado to Hood River Country, Oregon. Just to be clear though, Strange Darling is not actually based on a true story. That’s just some fun flavor.

For the first 30 minutes or so of the movie, we follow a young woman, known in the the script only as Lady (Willa Fitzgerald), who we assume to be one of the victims of this prolific serial killer. She’s injured and on the run from a man with a gun, listed in the script as Demon (Kyle Gallner). We see that she had rough sex with him after first asking him if he is a serial killer. That said, we know the story is being told out of order, thanks to the title cards that inform us we are watching “Chapter 2” or “Chapter 5.”

Eventually, the story comes together. Lady picked up Demon, a married man, at a bar. She explained to him that she wanted to have kinky, BDSM sex with him. She wants him to play act as a killer, to threaten her with violence, and to keep going even if she cries and says “no.” The only word that actually means no, she explains, is the safe word, Mr. Snuffleupagus. We see that Demon does exactly as Lady asks, and treats her with care and concern when she uses the safe word. He is patient despite her many games. He even reluctantly agrees to do cocaine with Lady, after she claims it’s her birthday.

Demon soon finds out it wasn’t cocaine that Lady gave him, but ketamine. He tries to flee the hotel room, but passes out due to a ketamine overdose. Lady ties him to the bed and tortures him by carving the initials “E.L.” into his chest. Lady lets him breathe, goes through Demon’s stuff, and discovers his police badge. He calls her “Electric Lady,” and we realize that she is the serial killer. He’s a cop who was hunting her down, and got very close to catching her. (But his methods are questionable. I don’t think you’re supposed to sleep with murder suspects!)

Lady tries to kill Demon, but his drugs are wearing off, and he gets the jump on her with a concealed gun, shooting her in the ear. She flees the hotel, and he pursues her with his rifle. She takes advantage of her appearance as a perceived victim in order to bandage up her ear and steal a nurse’s clothes. Then she runs into the woods, where she stumbles upon a house that is surrounded by megaphones, blasting a podcast about a Sasquatch conspiracy theory.

It turns out the house belongs to an old, eccentric, doomsday prepper couple, Frederick (Ed Begley Jr.) and Genevieve (Barbara Hershey) who agree to help Lady when she begs for assistance. They ask her if she’s been attacked by the Sasquatch. When Frederick tries to call the police, Lady kills him. Barbara escapes, just as Demon is coming on to the property to hunt Lady down.

Lady hides in freezer, where Demon eventually finds her. He shoots her in the shoulder. (She’s wearing a leather jacket, which maybe also offers her some protection.) He handcuffs to her the freezer, and calls his cop buddy for backup. But before the back-up arrives, Lady sprays Demon with bear spray, and takes a big bite out of his jugular. He bleeds out, while Lady arranges herself into a more helpless-looking position, before the cops arrive.

Two cops arrive, one male and one female. The woman cop immediately goes to Lady’s aid, perceiving her as a clear victim in the situation. The man cop is more suspicious, but agrees to help escort Lady to receive medical attention. While escorting Lady in the squad car, Genevieve runs up to the car shouting about a woman who tried to kill her. Of course, that’s when Lady busts out her concealed gun and kills Genevieve.

Lady lets the woman cop escape, as a thank-you for helping her. She holds the male cop at gunpoint, during which he asks her why she killed all those people, as the “Electric Lady” serial killer. Lady says that sometimes instead humans, she sees devils. We assume this is why, earlier in the movie, she was staring at Demon like he was, well, a demon. Lady apparently sees a demon in the cop, and kills him.

In the epilogues, Lady once again plays the victim and once again a Good Samaritan pulls over to help her. Only this time, when Lady pulls a gun, the Good Samaritan is ready. The Good Samaritan shoots Lady first, then calls the police to let them know she shot someone in self-defense, and will drive her to the hospital. Lady bleeds out in the passenger seat, and with that, the movie ends.

If you stick around to the very end of the Strange Darling credits, you’ll get treated to a Strange Darling end credits scene, of sorts. It’s a little bonus audio dialogue of the podcast about the Sasquatch that we heard in the forest:

“From the high desert in the majestic American West, I bid you all good evening, or good morning, or good afternoon, wherever you may be across this great land of ours,” a voice says. “This is the world-famous Shore to Spooky Shore AM Dark Night in the desert. And I’m Art Pallone.” According to the movie credits, Art Pallone is voiced by cinematographer Giovanni Ribisi.

So what’s up with this podcast? In additional to being some extra, stylized flavor, it could also be the murders done by the Electric Lady helped fuel a rumor that there was a Sasquatch monster in the woods, killing people. After all, the opening credits claimed she was “prolific,” so we can assume she killed a lot more people than we saw her kill. But hey, that’s just a theory. It’s also just fun!