MaXXXine Ending, Explained

The final part in Ti West’s X trilogy comes to an end, with the 1980s Hollywood set, MaXXXine, with Mia Goth reprising the role of the porno star final girl from the original movie, as she tries to break into the horror industry in the city of angels. Fans have raved about the final part of the slasher trilogy, and the critics have also received it positively.

Mia Goth played both Maxine and psycho killer Pearl, in the 2022 slasher thriller, X, and reprized the latter role in the 2023 prequel, Pearl. A24’s MaXXXine aptly had its premiere at the TCL Chinese Theater in Los Angeles on June 24, 2024. It was released in theaters worldwide on July 5, 2024.

What is MaXXXine about?

Maxine (Mia Goth) has moved on from the events in rural Texas in 1979, when her and her movie making friends were stalked while filming a porn movie on a farm run by an elderly psycho woman called Pearl. It’s 1985, and she is now known as Maxine Minx, and she has just gotten her big break in Hollywood, after a successful audition for the horror movie, The Puritan II.

As she prepares for her new role, she continues her job as a live peep show model in the heart of Hollywood. But Maxine’s past comes back to bite her, when a mysterious killer murders her friends, Amber (Chloe Farnworth) and Tabby (Halsey) in a brutally satanic way (similar to that of The Night Stalker, who is also on the loose in Los Angeles, and mentioned throughout the movie). Aided by the sleazy private eye, John Labat (Kevin Bacon), the killer has tracked Maxine down, and leaves her a VHS tape on her doorstep of the porn movie she made six years earlier, and is threatening to reveal her torrid past.

Maxine meets with John Labat, and he tells her she must meet with her employer at Starlight Drive in the Hollywood Hills, if she wants her past to remain a secret. She declines, but is soon confronted by LAPD detectives, Torres (Bobby Cannavale) and Williams (Michelle Monaghan), who question her about her links with the murder victims. Maxine is less than co-operative with the detectives, and is later tailed by Labat, who she brutally attacks and warns him to back off.

How does MaXXXine end?

After her friend, Leon (Moses Sumney), is brutally murdered in his video store, Maxine takes action, and tells her agent, Teddy Night (Giancarlo Esposito), about Labat’s harassment, and he agrees to help her. He can’t find any dirt on him, and the situation worsens when Labat chases Maxine around the Universal Studios Lot, while she is working on her new movie, The Puritan II. Security escorts Labat off the lot, as Maxine hides on the set of The Bates Motel from Psycho.

As day turns into night, Labat tracks Maxine down to a club, but she tricks him into following her, and Night and another man, Shepard Turei, (Uli Latukefu) confront him. Labat ends up being trapped in his car and Maxine watches on as Labat is crushed by a junkyard compressor.

Maxine visits Starlight Drive in the Hollywood Hills to confront the secret killer. Turns out, the killer is Maxine’s estranged father, a televangelist named Ernest Miller (Simon Prast). He captures Maxine, and scorns her for her sin-filled life. Miller’s ultimate plan is to make a movie to expose Hollywood for how it exploits people. He ties Maxine up in the back garden, and is aided by many masked accomplices.

Miller tells Maxine he killed Amber and Tabby because they refused to accept God, and he intends to kill Maxine if she refuses to repent of her sins. Torres and Williams arrive on the scene and a gunfight ensues as Maxine manages to free herself. The LAPD detectives manage to kill Miller’s accomplices, but he gets away, and they chase him towards the Hollywood sign. Miller kills Torres and Williams, but Maxine tracks him down, and holds a shotgun to his head at the Hollywood sign, as an LAPD helicopter approaches above.

A dream sequence interrupts the events, and it shows Maxine as a big celebrity, who is being interviewed on talk shows alongside her agent, Teddy Night, and takes credit for stopping her father in his murderous tracks. She then attends the premiere of The Puritan II, and she reveals that the director of that movie, Elizabeth Bender, (Elizabeth Dubicki) is planning to direct a movie about her life experiences.

Back to reality, Maxine shoots her father at the Hollywood sign, and tells him he gave her what she ultimately needed: divine intervention. One month later, Maxine is sniffing cocaine in her trailer, as she is called to the set, as she continues her work on The Puritan II. News footage reveals that The Night Stalker, Richard Ramirez, has been caught, as Los Angeles tries to return to normal life.