Ending Explained: The Exorcist

💡 What does the ending really mean?

The possessed Regan, after endless profane torment and medical horrors, finally expels the demon during a chaotic climax in which Father Karras, consumed by rage and guilt, invites the entity into his own body and then hurls himself down the stairs to his death, taking the demon with him. The ending is a bleak, cynical victory: faith and sacrifice achieve nothing transcendent, only a grim exchange of vessels and a final image of Karras's broken body that suggests evil is never truly defeated, merely passed on in an absurd, godless universe.