Next

The ending of Get Out marks a crucial shift in power, as Chris Washington finally seizes control from the Armitages, transforms from a victim into a survivor, and reclaims the autonomy that had been stripped from him throughout the film. His survival isn’t just about escaping physical captivity—it symbolizes his resistance to the oppressive racism around him and the psychological manipulation the Armitages weaponized against him. By outsmarting them and overpowering them, Chris’s victory becomes a deeper triumph of self-preservation and resilience.  

Chris’s final confrontation with the Armitages is a direct rejection of their insidious, covert methods of maintaining control. Previously, each Armitage family member used their own kind of manipulation to coerce and subdue Chris: Missy weakens him through hypnosis, Dean hides his intentions behind his polite demeanor and his performances of allyship, and Rose gains his trust by pretending to love him. When Chris fights back, they’re astonished that he could ever disrupt their system of control. When Chris kills Dean with the antlers from a mounted, taxidermied deer head, he’s actually turning a symbol of his childhood trauma into a weapon that saves his life. Rather than being the hunted, Chris becomes the hunter.  

Rose becomes a violent hunter herself at the end of the movie. When her emotional manipulations fail, she turns to weaponry instead, shooting at Chris’s car with a gun. Chris’s final encounter with Rose also highlights her complete detachment from the harm she has caused. After she’s shot in the stomach by Walter, she makes one last attempt to sway Chris into helping her by claiming she loves him, but Chris doesn’t fall for it. He strangles her but stops before killing her, refusing to let her sociopathic tactics dictate his actions. By letting go instead of finishing her off—she dies as a result of her gunshot wound, not his actions—he asserts his agency rather than allowing her to control the terms of their final moments.  

When the red-and-blue lights flash across the road as Chris kneels over Rose’s bleeding body, the film hits its most gut-wrenching moment of tension. Given everything that’s come before—especially the earlier scene with the cop who tried to pin blame on Chris—the audience expects the worst. The sight of a Black man over a wounded white woman in a wealthy neighborhood is exactly the kind of scene that, in a racist society, is quickly misread and criminalized, and the fear of how law enforcement might respond is as chilling as the Coagula procedure itself. But instead of the police, it’s Rod who steps out of the car, bringing with him not only rescue, but a total unraveling of the Armitages’ operation. Rod’s arrival, after putting the pieces together on his own, proves that their system of silence and isolation has failed—and his final line, “I told you not to go in that house,” lands as both comic relief and satisfying vindication. 

It’s important to note that Jordan Peele originally wrote a darker ending for Get Out. In the first version, the police arrest Chris for the deaths at the Armitage estate. That ending, had it been used, would have reinforced the idea that no matter how hard and cleverly Chris fought for his survival, the system, far from protecting him, would actively work against him. Peele later decided to change it, saying in an interview with Varity, “It was very clear that the ending needed to transform into something that gives us a hero, that gives us an escape, gives us a positive feeling when we leave this movie.” His decision gives the audience a moment of cautious hope, rather than leaving them in total despair. The Armitages and their cohort see Black lives as disposable and believe Black bodies are theirs to take, own, and exploit. Chris’s survival does not erase what he has endured, but it breaks the cycle of violence the Armitages have perpetrated for years. By giving us an ending in which Chris defeats his captors and speeds off with his best friend, Get Out closes with a powerful assertion: Chris’s survival is not a happy accident or a stroke of luck, but an act of resistance in a deeply racist, oppressive world, and a reclamation of his autonomy and humanity. 

Next section Get Out and Performative Allyship

Take a Study Break