Here’s what happened at the end of Sharp Objects
By Erin Qualey
Confused about what happened in those last thrilling moments of HBO’s Sharp Objects? We’ve got you covered. Spoilers. Obviously.
If you’re anything like me, the final moments of Sharp Objects left your jaw planted firmly on the floor. The series made the daring decision to reveal the true identity of the killer and then immediately cut to black, punctuating our shock with some rockin’ licks, courtesy of Led Zeppelin, of course.
The choice paid off. It’s a supremely brilliant ending that leaves the aftermath of Camille’s discovery dangling in mid-air. After finding a dollhouse floor made entirely of carefully sanded and polished children’s teeth, will Camille (Amy Adams) turn Amma (Eliza Scanlen) in? Will Amma attack Camille? Why did Amma do it? How did Amma do it? The two end credit scenes provide some context for those last two questions, but not much. What we’re left with is a portrait of two extremely damaged sisters in a room, confronting an ugly and twisted reality.
However brilliant, this ending is apt to leave viewers – especially viewers who haven’t read the book – wanting more. And there’s good news. Gillian Flynn’s original novel provides much more context for Amma’s motivation as well as the aftermath of Camille’s discovery. If you haven’t read the book, it’s certainly worth your time, but if you’ve got to know ASAP, we feel you, and we’ve got your back.
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Let’s start with the first (horrifying) end credit scene. In jumpy cuts we see images of the killings of each of the girls. A flash of Ann as she grapples for a stone in a riverbed; A peek of Natalie’s slack face from underneath John’s bed; A hand with fingernail polish poking out of a chain link fence. And, to cap it all off, Amma’s manically grinning face. In a move that echoes her lacing up those trademark roller skates, we see her yank a rope around one of her victims necks. This is truly the stuff of nightmares.
In the novel, Camille has reason to suspect Amma’s guilt even before she finds the teeth. That sweet girl Amma befriended in St Louis? Well, those fingers in the end credit scene belong to her. Amma kills her new friend on both page and screen, but in the show the body hasn’t yet been found. In the book, the body is found propped up in an alleyway, just like Natalie’s. Camille then realizes the mistake she’s made. She goes tearing through her house, seeking out any evidence of Amma’s guilt. She quickly finds the teeth in the dollhouse, but leaves them for the police to discover on their own.
Now, how did Amma do it? She had some super Mean Girl assistance on her hands. Her fellow roller girls that terrorized the streets of Wind Gap were her willing accomplices, holding down both Natalie and Ann as Amma took their lives and then pried out their teeth. You can see them “helping” in flashes throughout the first credit scene.
The final end credit scene lasts a mere second, but it illustrates that Amma was the infamous woman in white the entire time. According to the novel, the little boy James Capisi was right. Natalie was, indeed, taken by a woman in white. In order to lure Natalie into the woods, Amma decked herself out in a white dress, like “Artemis, the blood huntress”. After the girls captured her, they kept her for 48 hours, torturing her by painting her nails and shaving her legs before finally killing her.
As for Amma, the book states that she was sentenced to time in a juvenile facility, with possible release on her eighteenth birthday. (Say what now?) When Camille goes to visit, she asks about her motivation. Why did she kill those girls? Amma’s answer is simple and wildly sociopathic. She couldn’t bear the thought of Adora or Camille getting close to those little girls. She had to remain number one, so instead of talking the issue over with either her mother or her sister, she just offed the competition. Dysfunctional families, amiright?
Now if only we could get those haunting end credit images of Amma out of our minds. Will we ever sleep soundly again?
The entirety of ‘Sharp Objects’ is available for streaming on HBO Go and HBO NOW.