Black Crab Ending Explained: Is Edh’s Daughter Still Alive? What Happened With Caroline And Vanja?

Black Crab Ending Explained: After Lamb‘s Icelandic trip, The Trip‘s Norwegian one and You Won’t Be Alone ‘s Macedonian one, Noomi Rapace has returned home to her native Sweden. The opportunity is provided by Black Crab, the post-apocalyptic action thriller by Adam Berg (director of commercials and popular music videos on his first feature film) available in the Netflix catalog from March 18.

Produced by Malin Idevall and Mattias Montero for Indio in Stockholm, Svart krabba is the adaptation of the novel of the same name by Jerker Virdborg, published in 2022 by Norstedts Forlag and highly awarded at home. The starting point is the darkest and most terrifying: a world at war and a group of heroes on a suicide mission to save the planet, at least in appearance. Because the ending of Black Crab holds a surprise, complete with a moral dilemma: what is the price of survival?

Black Crab The Plot

In an unspecified Scandinavian country reminiscent of Sweden, a terrible and ferocious civil war broke out in an era reminiscent of todays. During an onslaught of “enemies”, former professional figure skater Caroline Edh is separated from her daughter Vanya (Stella Marcimain Klintberg). A few years later, she became a soldier, hired by the army and summoned to the Tessenoy base for an interview with Colonel Raad (David Dencik) and her right-hand man Forsberg (Aliette Opheim).

Edh and four other soldiers – Lieutenant Nylund (Jakob Oftebro), Malik (Dar Salim), Karimi (Ardalan Esmaili) and Granvik (Erik Enge) – must embark on a secret mission: they are tasked with transporting two mysterious capsules south to a link center. Their surrender could serve to end the war. The five do not know what is in those envelopes, they do not know each other and above all they must pass behind enemy lines crossing an icy archipelago on skates.

It is a prohibitive task. Although skeptical but not having much other choice, Edh accepts her for one reason only: Raad shows her a recent photo of Vanya. The daughter is still alive and is in a refugee camp in Ödö, their final destination. A sudden attack by the invaders on Tessenoy’s headquarters spurs the group, escorted by Forsberg, to prepare and quickly set off.

Black Crab Ending Explained: Is Edh’s Daughter Still Alive?

After the quick death of Forsberg, the assault of an enemy helicopter in the rubble house where they took refuge, the passage over an expanse full of corpses and the murder of Karimi, mistakenly believed to be a traitor, in the cottage of a couple of seemingly harmless elderly, the four survivors make a shocking discovery: there is a virus in the capsules. It is a biological weapon that will not destroy the enemy, it will not end the war but the whole of humanity.

The team, divided on the choice to make at this point in the mission, is forced to hide from the enemies in an abandoned boat. Malik, seriously injured in the shooting in which Karimi lost his life, stops there. Nylund promises that he will contact the base to send him help, but destiny is written for him. The lieutenant, Edh and Granvik continue: the umpteenth obstacle of the crossing is a sheet of ice that does not hold their weight. The three crawl on all fours and conquer the check-post despite the enemy fire. At that point they decide to continue the journey in the morning, but upon awakening Nylund has disappeared with the containers.

Edh and Granvik are alone in the trenches under the blows of the enemies: she is wounded in the stomach and he dies from the explosion of a grenade. Caroline gets back on her feet, ready for anything to see Vanya again. She reaches the lieutenant who now wants to destroy those capsules: despite the harsh confrontation with her superior, Edh shoots Nylund to complete the task. The crossing of her reduced her to the end of her strength. Edh wakes up in a hospital: she has a hole in her stomach and three fingers have been amputated, but the first phase of the Black Crab operation has been completed.

What Happened With Caroline And Vanja?

All members of the mission except her and Nylund died in the fulfillment of duty. Caroline even earns the Medal of Honor, but she soon discovers that she lied to her: Vanya has never been to Ödö. It was a cowardly and opportunistic subterfuge to get her to take action. Now that she has realized the deception and that she has sentenced all humanity to extinction, the soldier finds Nylund and convinces him to help her destroy the virus, not yet ready because the scientists of the base must mix the components.

Edh and Nylund make their way to the military base and reach the laboratory where the capsules are stored, but they cannot get rid of the virus inside the facility because it would infect everyone. Disguised as seekers, the two reach the outside but are stopped before they can escape. Edh has nothing left to do but sacrifice himself to destroy the bioweapon his team carried: he attaches the pods to a grenade and throws himself into the void causing it to explode holding it in his hand.

Nylund is safe, Edh has made a choice. After simply following her orders and hoping to see her daughter again, she has freed herself from a huge moral burden. When she falls overboard, she finally reunites with Vanya in a visionary scene. Underwater, mother and daughter can hug each other. Is Vanya alive or dead? You are not given to know. In Edh’s mind, who did his best to protect her, he is there with her. Accompanying the last journey of the skater soldier are the notes of Stay Dead by the Dead People.

The connection between Caroline and Vanya, in reality, is an element present only in the film. In Virdborg’s book the protagonist is a man and not a woman: his name is Karl Edh and he has no children. This change allowed the screenwriters (Berg, Virdborg and Pelle Rådström) to give more humanity to the narrative and ground it to reality. The director explained in an interview with Slash Film that he chose subtraction and an open ending because “people talk too much in movies”.

I think there is always a delicate balance between revealing too much and too little, and throughout the film we have made an effort not to explain what happened, who is fighting, who is the enemy. This kind of thing tends to get boring when you explain too much. In a way it was a dangerous choice not to give the characters too much back story – they are just people who have been thrown into this conflict and have had to fight for their lives.

This feeling is shared by Rapace herself. Also at Slash Film, the Swedish actress stated that “you don’t always have to say everything” because “most people aren’t stupid, but many films treat audiences as if they were dull”.