Barbie Movie Ending Explained: Why Does Barbie Decide to Become Human? Who Is That Mysterious Woman?
Greta Gerwig’s Barbie written by Noah Baumbach has finally arrived in theaters, after months and months of speculation about its plot and a proliferation of highly appreciated memes on social media. But what is the Barbie movie about? It is a very funny comedy but capable of giving us a sagacious, punctual, and extremely intelligent critique of the society in which we live and above all of gender differences. The idea from which the film starts is very simple: what would happen if, one day, a Barbie (inhabitant of the perfect and hyper-feminist Barbieland) made a trip to the real world and realized that things are very different from what she and her “colleagues” had thought they had helped to create? What if her Ken was also with her, who suddenly discovers what patriarchy is? In the following article, we will try to explain both Gerwig’s intent with this work, which is suitable for both an adult and a decidedly younger audience and her convincing conclusion: here is our explanation of the ending and the meaning of Barbie.
If you have seen the film – and if you haven’t seen it, we remind you that this article is marked as a spoiler – you already know that the plot of Barbie revolves mainly around the ‘realization’ of Ken (Ryan Gosling), who after spending his whole life serving Barbie in the world of Barbieland arrives in the real world and ‘discovers the patriarchy’, immediately falls in love with it and returns to Barbieland to ‘colonize’ it and transform it into a world where the Kens are finally in charge. In the final scenes, Barbie and her friends manage to turn the situation around and regain the decision-making power of the community (curiously Barbie does not push in favor of an egalitarian society in which Barbie and Ken are equal, in a real ‘Pinocchio Moment‘, Barbie decides to become a real woman.
Barbie Movie: Summary Recap
In the film that Gerwig dedicates to Barbie, the doll’s life is perfect in the colorful and fake Barbieland, an enchanted place where every day is as wonderful as the one before and as much as the one to come because everything there is eternal! However, here is that the thoughts of death that begin to be generated in Barbie represent something very worrying, which seems to make her malfunction compared to the others. Barbie finds herself therefore forced to leave for the real world, where she will have to search for the origin of that malaise and remedy it. An adventure that will however put the enchanting doll in front of a world far from what she expected. Sitting on the cinema seat and not knowing how to predict what we’re going to see: it’s something that happens less and less often today, and, in the specific case of Barbie, it contributes a lot to enjoying a vision without prejudices and full of surprises.
For this reason, just as we didn’t know anything about what we saw when the press preview began, it’s good to spend only a few lines regarding the plot of the film, only telling the initial premise. We are in Barbieland, the world where all the Barbies and all the Kens live their perfect day, always the same, as it should be. A pink-tinged world where Barbie dolls live in their dream homes, go to the beach, exchange Nobel prizes and have parties. A world where the Kens are just supporting actors, men waiting to be looked at by their Barbies, a little jealous of each other, but part of a tested safe and precise routine.
The days are spent like this, immovable until one of the Barbies (Margot Robbie) starts having thoughts related to death. From that moment the perfection of her routine fails and, even worse, her body begins to change: the first signs of cellulite appear on her legs, her feet rest on the ground (instead of staying on their toes. The reason seems to be clear: they are all consequences of an emotional bond coming from the little girl, no longer happy, who is playing with her in the real world. Our Barbie will have to convince the little girl to rediscover that lost joy and she will therefore be forced to travel to the real world, which she believes is as perfect as Barbieland. She will discover, however, that reality is very different from what she believed.
Barbie Movie Ending Explained: Who Is That Mysterious Woman?
The rare Barbie explains that her doubts are transmitted by the girl who plays with her in the real world, so she must go find her to recover her perfect life. Despite her doubts, the protagonist gets into her pink convertible and heads to Los Angeles in the company of Ken (Ryan Gosling). After crossing the portal, Barbie and Ken find themselves in a hostile world that is very different from Barbieland. As Ken feels more confident in himself, Barbie begins to feel insecure and bullied. After being arrested just for defending themselves, they decide they should wear less flashy outfits, so they grab the first thing they see and leave without paying, prompting another arrest.
Barbie tries to meditate on locating her girl, but Ken won’t let her focus, so she sends him on a tour of the town. During that time, Ken understands how the real world works and the power that men have, something that he will later try to replicate in Barbieland. Meanwhile, Barbie finds Sasha and decides to talk to her at her school, but only receives rejection and complaints for idealizing beauty standards. As she processes everything she was told, she is accosted by Mattel employees who take her to the general manager, who just wants to send the doll into her world. The protagonist decides to escape and with the help of Sasha’s mother, who was the one who transmitted her doubts to the doll when playing with her daughter’s toys, she succeeds. After escaping from the Mattel executives, Barbie brings Clara and Sasha into her world, but nothing is like before.
Does Barbie Manage to Regain Control of Barbieland?
With everything he learned about men in the real world, Ken educated the other Kens and managed to take over Barbieland. Now they have all the important jobs and positions, while the Barbies are reduced to companions. Without any idea, the protagonist simply starts crying. Clara and Sasha try to cheer her up, but they can’t, so they leave. Before they can cross the portal, they run into some workmen who begin to close the portal on Ken‘s orders. Determined to help Barbie, mother, and daughter return and together with the rare Barbie and Allan devise a plan to regain control. After waking up the other Barbies, they gather at the beach and ask the Kens to play the guitar. To provoke a showdown, they start flirting with other Kens, and take advantage of that distraction to take back Barbieland. The executives arrive at Barbie‘s world and when they see that everything is in order, they decide to close the portal. Before that happens, Barbie must make a choice: stay in her perfect world or go to the real world and become a human. After a revealing talk with Ruth Handler, she resolves that she wants to be human.
What Happens to Barbie?
Barbie‘s film opens with a voice-over (originally that of Helen Mirren) that tells us how girls have always played with dolls, which were reproductions of newborns and only allowed them to play at being mothers. With the arrival of Barbie, things have changed radically, and girls from all over the world have started playing with dolls that could be doctors, astronauts, the president of the United States, and Nobel Prize-winning scientists. Barbie changed the world, allowing young women to aspire to be whomever they want, always making their dreams come true. At least, that’s what the Barbies who live in Barbieland believe, a reality separate from ours in which we find all the Mattel dolls: every day in Barbieland is perfect. Let’s find out what it’s like to live in Barbieland by following the protagonist, Margot Robbie‘s Stereotypical Barbie, the doll that perfectly sums up being a Barbie: blonde, beautiful, and perfect in every way. Life is all sunshine and sunshine for the Barbies, but it’s not for the Kens, who live completely for their Barbies, as if they were simply their accessory.
One evening, during a party, however, perfection seems to crack: the protagonist shocks everyone by declaring that she has had thoughts of death. Things get worse the next day: Barbie wakes up to her shower (no water) freezing, her toast burnt, and – horror of horrors – her feet are flat. The only possible solution is to ask for help from weird Barbie, a symbol of all those dolls scrambled by their little owners, who advises her to go to the real world and find the little girl who is playing with her. It depends on this little girl the change that is taking place in Barbie, and the strange thoughts that she is having for the first time are causing a gap between the two worlds.
Barbie can’t stop Ken from following her on her journey and the two find themselves facing the strangeness of the real world for the first time. What shocks Barbie is the fact that reality is completely different from what she believed: it is the men who are in charge here and the women, even if they can do prestigious jobs, are always at the mercy of the male will. Our protagonist feels particularly uncomfortable with the looks she receives, while Ken seems to have finally found an environment in which to flourish. While Barbie searches for “his” child, whom he is convinced is the young (and very angry) Sasha, Ken decides to learn everything he can about patriarchy and returns to Barbieland, where he will teach all the other Kens.
Things get complicated when the Mattel bosses discover that Barbie has left Barbieland, so they decide to take her to them and lock her in her box: to her amazement, the protagonist discovers that the people in charge of the company are all men, who decide that Barbie will invent from time to time to make girls all over the world happy. The only woman present, Gloria, is just a simple assistant. To avoid being put back in the box, Barbie runs away and – after briefly meeting the ghost of Ruth Handler, the creator of Barbie – is saved by Gloria, who turns out to be the one who played with the Barbie Stereotype (and not her daughter Sasha). To help her feel better, and to get back to what she used to be, Barbie will take Gloria and Sasha to Barbieland.
Our Barbie first despairs and is the victim of a real existential crisis, but then with the help of a revealing speech from Gloria – who explains all the difficulties of being a woman – she finally decides to do something. Together with Weird Barbie, all the Barbies out of production, the very nice Allan and Gloria, and Sasha, she will be able to awaken the others from the trance state into which the Kens (and their imposed patriarchy) have forced the others. Together the Barbies will be able to put the Kens against each other, buying the time necessary to reappropriate Barbieland. The Kens are thus sent back to their places and the Barbies are once again in command (although granting something more to their male “accessories”, such as a place in some minor court, certainly not the supreme one!).
Our Ken realizes that he has to figure out who he is and what he wants, even without Barbie. Instead, the latter has to make an important decision: to continue living in the perfect Barbieland or to move to the real world, even with all her problems and contradictions. With the help of Ruth’s spirit, Barbie understands that by now she has seen and done too much to go back to what she was, she no longer wants to be an idea but the one who creates ideas, stressing that she embraces the human experience even if it means that sooner or later, she will have to die. Thus, we find Barbara (like Ruth’s daughter, who inspired the woman to create Barbie) in our world, together with Gloria and Sasha, ready for an important moment of transition: her first visit to the gynecologist!
Among the most important moments of the film, there is certainly the one in which the Barbies free themselves from the brainwashing done to them by the Kens and from the imposed patriarchy. To do this, the Barbies join forces and take advantage of the illuminating speeches of Gloria, capable of summarizing in words the complexity of being a woman and all the difficulties that this entails (especially in relating to the opposite sex and one’s role within a society shaped by the male will). This is enough to make them awaKen from the trance they had fallen into: our Barbies are once again doctors, physicists, presidents, judges of the supreme court… In this part of the film, we find a clear invitation to women of the “real world”: only by working together, talking, and discussing, will they be able to understand how the patriarchy “works”, of which they are involuntary and unaware victims. It is precisely through this kind of awareness that one can free oneself from certain chains, and one can truly aspire to be whoever one dreams of being.
Put Barbie in a Box!
Another particularly significant scene is the one in which the Mattel bosses try to put Barbie back in the box: to keep her under control they decide to lock her up, thus suffocating her potential and her dreams. In the box, she will always remain perfect, beautiful but without the possibility of change. Quoting Proust – the box evokes an involuntary memory, like Proust’s madeleine – Barbie makes us understand that that condition of immobility represents the past for her, she is no longer the same and she is ready to move on to something else. The connection with women in today’s society is clear: when women are “boxed” into certain roles (mother, wife…), they are forced to give up on their dreams and ignore their potential.
Why Does Barbie Decide to Become Human?
It is Ruth Handler who created Barbie, giving her the name of her daughter, Barbara. When she and Barbie meet again at the end of the film, she is in trouble because she no longer knows her ending, but Ruth explains that she didn’t create her to have one. Barbie is a symbol, an idea, born to influence girls all over the world. She may not die but she remains an example of eternal perfection, even if times change, she remains the same. Barbie chooses to go from being an idea, an object, to be the one who creates the ideas, the subject of the action, and this decision also refers to the legitimate need that women have always had not to be objectified, to have a value within society that is not measured only based on their physical appearance and according to men.
Barbie, instead of staying in Barbieland, decides to become human, even if this means that sooner or later she will have to die. To live a life full of meaning, no longer being an “idea”, but becoming someone who can create ideas, is what she wants. Pushing her even further towards this decision is a long vision of what it means to be a woman, both positive and negative experiences: Barbie decides that she doesn’t want to preclude anything, that she wants to try everything possible and live a life full of meaning, however imperfect.
Being Human!
In a sequence that recalls Super 8 format home movies (among other things, in some of these we see Margot Robbie as a child, they were donated by the actress and other cast members), Barbie sees the female experience at 360 °, from the best moments to the saddest ones, and is overwhelmed by emotions because she finally understands the bond that unites all women, one generation after another. It is precisely this bond that she feels the need for, and which she could not have if she remained in Barbieland, where Barbie is “only”: in reality, she becomes Barbara Handler, like Ruth’s daughter, and this is how she becomes part of this infinite chain of women, mothers, and daughters, who pass on dreams and hopes to each other. This is what it means to be human, not to be an idea of perfection, but to be part of a whole. What, then, can express Barbie‘s new humanity more than the last minutes of the film? Barbie/Barbara is ready for her first visit to the gynecologist, she is no longer an object (remember when she said she didn’t have genitals at the beginning?) But she is a woman in all respects, a woman who can also create life.
The Meaning of the Movie?
Barbie teaches us that we must find our identity, beyond what society imposes on us, we must fight for change, even if it’s scary. Both main characters in this story, Barbie and Ken, are going through an existential crisis, as they both come into contact with a new reality which makes them realize that the old one no longer defines them: Barbie no longer longs for eternal perfection of Barbieland and Ken wants to better understand himself, who he is even without Barbie. As scary as the news is, they can never go back, because they are no longer the ones who left Barbieland for the first time.
Barbie shows us how patriarchy is negative for both women and men: the Barbies – during Kingdom – had been deprived of their identity, their power, their uniqueness; Ken had led others to conquer power, yes, but in the end he collapses because he cannot express his emotions and explore his identity and uniqueness, actions that – according to the male model imposed by patriarchy – a man should not do. To live better, the Kens have to work on themselves, rather than trying to control the Barbies; Barbie, on the other hand, must understand that it’s normal to be confused, to aspire to change and, above all, not to be perfect.
