Frankenstein Ending Explained (Guillermo del Toro): Does Creature Manage to Survive?

Frankenstein Ending Explained (Guillermo del Toro): Netflix has put an end to the wait and has already released the Frankenstein of Guillermo del Toro. After almost a month of enchanting viewers in selected cinemas, the film is now available to watch from home. A date marked in red on the company’s calendar, as it is one of the most ambitious films in its history. And, above all, one of its pillars for this next awards season. In Frankenstein, Guillermo del Toro revisits the classic myth from the novel Frankenstein or The Modern Prometheus from a poetic point of view. The protagonist is Victor, a man obsessed with conquering death, overcoming it. Throughout his life, the scientist will dedicate himself to studying human anatomy to discover how to breathe life into corpses. A task that will earn him powerful allies but will also take him to the limits of madness when he manages to create his Creature.

The adaptation of Frankenstein by Guillermo del Toro it’s very faithful to Mary Shelley’s original novel, but not everything that happens in the movie is the same as what happens in the book, and the ending has a different detail that seems small, but is extremely powerful. The film opens with the childhood of Victor Frankenstein, to explain why he becomes what he becomes, continues with the moment in which he begins to work on the experiment that, eventually, leads him to build and give life to a creature, in which he then deposits his fury and cruelty. The film represents a journey of discovery and growth for the creature, who must learn to survive in the world after being abandoned by its creator (who also tries to kill her), but it is also a journey for Frankenstein, whose perspective on the world, ambition, and his own creation change. The end of Frankenstein from del Toro has a tone of hope, and it is something different from what Shelly wrote in her novel.

Frankenstein Ending Explained: Does the Creature Manage to Survive?

In Frankenstein, it is sensed that Mary Shelley was inspired by his own life. Her mother died when she was very little, and her father disowned her, especially when she married against her will, Percy Shelley. This led the novelist to write about a Creature without a mother and whose father hated him. Guillermo del Toro wanted to tell that same story because he also grew up with a father who could not understand his son’s creativity. “I will not speak of a monster and a creator, but of me and my father, and of me and my children. And it will be difficult to talk about it, as it must have been for her”, she has even said.

It is precisely in the approach that Guillermo del Toro changed the history of Frankenstein, leading us to a tremendously emotional ending. Unlike the book, the creature from the first moment is basically a six-foot-tall boy. An innocent being who only needs love. It is not he who commits the crimes (he does not even harm anyone who does not try to do it to him first), but his father. Victor Frankenstein is a man who, as a child, suffered abuse from his father, cold and abusive. Some patterns that he repeats later with his Creature. He chains him, intimidates him, hits him, messes with him, insults him, and even tries to set him on fire. In the book, it was understood that the doctor wanted to abandon him out of pure terror. In the film, he does it because he feels disgust for him; he considers it a failure since it is his work that “shows no signs of intelligence”.

In this way, the Frankenstein of Guillermo del Toro does not narrate the arc of redemption of the creature but of his father, something that reaches its climax at the end of the film. When they finally meet on the boat, with the character of Oscar Isaac on the verge of death, it raises the definitive question that was not in the book. Can Victor Frankenstein redeem yourself from your sins, from your failures as a father? Can love exist in the father-son relationship of the doctor and the creature after all their confrontation? What Guillermo del Toro tells us with the end of Frankenstein, his vision is optimistic. Victor Frankenstein asks for forgiveness from his Creature, and he forgives him. With this gesture, the open wound that is not even in the novel is closed. Mary Shelley, you get to heal. The souls of Victor and the Creature find peace, hope. A poetic, round outcome full of feeling.

What is the Ending of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein Novel Like?

In the novel, the creature kills Elizabeth (Mia Goth) the night she and Victor get married, and that is what makes the creator embark on a journey of revenge, where his only objective is to search for his “son” and destroy him. This leads Victor (Oscar Isaac) to the Arctic, where he is rescued by the crew of a ship, and begins to tell his story to Captain Walton (the novel opens with a letter in which Walton tells his sister about this encounter), and soon dies. Because of his injuries and exhaustion.

After Victor’s death, the creature arrives at that same place and faces a new loss from his father, and tells Walton about the pain he feels for having caused so much damage. Afterwards, the creature decides that it no longer has a purpose and that it has to end its own life, and seeks to burn itself alive so that no one else has to meet it. We don’t know if it does, because the novel ends with the creature walking across the ice and moving away from the crew’s field of vision.

Frankenstein’s Death and Why the Creature Forgives Him?

The creature (Jacob Elordi) and Elizabeth have a special bond in this film, plus an important change is that she does not marry Victor, but rather her younger brother, and it is Victor who accidentally kills her during a confrontation with the creature. But, this same incident leads Victor to seek revenge, and also end up in the Arctic, where, after an explosion, he is rescued by the crew of a ship that has been trapped in the ice for days.

Upon being rescued, Victor begins to explain who the “monster” that is chasing him is, also sowing fear in the captain who is listening to him, but everything changes when that monster proves to have more humanity than they thought. After reuniting with his son, Víctor dies, and that is a way to close the cycle and to give the child the possibility of building his own path and his own life, far from the prejudices and all the pain he experienced.

Does the Creature Manage to Survive?

Unlike the novel, in the movie (already in theaters), the creature manages to reach the ship when Victor is still alive. In front of the captain, he begins to tell his own version of the story (because he wants to show him that he is not the monster his father talks about), what he learned during his trip, and the encounters he had, which leads Victor to see him with more humanity, and to ask for his forgiveness. The son manages to forgive the father (or creator) and then helps the crew free their ship from the ice. As in the novel, we see him walking through the Arctic, while the ship’s crew wonders what will happen to him. This is a little more hopeful, as it suggests that the creature could survive long enough to find its place in the world.

The Real Monster: The Pride of Victor Frankenstein

In Del Toro’s version, Victor Frankenstein (Oscar Isaac) is not a misunderstood scientist, but a man consumed by his arrogance. His ambition to challenge God leads him to create life, but also to destroy everything he loves. The film shows him not as a tragic hero, but as the true villain of his story: cruel, manipulative, and slave to his ego. His brother and his fiancée, Elizabeth, become collateral victims of his obsession. When the creature (Jacob Elordi) —his imperfect but sensitive work— first pronounces the name “Elizabeth”, Victor reacts with jealousy and fury, sealing their fate. Unlike other adaptations, Del Toro emphasizes that true monstrosity is not in the creation… but in the creator.

The Creature and Elizabeth: An Impossible Love

The bond between Elizabeth (Mia Goth) and the creature is the emotional heart of the film. She treats him with empathy, recognizing in him something more human than in Victor himself. A silent, almost spiritual affection is born between them, reminiscent of the sad romanticism of The Shape of Water.

But their final reunion is as beautiful as it is devastating. Victor, blinded by envy, shoots and mortally wounds Elizabeth on their wedding night. The creature holds her while she dies in his arms, confessing that she never belonged to that world. The immortal being who defied death is thus condemned to an eternity of solitude. Del Toro turns that scene into an elegy about the fragility of the soul and the weight of impossible love.

The Angel of Death and the Guilt of the Creator?

Throughout the film, Victor is stalked by the sight of an angel on fire, inspired by a statue from his childhood. At first, he interprets it as divine guidance, but when the angel removes his mask and shows a skeletal face, he understands that he has actually been seeing his own reflection: the angel of death that he himself has released. That symbol, recurring in Del Toro’s cinema, represents the corruption of the soul by ambition. The fire in the laboratory and the final fire in the castle are echoes of that same inner fire that consumes Victor until his last breath.

An End of Forgiveness and Condemnation

The outcome of Frankenstein preserves the structure of the book, but transforms it emotionally. In the Arctic, Victor is dying and finally asks forgiveness for his creation. The creature, in a deeply human act of compassion, grants it. For the first time, Victor dies peacefully, while the being he called a monster proves to be more human than his own creator. Unlike Shelley’s text, where the creature vows to commit suicide, Del Toro leaves his fate open. Victor asks him to live, to find a purpose beyond hate. The monster walks through the snow towards an uncertain, immortal horizon, condemned to remember… but free.

The Final Meaning: Humanity, Guilt and Hope

Frankenstein by Guillermo del Toro is not only a gothic horror story, but a reflection on human nature. Men who seek power —Victor, his father Leopold, patron Henrich— end up destroyed by their own ambition. Only gestures of tenderness, like those of the blind old man who teaches the monster to speak, survive in a world ruled by cruelty. The creature, in its final silence, embodies the film’s teaching: true humanity is not born of the flesh or the scientific miracle, but of the ability to forgive. And as the storm dissipates over the ice, the viewer understands that the monster is no longer one. The man does.