Phenomena Ending Explained: Who is Sarmiento? Is Father Pilón Dead? What Was the Spirit?
The film Phenomena (Fenómenas), the newest Spanish feature film that has been very successful on the platform, recently debuted in the Netflix catalog. With a breathtaking story praised by both critics and audiences, the plot is full of rich, complex characters completely involved in the plot based on the history of the real group Hepta Group. In the feature, a priest recruits three women to join the work of tracking and communicating with the dead, to wage a war against evil spirits and things from other mysterious planes of existence. But how does this story unfold and end? That’s what we’re going to find out in this special article, with an explanation of the end of Phenomena.
Phenomena: Summary Recap
The plot of Phenomena takes us to Madrid in 1998, where TV journalist Sagrario (Belén Rueda), camera operator Paz (Gracia Olayo), medium Gloria (Toni Acosta), and Father Pilón (Emilio Gutiérrez Caba) come together to form a team specializing in the investigation of paranormal phenomena, the Hepta. To these is added, almost by chance, Pablo, a rather skeptical but extremely enthusiastic young physics student. Although the group is not experiencing its moment of maximum splendor, the members of the Hepta nevertheless decide to investigate the strange and disturbing events that take place inside an antique shop in the city. However, what at first seems like a simple routine case, probably caused by the repressed energy of a living person, will prove to be the most difficult of their lives.
Phenomena Ending Explained: Who is Sarmiento? Is Father Pilón Dead?
First of all, let’s talk a little about these three women and their specialties. The first of them is Gloria, a woman who suffers from smoking, but at the same time a talented medium. The second, Sagrario, is a widow desperately trying to get on with her life despite her late husband’s frequent contact. The third is Paz, a camera genius who is responsible for documenting the group’s “encounters” with the dead. They form a very renowned group in Spanish society – something similar to the Ghostbusters – and have been working together for years, especially after a particularly disturbing case unfolded in 1998 and forced the ghost hunters to move to solve it. They succeeded and began to work together, always successfully solving cases.
Early in the film, the group is tasked with tracking down an entity that has seriously injured Padre Pilon as he investigates the appearance of a poltergeist in an antique shop. They are accompanied by a very skeptical young university scientist named Pablo, whose main intention is to rationally refute their inexplicable logic. Sagrario, Gloria, and Paz have great relationships as colleagues and even as friends. They play a lot with each other and not even the mission to track down the person responsible for the attack on Padre Giron can end their relaxed conversations, as they walk through the antique shop at the same time that strange things happen — like chandeliers that turn, mysteriously moving furniture and flying objects and lights. The three propose and raise theories about what happened repeatedly, but at the same time, the young university student makes a point of explaining them using science. To find out what they are chasing, the traditional Ouija board is used, so that Gloria can finally do her job to communicate with the entity directly from beyond.
Once everyone realizes they are dealing with something beyond human comprehension and capable of even embodying the shop owner, the story takes a dark turn as the spirit begins to flex its muscles. When the lights go out, the three finally manage to take the spirit by surprise, leaving the house unharmed — but without Paz forgetting to leave her camera monitoring the store when they leave. After they manage to expel the spirit from the owner’s body, we meet a very important character in the story called Susanita, the daughter of a woman who lives in the house next to the store. During a conversation with the girl, Sagrario enters and talks to her alone, pretending to interview her for a television program, but ends up predicting that something very sinister is happening.
It’s just that the spirit is using the girl’s mother as a vessel to carry out a dark plan that has nothing to do with the antique shop or the owner, which is confirmed when Paz watches her camera footage during the night, which shows the mother kicking and abusing Susanita. It is not her, and since she is being controlled by the spirit, which in turn is fed by the girl’s anguish and pain. His presence in the woman explains why he has “written” the name “Quimi” on the board since this is an author that the girl secretly admires. At one point, even the possessed mother leaves Sagrario and Paz leaves Sagrario and Paz in trouble, with Glória being responsible for saving the two and keeping the trio completely safe.
After that, the smoker returns to the building to confirm a feeling she had. It turns out that the others hear a scream and also go to the place to rescue her and end up seeing a kind of secret passage that leads to the basement of the building. With the place flooded due to heavy rain, they find the colleague completely possessed by the evil spirit. There are quite old skulls and bones at the site, which indicates that such a spirit has inhabited the place for a long time. And he is much stronger than Gloria herself, who has years of experience with other spirits beyond powerful. She tries to communicate with the other two in the traditional distorted voice of spirits while trying to free her body from it. The woman has visions of Padre Pilon, who encourages her to fight the spirit, which can present itself as it pleases. He manages to speak with the voice of the priest himself and even in the voice of Sangraria’s late husband. After a lot of struggles, Glória manages to free her body, even if it is bleeding and with a concussion. She asks for a cigarette to celebrate.
What Was the Spirit?
In the end, with the question of the demon resolved, Father Pilon ends up dying and the three amazing ones pay tribute to him by drinking good whiskey. It is only now revealed that the mysterious spirit belonged to Sarmiento, a rather cruel priest who was briefly mentioned at the beginning of the film and who also operated as a witch hunter in addition to his profession as a priest. He lived in a rectory that was burned down hundreds of years ago and was banished from his archdiocese precisely for witch hunting, but he continued to hunt down women he considered to have such a title and killed them to surpass Pierre de Lancre’s mark, serial French killer responsible for the deaths of 81 women. During one of his witchcraft “courts”, he ended up being burned to death, just as he burned his victims. The bones and skulls located in the basement belonged to the 79 women he had killed. He was responsible for incorporating both Susanita’s mother, the owner of the antique store, and Gloria.
