Sister Death Ending Explained: What is the Secret Hidden in the Convent? Can Sister Narcisa Finally See?
Sister Death is available on Netflix from 27 October 2023. This is the new Spanish horror film directed by Paco Plaza and written by Jorge Guerricaechevarría. The film is the prequel to the 2017 Spanish drama, Veronica. The film aims to delve into the life of Narcisa, played by actress Aria Bedmar, nicknamed Death Sister by the school’s students. We are in post-war Spain and the young novice with supernatural powers reaches a former convent that is now a girls’ school, where she must take on the role of teacher. As time passes, strange events occur and the situation becomes more and more disturbing, to the point that Narcisa decides to discover all the secrets concerning the structure.
In the film Veronica, based on a true story, we see the events of a girl who, while playing with an Ouija board with her school friends, is possessed and attacked by a demon. To get rid of it, she asks for help from a blind nun who teaches in her school and who will act as her mentor, Narcisa nicknamed Sister Death. The film of the same name which recently arrived on Netflix, however, aims to explore the dynamics of the nun’s life during her youth and before the events of the sequel. Following the clash with ghosts on which she places a terrible curse, the woman loses her sight and goes to teach in a new school. When she became old, in 1991, she entered the class where Veronica herself, who would later be the protagonist of the director’s other film, studied, and the two looked at each other as if predicting that something would happen.
Sister Death Ending Explained: The Story Plot
The plot of Sister Death begins with Narcisa, who arrives at the school where she has to take on the role of teacher, the nun understands that someone is trying to contact her and now she must find out who it is. In a box with letters, she finds a photo of Sister Socorro and a pair of scissors. Just at that moment, the chair falls to the floor and other very disturbing events occur. Narcisa understands that there is something strange in the school, with its vivid nightmares and panicked awakenings. She becomes concerned when one of her students reveals that he has seen a spirit called Little Girl. Furthermore, she is suspicious of Sister Inés’ disappearance and eager to find out what the children of the convent are hiding. For this reason, Nascisa begins to investigate, becoming obsessed with the case. What happens has to do with her doubts about her faith and her future as a nun. Not only that but the protagonist is also tormented by her past. As a child, she ended up in the newspapers because she managed to see the Virgin Mary.
She, however, today doubts whether she saw it. Rosa seems to be the only one able to see these invisible presences in the school and Narcisa guarantees her that nothing bad will happen if together I finish the hangman game, which appears on the wall of her room. But then, shortly after, Rosa disappears and is then found hanging in the confessional. At this point, Sister Narcisa takes her things and leaves the convent, during the solar eclipse. Before dying, Rosa had revealed to the young nun that her sister Inés had designed the last leg of the game and her spirits had begun to haunt her. The nun explained to her that the name written by the spirit on the blackboard was her next goal. Rosa’s name was written on the board on the day of her death. Julia blames Narcisa for what happened.
Sister Death Ending Explained: What Happens in the Ending?
Narcisa is leaving the convent when she is struck by a sort of religious ecstasy, on her knees looking at the sky while a solar eclipse is underway. Her phenomenon irreparably damages her sight but unlocks something inside her: what we imagine to be her divine intervention causes visions of her and instills images in her mind that show her what happened to the convent during the War. A group of armed men ransacked the building, destroying many religious statues and icons, and one of them, then raped Sister Socorro, making her pregnant. As a result of this terrible violence, a little girl, was raised in secret by the nuns, who did not want anything to be known about what had happened they considered Socorro’s pregnancy a terrible shame. Problems arrive, however, when Socorro’s daughter is a little girl, the same age as the students who will then attend school, and she becomes seriously ill: her mother would like to take her to a doctor at all costs, but the other nuns cannot allow her to leave the school. convent.
They cannot allow the enormous sin that occurred within the walls of the building to be discovered. Trying to lower her fever, the woman put her in a tub of freezing water. The little girl, panicked and desperate at having been separated from her mother, hits her head violently and dies. Having understood what has happened, Socorro will take her life, in the same room that will be Narcisa’s in the future, and in which she was locked up by her sisters who had taken the little girl away. The desperate spirits that populate the convent are those of Socorro and her daughter, separated against their will even in her death. All this is seen by Narcisa, now almost blind, who in the meantime has been brought back into the convent by Sister Julia. Having discovered the whole truth, the woman comes into contact with the spirit of Socorro, and, in a sort of trance/vision, frees her from the cell in which she is locked up.
Can Sister Narcisa Finally See?
Overwhelmed by Rosa’s death, Sister Narcisa leaves school and looks directly at the eclipse, which seriously damages her eyesight. When Sister Julia realizes the situation, she goes out to help her, but it is too late, her eyes are very affected. However, Narcisa finally gets what she longed for, “being able to see”. By touching Sister Julia, he discovers what happened in the convent during the war. She manages to see some men looting the place and attacking the nuns, one even Sexually abuses one of her sisters.
What is the Secret Hidden in the Convent?
The protagonist of Sister Death knows the whole truth after touching the photo of Sister Socorro, who was a victim of abuse and became pregnant. The nuns allowed the baby to be born, but they were in charge of keeping everything a secret, so when the girl got sick, they refused to take her to a hospital. To prevent Sister Socorro from interfering, Sister Sagrario and Sister Julia locked her in and put the girl in the bathtub to try to reduce the fever. In the middle of the struggle, the little girl hit her head and died, which motivated her mother to take her life by hanging herself in her cell.
Once again, Sister Narcisa hears the crying and sees the chair fall, so she pays attention and realizes that it is Sister Socorro who asks to be released. When she does this she seeks revenge on the sisters Sagrario and Julia, whom she murders. Later, she has reunited with her daughter this image is the same one that Narcisa saw when she was a child. Sister Death ends with a jump to March 20, 1991, about two months before the events of Verónica, and shows the arrival of Sister Narcisa at the school of the protagonist of the 2017 film.
Who’s Behind the Supernatural Events and Why?
Behind all the strange events that occur throughout the film Sister Death, there is the suffering experienced by Soccorro. It is Narcisa who tells the viewer what happened, who during the solar eclipse can go with her mind into the past. During the civil war, the convent was looted, and a nun was abused. It was Socorro, who became pregnant and then gave birth. In the present, Sister Julia realizes what is happening and fears that Narcisa will discover her, Sagrario, and Mother Superior’s secrets. For this reason, the nun takes the girl back to her room. Through a photo of Socorro, Narcisa returns to the past again, where she feels her suffering, with the other nuns who did not make her life easy. They decided to hide Socorro and her daughter out of shame.
Narcisa feels sadness for the nun and ends up back in the past discovering the difficult moment she faced after the birth of her daughter. Julia, Sagrario, and the Mother Superior took away her daughter, who had a fever. The little girl resisted in the convent, but then she had an injury and died. This explains who the little girl Rosa was talking about and why strange events happen when Narcisa looks at Socorro’s photo. Now the nun persecutes all novice nuns who have not yet taken their vows. It may appear as an attempt on her part to save the new arrivals by making them leave the convent.
Sister Socorro’s Revenge?
Once free, Socorro’s spirit seems to almost split in two, one version of her is in the past, when her daughter was killed and she took her own life, and the other is in the present. Socorro is ready to exact her revenge, directed primarily at Sister Julia and Mother Superior, responsible for the death of her little girl. Both in the past and the present the two nuns will be chased by the spirit of Socorro, and what is done to the two women in the past – or at least in that version of the past in which the vengeful spirit was freed – affects them in the present: the Mother Superior is drowned in the tub in which the little girl died, and in the present she vomits water and blood, quickly taking her last breath; Julia, however, is crushed by a statue, one of those that were ruined during the attack on the convent, and in the present her body is tortured by an invisible force.
This split between past and present is perfectly consistent with the theme that forms the narrative skeleton of the film: the sins of the past cannot be erased, no matter how much we try to hide them they will always come back to claim the bill. It therefore makes sense that it is in the “past” that the two nuns, Julia and the Mother Superior, are punished and killed, but that this has a direct consequence on the present. The nuns had tried to bury what happened in Socorro, more worried that such a shameful event would leave the convent walls rather than save the life of a little girl. What the two women did is far from the principles of Christian compassion that they falsely preach, and for this reason, it is right that they should be punished. From Socorro, finally freed by Narcisa, but perhaps also from God himself, who instilled the truth through visions in the mind of the young novice.
The Final Scene: The Connection with Veronica?
The final scene takes us forward in time, to the years in which Veronica is set, of which, as we told you, Sister Death is the prequel. We see the elderly Narcisa entering the class attended by Veronica and her classmates. She is one of her companions who coined the nickname Narcisa, Sister Death, which gives the film its title. As we know, it will be during a solar eclipse, like the one that caused Narcisa to lose her sight, that Veronica, while she plays with her friends with an Ouija board, will be found and then persecuted by an evil demon.
The Themes at The Center of The Film?
This story is set in the post-war reality and revolves around the need not to bury what happened, to hide it, but instead to face the mistakes/horrors of the past, because only in this way is it possible to start again. What kicks off the plot is in fact what happened in the convent during the War, and how it marked both the characters and the world around them: what happened has transformed into a disease, into a stain that spreads but cannot be canceled. Religion, in this case, is represented not as a source of relief for the pain caused by the war conflict, but as a suffocating force interested only in burying and hiding, rather than healing.
The importance of a historical memory, of an honest awareness of the past and the mistakes that have been made there, is fundamental to rebuilding a new society. Socorro is so vindictive precisely because what happened to her and her daughter was hidden, voluntarily forgotten, as if the violence she suffered – both the rape and the death of the little girl – was a sin for which they were responsible: it is no coincidence that Julia she dies crushed by one of those statues that had been damaged by the men who arrived at the convent, one of those statues then put aside and hidden from view, in an attempt to hide every memory of what happened. The past cannot be erased, she will always come back to ask for the bill.
