Sweet Tooth Season 3 Ending Explained: Hybrids or Humans, Who Survives?
The 8 episodes of Sweet Tooth Season 3, the final season of the fantasy series created by Jim Mickle based on the graphic novel of the same name by Jeff Lemire, were released on Thursday 6 June 2024 on Netflix. We have therefore reached the end of this long and fascinating journey, so the time has come to look back to retrace the most significant and exciting stages. In short, if you have seen the last season of Sweet Tooth, a summary/explanation of the ending of this series may be useful: clearly from here on out it is full of spoilers, you have been warned. The final installment of the fantasy drama created by Jim Mickle begins by showing the failure of the expedition of Captain James Thacker, who entered a cave in Alaska and did something that caused his crew to contract the deadly virus. What did he do and how to reverse the damage?
The fantasy drama returns with Gus, Tommy Jepperd (Nonso Anozie), Becky (Stefania LaVie Owen), and Wendy (Naledi Murray), who search for supplies to continue their journey to Alaska, where Birdie has been working on a cure for the virus. The protagonists of Sweet Tooth try their luck in a casino, but they get nothing. After surviving an avalanche, they take shelter in a house and reunite with Dr. Aditya Singh (Adeel Akhtar). Despite his past mistakes, Gus agrees to let the doctor come with them after hearing that he too has dreamed of a cave calling to him. Can they really trust him? Jepperd and Becky keep an eye on him and wait for the first opportunity to leave him behind.
Sweet Tooth Season 3: Summary Recap
Let’s start by briefly summarizing this latest season. Let’s immediately clarify one thing about two characters: both Abbott and Rani are evidently dead or at least completely absent in this season, although Mickle had responded with a cryptic “maybe” to those who asked him whether the general of the Last Men was dead or not (unlike the comic); and although we saw Dr. Singh’s wife still alive and indeed apparently ready for battle in last season’s finale. So let’s deal with who is still present in the final season of the Netflix TV series. Starting from Gus and his friends and traveling companions Tom “Big Man” Jepperd, Becky (ex-Bear) who found her hybrid little sister Wendy, also in the group that left the other hybrid children orphaned by Aimee in foster care family that Gus and Jep had met in the first season and went in search of “Birdie”, Dr. Miller, Gus’ “mother” who has been in Alaska for ten years to remedy the mistakes that Dr. Washington’s Fort Smith project has made, creating the hybrids and the Blight.
Birdie appeared to Gus in a vision, induced by the purple flowers, which took place in a mysterious cave in the ice, the same one also seen by Doctor Singh who set out on Gus’s trail (as well as the evil Mrs. Zhang, but there we’ll come back later). And so our friends first arrive at a casino where some old, hardened gamblers live who refuse to help them with supplies and instead win at roulette the last bottle of maple syrup that Gus had optimistically put up for grabs. Subsequently, after having reluctantly accepted the pursuer Singh into the group, they seemed ready for the lucky turn when they came across that man with the plane, but after having helped his wife give birth (another hybrid in addition to the eldest half-bat son, that the parents were hiding) who not only refused to help them but also reported them to Zhang, forcing them to flee but at least being able to count on the van that the bat son had stolen from his father to give to his new friends. Having heard (from a woman at the casino who is less evil than the others) about a ship that would soon set sail for Canada, our group tries to reach the starting point but this time too they are unlucky and arrive when the ship has already set sail.
There, however, they meet a good woman, who before leaving, with the little dog inherited from her dead brother, to surf the last waves south in California, helps them to repair a boat and contact the ship to ask to wait for five passengers. But at a certain point, the communications are intercepted by Rosie Zhang, on a mission with her wolf children on their mother’s orders, and their arrival divides the group of our fugitives in two. On the one hand, Becky and Wendy, are hunted by a hybrid wolf: Wendy manages to escape and hide by clandestinely following her sister who is instead taken prisoner by the Zhangs after killing the wolf boy who was about to bite her. On the other side there are Gus, Jep, and Singh, who escape the bullets of Rosie’s brother-in-law, as well as the husband of the pregnant Ginger Zhang, and manage to reach the ship stopped offshore. This time too, however, our friends cannot relax.
Because everyone on board has died of the Blight, and the purple flowers are already everywhere. So Omone and Singh hole up in safety while Gus, who is immune to the disease, searches for a solution. He finds a survivor in the second officer, who is practically smart working from Gus’s cockpit to remove corpses (whose names and information he tries to memorize so as not to abandon them to oblivion) and flowers and then resurfaces to start the engines in front of Gus, who doesn’t have time to warn his friends because when the officer returns, who in reality was also ill, he threw himself into the sea to allow Gus and company to reach Alaska. And at this point let’s stop for a moment to explain the history of the Zhang clan.
Sweet Tooth Season 3 Ending Explained: Hybrids or Humans, Who Survives?
At the Alaskan outpost, Little Bird says goodbye to her friend Siana (Cara Gee) and her hybrid daughter Nuka (Ayazhan Dalabayeva). While she tries to get back to Gus, one of the men who works for Helen Zhang intercepts her and tries to take her away. However, a mysterious character appears and takes her to her refuge. Is it the caribou man? Meanwhile, Gus and his friends are looking for a way to get to the coast and stumble upon a plane belonging to a family that needs urgent medical assistance. Even though the man has two hybrid children, he notifies Rosie Zhang (Kelly Marie Tran), who arrives with her fearsome Wolf Boys to catch Gus. She tracks him to the sea, where the hybrid boy’s team splits up. Gus, Jepperd, and Dr. Singh board a boat and manage to catch up with a ship heading to Alaska. But Wendy and Becky stay on the ground.
The latter is captured by Rosie after seriously injuring one of the Wolf Boys in her own defense. When Gus, Jepperd, and Dr. Singh sneak onto the ship, they discover that everyone died due to the virus. While the adults resolve their differences, the child looks for a way to get the boat moving again. With the help of a survivor he succeeds, but first, he gets rid of the bodies so as not to spread evil. Upon arriving at the station, they are greeted by Siana and Nuka, who fill them in on what happened to Birdie. Meanwhile, Helen Zhang interrogates Becky and, failing to get the information she needs, tricks her and discovers that the deer boy is in Alaska. With the birth of her youngest daughter getting closer and closer, the woman organizes her men to find the child and put an end to the virus before her grandson is born as a hybrid. When Helen and her troop arrive at the station, Jepperd and Siana get Gus and Nuka to escape through the ventilation ducts, while they solve the problem.
The Zhangs: Who They Are, What They Want and Where They Are Going?
After the fall of Texas following the Collapse, the Zhangs were the family that took control of everything from military power to livestock, etc. Then one day Rosie told her beloved dad that she was pregnant with her, and he ordered her to have an abortion so as not to give birth to what she considered monsters. Rosie refused and left her family and home to live in a camper with her puppies, abandoning any previous artistic ambitions. But when she no longer knew how to support her children, her mother arrived to inform her of her father’s death, and then Rosie returned home, agreeing to make her children available as a hunting weapon for her mother (do you remember when in the second season threw pieces of meat at them?). Or, in her words to Ginger, “I traded my freedom for security” (“and you traded badly” is her sister’s perfect response). The Zhangs’ goal is to restore the birth of human children, to realize the dream of a “normal” grandchild, and for this reason, after seeing what Singh showed in the last season, they also set out on the trail of Gus, with Rosie and his cubs chasing our greedy deer boy.
When they capture Becky they don’t kill her, even though she has mortally wounded the puppy Bruno, because she will be useful as a woman to impregnate once everything is resolved, but also immediately because they want her to confess where Gus is going to visit his mother Birdie, who is escaped the cowboy who chased her through the ice after abandoning the outpost where she had taken refuge (but we’ll talk about that shortly). And since Zhang’s team includes Jordan, the boy that Becky met in season 2 when she joined the Last Men “as an infiltrator” (which Jordan had instead joined to avenge the death of her father killed by Zhang’s Animal Army where Bear was the leader), Zhang uses him as “bait”: Jordan pretends to help her escape for old times’ sake, only to be told where Gus, Tom, and Singh are headed. Once they get the information, they set up the plane and go there too, with Wendy continuing to sneak in without being noticed by anyone other than Rosie’s cubs.
How Did the Virus Arise and How to Destroy It?
Many years ago, Captain James Thacker and his crew aboard the ship Simpson supposedly found the cure for all ills. Even though his men have fallen ill with a strange virus, Thacker insists on returning to land to share his discovery with the world. However, Burke is determined to see the evil end them so that his pregnant wife, Iklaq, has a chance to survive. Although they died on that boat, Forth Smith scientists reached the cave where Captain Thacker sacrificed a deer to obtain blood from the earth and took the virus with them. How can they reverse the damage? In James’ diary, Dr. Singh discovers that the solution is to sacrifice Gus in the cave and assumes that this is the mission he must complete to be free and reunited with his beloved Raina. So, he betrays his team and joins up with Helen.
Who Has Birdie?
This is the caribou man from the legends that Nuka mentioned. But he is the son of Iklaq and Burke. The first hybrid saves Birdie and later does the same to Gus when the Wolf Boys surround him. After scaring away Rosie’s children, the deer boy takes the injured Munaqsriri to his house, where he is reunited with Birdie. Due to his injuries, the caribou man dies after telling his story and warning that humans do not deserve to survive. Mother and son find the cave map and prepare for the new adventure. Big Guy arrives just in time to join them. After overcoming a series of obstacles, the protagonist of “Sweet Tooth” reaches a peculiar tree that is bleeding due to an axe. When the little one is about to remove it, Birdie warns him that this could mean the end of hybrids and that it is best to let nature prevail. Before she can continue arguing, Helen appears and she and her men prepare for the sacrifice.
Who and What is so Important About Alaska?
In the second season, we discovered that Dr. Washington, Birdie’s boss, was a descendant of an English captain who a century earlier had gone into the ice of Alaska to find the cure of all cures. We also understood that something had gone wrong and that in trying to understand what had gone wrong, the Fort Smith mission had returned to those places following the indications in Captain Thacker’s diary, but ended up unleashing the disease and the birth of the hybrids, a starting with Gus. After the Collapse, Birdie had entrusted the newborn Gus to Richard-Pubba and had gone to Alaska to figure out how to fix it, using the captain’s diary. This season we saw how Thacker unleashed the disease on board his ship, and how his companions wisely decided to die there so as not to infect anyone.
But Burke, the second in command, had impregnated a Native American from a local tribe, who then gave birth to a hybrid baby, the true first hybrid, with the features of a caribou, which Burke abandoned before knowing he was fatally ill. This child, after losing his mother at an early age who left him an engraved walrus tusk as a souvenir, then grew up hated by others, who also cut off his horns, and after isolating himself he became a legend of explorers of those places, which he guarded so that they would not find the cave where Thacker had let out the “blood of the earth”. One hundred years later Munaq, as this creature is called, is still alive and it is he who saves Birdie when she escapes the ambush of Zhang’s cowboy. But he certainly has no intention of revealing the whereabouts of the mysterious cave.
All in Alaska: Gus’s Escape and Singh’s Betrayal?
For the first time since the beginning of the series, in the middle of the season, all the surviving characters find themselves in Alaska. Gus, Jep, and Singh arrive there and meet Siana, the leader of the outpost where the now missing Birdie was, and her hybrid daughter Nuka, a little girl with the features of an arctic fox. The other residents of the outpost, who weren’t particularly concerned about Birdie’s disappearance, don’t exactly welcome the three with open arms but then Gus and Jep explain the situation and convince them. The entire Zhang clan also arrived in Alaska by plane, with the prisoner Becky and the illegal immigrant Wendy. While Rosie has a “chat” with Becky who renews her apologies for Bruno’s death, and while Ginger is increasingly closer to giving birth to a grandson who her grandmother still hopes will be human, Mrs. Zhang arrives with her men at the outpost, and she fights her way through rifle shots and threats to free her nephews if they don’t tell her where the deer boy is.
Gus, who with his friends and Siana with Nukka had moved to an office to examine Birdie’s things for clues about the cave, then has to escape. And the only escape route is an air duct, through which only he and the other little girl can pass. To buy time for his beloved Sweet Tooth, Jep introduces himself to Zhang to tell her that Gus is now far away, but at this point, the betrayal of Doctor Singh occurs, who promises his help to Zhang in exchange for the realization of his true vision, which culminated with the “sacrifice of the deer that unlocked everything”. Jep, who trusted Singh after remembering their first meeting in the hospital elevator ten years earlier, would like to kill the doctor, then thanks to a diversion created by Siana he manages to escape without being mauled and that’s fine. Zhang would also like to do without her, but Singh burns the captain’s diary before her eyes to make sure that he is the only one who knows what to do and where to go.
The Dilemma: Save Humans or Hybrids?
This is where Gus is going, but when he is reached by the little wolves Zhang is saved by the caribou man, who is then bitten by the “boys” who are put to flight by Gus armed with a torch. Gus therefore goes with his new predecessor to his lair, where he is finally reunited with Mother Birdie. And where Munaq tells him his painful story, from when he was abandoned as soon as he was born by his father who later died of the disease together with his sailing companions (and Captain Thacker pierced by purple flowers) up to his centenary mission to prevent anyone from finding the cave. Even Birdie is no longer so convinced that she wants to save humanity, but Gus is certain that people are also good, deep down. Munaq dies in the arms of Birdie, who in his final delirium is his mother, convinced to the last that it is necessary to let nature take its course and put an end to humanity by the end of the polar night (“Humans I am the disease, the affliction is the cure” is the phrase that sums it all up).
However, it is necessary to find the cave before Zhang and company, who in the meantime have found in the outpost “the Beast”, an old oil drill that Zhang wants to use to find the cave. Becky for her part freed herself from the hook she was attached to, but Jordan immediately arrived to block her. Luckily, Wendy also arrives, giving the boy a good blow on the head and saving her sister. Together they get on a kind of snow bulldozer and go to look for the others. Arriving at the right time at Birdie’s old refuge where they found themselves first Siana and Jep with Nukka and then the other residents of the outpost chased away by the Zhangs. Jep has just finished giving a motivational speech which convinced everyone not to hand over Gus but rather to help each other to defeat the Zhangs, when Wendy and Becky arrive and join the “resistance”, however convincing Jep to find Gus and help him in his search for the cave. Jep doesn’t joke about timing either, because he arrives at Munaq’s church den just as Gus and Birdie are leaving after deciphering the map on the walrus tusk engraved by the first hybrid’s mother.
Towards the Final Showdown?
Then Gus-Birdie-Jep goes towards the cave, while Siana and the others return to the outpost to stop the Beast from charging and prevent Zhang from using it (and from using up all the outpost’s power reserve). Gus and his guardian angels find the cave thanks to a spirit guide-deer who reminds us for a moment of Darkness and Bones, but there isn’t a red carpet to welcome them, but rather ice traps and frozen purple flowers which however thaw to the heat of the torches. Once they overcome the obstacles, they arrive at what Munaq called a “sanctuary”, that is, a kind of tree with branches that look like deer antlers and a trunk with Thacker’s ax still stuck in a point from which the “blood of the earth” flows out.
in the ice taken by Fort Smith scientists who gave rise to disease and hybrids. Gus would like to simply throw the ax away, but his mother stops him, telling him that the consequences of that gesture are unknown. Unfortunately, while they are thinking, Zhang arrives with Singh, and they certainly don’t have the same doubt. And unfortunately, even the mission to stop the Beast doesn’t work entirely, because despite the defeat of the cowboys (and the doubt instilled in Rosie’s mind) Jordan puts himself behind the wheel of the drill. In those same moments, at the cave, Singh is about to carry out his plan to kill Gus, but Jep and Birdie intervene, and Birdie takes the fatal stab wound that kills her.
What Happens in the Last Episode of Sweet Tooth Season 3?
Yet another wrong suffered by humans convinces Gus that people don’t deserve a future, but Zhang counters by promising, in front of a dismayed Singh, that he will use the blood of the earth not only to stop the disease and the birth of hybrids but also to create a virus that eradicates hybrids from the face of the earth once they are born human again. Jep tries the extreme threat of blowing everything up with dynamite, but Zhang knows he would never kill Gus and calls his bluff and stabs him in the belly. Meanwhile, Siana and the others try to stop the Beast heading for the cave, and in the end, with Becky’s sacrifice, they overturn the vehicle driven by Jordan off the road. Zhang is already ready to have Gus sacrificed, but Singh now hesitates and she challenges him to fulfill his destiny. The “no longer a doctor now” has a last gasp of dignity thanks to Jep’s words and the fact that Zhang mentions Rani, so he stabs those holding the boy to make him escape, angering Zhang who does the worst thing he could do: Pull Thacker’s hatchet from the bleeding tree.
Zhang Releases the Final Version of the Blight?
As soon as he lifts the axe, Singh notices the trembling in his little finger, the now well-known symptom of the Disease. Everyone immediately begins to feel ill, demonstrating that Zhang’s gesture has released the latest and most lethal variant of the virus, which instantly affects all the remaining humans, inside and outside the cave, with only the hybrids who as usual suffer nothing. Jep, who we remember also has a stab wound in his stomach, is also about to die, and to save him Gus decides to sacrifice himself, cutting himself on his hand to combine his blood with that of the tree, in the hope of putting an end to the disease in any cost. Instead, Gus has a vision: he finds himself back in Yellowstone, and with him is the legendary Pubba. The boy explains to him that he doesn’t want to lose Jep and that he understands what Pubba means when he talks about “fires” and bad people. Pubba makes him understand that death is part of life and that the end of something is the beginning of something else. He also makes him admit that it’s not true that people deserve to die because we can all make the world a better place.
The End of the Affliction and the Birth of Ginger Zhang’s Son?
At this point, Jep appears in the vision, who in reality is urging him to detach himself from the tree to exit the vision. After saying goodbye to Pubba, our dear Gus gets up, takes a torch, and sets fire to the tree, making Zhang despair, but like everyone else, he immediately recovers from the disease. Including those outside, including Siana in Nuka’s arms, Rosie in the paws of her wolves, and Becky also survived the disease and the accident aboard the Beast, which was fatal for Jordan, and embraces Wendy. And Jep is also alive, hugging Gus, who claims to have let “Nature decide”.
Everything collapses in the Sanctuary, and Singh truly finds the redemption he was looking for when he saves the boy by taking a piece of rock on himself and dying under the rubble and with Gus’s piece of horn in his hand. Gus and Jep escape, while outside Wendy finally manages to calm Rosie’s wolves, freeing them from their chains and hatred. Becky does the same with Rosie, who gives up on killing the murderer of her son. Ginger, on the other hand, is ready to give birth, and her sister reassures her that even if it is a hybrid she will love her child. Becky arrives to help with the birth, resulting in a cute hybrid just as Gus and Jep reunite with Becky and Wendy. Mrs. Zhang is furious and orders everyone to get the deer boy, but no one listens to her since he saved everyone. And here is Rosie showing her mother the newborn half-animal (maybe walrus?), who immediately after shakes Gus’s finger in the scene that leads to the epilogue of this series.
The Conclusion of Sweet Tooth Season 3: Who is the Narrator?
The narrator explains that Nature took pity on humans, deciding not to let them die, but still destining them to extinction: “Those humans would have been the last, in the end, the hybrids would have inherited the Earth”. And so the last humans stop fighting each other and stay together, including the cowboys who abandon Zhang and join the residents of the outpost, in peace. Jep is in bad shape, the injury forces him to stop while Becky and Wendy leave, leaving Gus alone for a moment with his Big Man. He asks his friend to tell him one last story to pass the time. And Gus of course starts telling the story of him and Jep. A story in which in the end everyone is happy ever after (apart from Mrs. Zhang abandoned by everyone in Alaska among the ice), and in which Gus and the others return to their friends in Yellowstone.
A story that, many years later, in the future, will be told by the narrator (originally by the great James Brolin, father of Josh Brolin), who is none other than the now elderly Gus, who tells it to his and his wife’s grandchildren …Wendy. A nephew asks him about Jep, and we return to the present where Big Man asks him if he will be there in the future too. The answer seems to be yes, judging by the last scene of Sweet Tooth Season 3, as sweet as the maple syrup that Gus and Jep drink while sitting in front of their Yellowstone cabin. And who are we not to believe this scene and think that Jep instead died on the ice as it would be logical to believe? Nobody, and in fact, we prefer the sappier happy ending for this TV series that has reached its conclusion.
Hybrids or Humans, Who Survives?
As Dr. Singh prepares to stab Gus, Birdie and Big Guy get in his way, but it is Birdie who is injured and dies. Jepperd tries to protect the boy but is also stabbed. After losing his mother and seeing his friend on the ground, Gus understands that humans don’t deserve to survive. Gus’s words make Singh reconsider, and he confronts Helen. Tired of the delay, Helen pulls out the ax to kill Gus but causes the tree to bleed and everyone to become ill with the virus, including her troops and the people on the station, who confront each other at the entrance to the cave. Seeing that Big Guy is also infected, the hybrid cuts himself and offers her blood. This leads him to have a vision of his father, who helps him make the right decision: burn the tree and show mercy to humanity. At the end of the third season of “Sweet Tooth”, Helen has another hybrid grandson but is left alone.
Her daughters return to Texas and some of her men stay to rebuild the station. The main team returns to the refuge in Yellowstone. Despite his injury, Big Guy also makes it and like the other humans, they accompany the hybrids. The narrator is revealed to be none other than the adult Gus, who married Wendy and tells his story to his grandchildren. With this outcome, it is clear that humans became extinct and hybrids stayed with the world.
