Barbarian concludes on a chilling note, as Tess escapes the labyrinthine horror of the house’s basement only to emerge into the cold light of a new dawn, haunted and alone. After barely surviving her nightmarish ordeal and destroying the dwelling of evil, Tess walks wounded through the streets of Detroit, the rising sun a metaphor for her passage into a precarious future. The ending implies that while she defeated the literal monsters in the dark, the real evil that enabled their existence remains unvanquished. Though the physical house collapsed, its insidious foundations within society remain. The finale suggests that the “barbarian” threat lies not just in individual bad actors, but in systemic injustice, oppression and male toxicity infecting civilization like a plague. Having confronted the gruesome manifestations of this rot underground, a marked Tess now struggles to process the trauma of what she’s experienced. Though her resilience and courage persist, the light of hope remains dimmed, obscured by the long shadows cast by patriarchal violence and cruelty. The coda indicates the true monsters still lurk in the recesses of a world not yet healed.